You don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the tantrum America’s so-called elite threw last week. Actually, you did–it’s impossible to keep a straight face when you see some of this stuff.


The competition is stiff, but novelist Janes Smiley is ahead in the race to demonstrate just how out of touch with the rest of us these folks are.


Here’s a bit from Smiley’s now-famous hissy fit in Slate:


“The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million–my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.)”


Prompted by election results she didn’t like, Smiley reveals her real feelings about Americans:


“Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a ‘knock-down-drag-out,’ where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today’s red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights…”


Meanwhile, Lawrence O’Donnell is so upset that his side lost that he’s toying with the notion of reversing the results of the Civil War:


“‘There’s a mournfulness going on — people are talking about secession, and they’re not completely joking,’ said Lawrence O’Donnell, a writer on ‘The West Wing’ and a political commentator.’The intensity of disappointment is so enormous. I haven’t experienced or witnessed anything like it since 1972,’ when George McGovern lost to Richard Nixon.”


Nor is dapper former Clinton insider Sidney Blumenthal without reservations about his fellow citizens:


“Brought along with Bush is a gallery of grotesques in the Senate: more than one new senator advocates capital punishment for abortion; another urges that all gay teachers be fired; yet another is suffering from obvious symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The new majority is more theocratic than Republican, as Republican was previously understood; the defeat of the old moderate Republican party is far more decisive than the loss by the Democrats. There are no checks and balances.”


Do you get the feeling that Smiley’s people are estranged from the rest of us?