They Wonder What Media Elitists Do

Being a member of the media elite is a pretty sweet deal.

We journalists live pampered and exotic lives unimaginable to most Americans.

However, our lives have been under scrutiny recently. Some people on Capitol Hill have charged that we are out of touch with the common folk.

So it occurred to me that the common folk might be curious to learn about our lives, in much the same way that the yeomanry used to dream about the lives of princes and princesses.

In that spirit, then, I present you with this episode of “Lives of the Media Elite: The Kershner Family”:

As we approach the Kershner compound, we are immediately struck by the fact that to millions of Americans, it might be considered a palace, or, to millions of others, an ordinary home badly in need of paint.

We also notice that instead of a garage, which is a hopelessly middleclass touch, the house has a luxurious carport. It has no bothersome garage door to open and close, yet it still has a roof to protect vehicles from rain, except for the places where it leaks.

Once inside the house, we see the first evidence of unimaginable luxury: two bathrooms.

“Yes, we’re quite pleased with that,” says the proud owner. “However, we can’t take a bath in the upstairs one, because the water drips through the ceiling and soaks the couch in the family room.”

“The family room” - what other fancy rooms are there in this house? The library? The conservatory? Well, there’s a utility room, and a very nice one at that.

The family is quite accustomed to getting by with one bath, because for many years of their media elitedom, they lived in a house with only one bathroom. It had one bathroom for the very good reason that you can’t fit two bathrooms in an 800-square-foot house. Of course, to many Americans, an 800-square-foot house seems like a palace, or at least a servants’ quarters. Yet the mere fact that they can afford a house, any house, makes them part of the landed gentry.

Which brings up the one question that America is burning to know: How much money does an elite wealthy columnist haul in during a year? Well, our host was loath to give out precise numbers, but he did give one tantalizing hint. He said that for years he felt inferior to some of the influential newsmakers he covered because he made far less money than they did. But in the last few years, he now has pulled even with, and even surpassed, many of those fabulously wealthy people.

“I’m talking about schoolteachers,” he said. “I covered the school beat. I thought they were making some darn good money.”

He did admit, though, that even now he gets far less vacation time than they do.

This extravagant income explains why the family can afford such elite luxury foods as spaghetti, tacos and chicken, as well as macaroni and cheese, not the cheap kind, but the Kraft brand. They can also afford cereal for breakfast every single day of the week.

Wow! Have you priced cereal lately?

Of course, membership in the media elite also means membership in many exclusive clubs. They belong to Blockbuster Video, the Fantastic Sam’s $1-off-every-haircut club, and the Parent-Teachers Association.

They are also members of the cultural elite, which means that they have extremely snooty tastes in the arts. When they are not lost in a reverie over a Mozart horn concerto or a Shakespeare sonnet, they are likely to be chuckling sagely over the wit and wisdom of Tim Taylor’s Tool Time.

Membership in the media elite automatically confers membership in the liberal elite. We see evidence of this everywhere throughout the palatial mansion.

There’s an old Beatles album, which means they were probably hippies, or at least people who once thought Ringo was humorous. There’s a copy of Time magazine, mouthpiece of the mainstream liberal press. There’s a church bulletin from their Catholic church, a dangerous organization which espouses liberal causes such as peace and justice. And there’s a shelf full of books by our host’s hero, Winston Churchill, who, as everyone knows, was some kind of counterculture McGovernik.

My, what an exotic visit this has been. However, in the interest of fairness, next week we’ll visit the other end of society’s spectrum, the downtrodden.

We’ll visit the home of an NFL quarterback and try to answer the question: How can he survive on minimum wage?