It’s more than that, but it’s good to see a smidge of introspection.
Celebrity chef and self-described “privileged Eastern liberal” Anthony Bourdain slammed his fellow leftist elites this week, arguing that their disdain for working-class Americans helped create “the upswell of rage and contempt” that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency.
“The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we’re seeing now,” Bourdain said in an interview with Reason magazine.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in gun-country, God-fearing America,” Bourdain continued. “There are a hell of a lot of nice people out there, who are doing what everyone else in this world is trying to do: the best they can to get by and take care of themselves and the people they love. When we deny them their basic humanity and legitimacy of their views, however different they may be than ours, when we mock them at every turn and treat them with contempt, we do no one any good.”
A professional chef turned author turned television personality, Bourdain has spent the last decade-plus traveling throughout the United States and the world as the host of his own culinary and cultural TV shows, first at the Food Network and more recently, at CNN.
Great swaths of the country didn’t vote for Trump because of the snobbish attitudes of liberal elites. That’s been happening for decades. Yes, they were sick of it and it was gratifying to slap them by voting for Trump, but more important are the societal and economic trends that are marginalizing more and more people.
Reason had to publish this.
Doubt any left wing media, like CNN, NBC, would have courage to distribute the pinpoint of the liberal elitist problem in this country.