[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

You don’t see the scorn that the educated and upper middle class have for the uneducated working class? The derisive comments made about trailer trash, hicks, skids, and mouth-breathers. The food they eat (Tim Hortons and Boston Pizza LOL!). Their ugly clothes and out-of-date fashions. Their bad habits (smoking, VLTs, lotteries). Their activities (ATVs, going to church). The newspapers they read (the Sun), the lowbrow TV shows they watch (reality TV, Dr Phil). I enjoy taking the piss out of the Oilers as much as anyone, but the jokes about Edmonton on this forum are pretty much all sneering at working-class stereotypes.

This sort of snobbery has been around forever. But it has taken on a darker tone now that educational polarization has reshaped politics, and the educated and uneducated are on opposite sides of partisan politics and culture wars. The euphemism treadmill has accelerated even faster now that using a term that’s four or five years old marks you out as not merely an uncultured troglodyte, but a hated political enemy as well. Employing newly-minted language and gestures that emerge from academia has become even more important now that they mark you as not only educated and culturally attuned, but as morally superior to the troglodytes.

I mean this has more to do with capitalism and the cost and commodification of education than it does with some kind of nefarious shift in attitudes.