Barbara Ehrenreich on the myth of the liberal elite: Beyond that, the idea of a liberal elite nourishes the right's perpetual delusion that it is a tiny band of patriots bravely battling an evil power structure. Note how richly the E-word embellishes the screeds of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and their co-ideologues, as in books subtitled "Rescuing American from the Media Elite," "How Elites from Hollywood, Politics and the U.N. Are Subverting America," and so on. Republican right-wingers may control the White House, both houses of Congress and a good chunk of the Supreme Court, but they still enjoy portraying themselves as Davids up against a cosmopolitan-swilling, corgi-owning Goliath. Yes, there are some genuinely rich folks on the left — Barbra Streisand, Arianna Huffington, George Soros — and for all I know, some of them are secret consumers of French chardonnays and loathers of televised wrestling. But the left I encounter on my treks across the nation is heavy on hotel housekeepers, community college students, laid-off steelworkers and underpaid schoolteachers. Even many liberal celebrities — like Jesse Jackson and Gloria Steinem — hail from decidedly modest circumstances. David Cobb, the Green Party's presidential candidate, is another proud product of poverty.It's true that there are plenty of working-class people — though far from a majority — who will vote for Bush and the white-tie crowd that he has affectionately referred to as his "base." But it would be redundant to speak of a "conservative elite" when the ranks of our corporate rulers are packed tight with the kind of Republicans who routinely avoid the humiliating discomforts of first class for travel by private jet. What could be better than Thomas Friedman taking a vacation from the New York Times op-ed page? Having him replaced for a month by Barbara Ehrenreich. All it would take to make it complete would be to dump the rest of that sorry bunch and replace them with the likes of Naomi Klein, Michael Eric Dyson, and Greg Palast...And just for fun, now that William F. Buckley's fully retired from the National Review hire him too. See that'd be a fun page to read...