This blog will not besmirch its noble reputation by using the dirty word “elitism.” It will not recommend a return to the age when a small elite of self-appointed snobs dictated their tastes to the multitudes. The ’Sixties Revolution has wiped out all memories of that deplorable age, once and for all. It is now firmly stored on the bottom of the ash-heap of history.
In matters of taste – not only in the arts but also in journalism – egalitarian democracy has won. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, and Mary, Catherine and Jane, has the same right to express their views and tell the truth as they see it. Never mind what their qualifications are. And whether they have earned the right. We are so terrified of being called un-egalitarian that we pretend that there is no difference between the views of a scholar or journalist who has earned that right by spending many years of concentrated study on a subject, or maybe even risked his neck, and the person who just sounds off without giving the matter a moment’s thought.
But it is generally agreed that not everybody has the right to be a brain surgeon or rocket scientist. They need diplomas. Even teachers, by common consent, have to pass exams.
Bloggers don’t. They are free to spread truths and untruths (but only if they think they are truths), to disseminate high or low literature. That is their fundamental human right.
So where are the guide posts?
There are none.
Every one has a role model, favourite movie critic, an uncle who always knows best, memories of great experiences, and cultural and moral toilet-training. After the levelling ’Sixties Revolution there are no more group standards, only personal standards. After all, the group may turn out to be an elite.
In the digital age, one cannot expect any stream or bit or byte to be labelled true and beautiful, just for your convenience.
There are no pre-digital short cuts.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
Eric – in my experience, it is still possible to find more than one diamond in the cyber rough. Journalists are no longer playing the role of gatekeepers because there is no gate. There isn’t even a fence. As the estimable Bill Kling of Minnesota Public Radio once admonished his journalists: “For every story you do, there is someone out there who knows more about it than you do. Find that person and put his/her ideas in your story.” He was right and the journalistic process he encouraged, (called “Public Insight Journalism”) is better for it. Of course, there will always be elites. They just disguise themselves in other terms. As OWS has shown, those elites are feeling fairly nervous these days.
Excellence, truth and beauty will never vanish, and paradoxically are more accessible than ever before, but can be hard to discover in the trash pile of digital overabundance. Those capable of discernment separate the wheat from the chaff. There are those who don’t know the difference between wheat and chaff, or don’t care to know. Quality control starts at home, not online. Blessed are the standard-bearers. They blaze a trail in the digital muck. Without them there would be no fulfillment.
But that a real change did, in fact, occur is demonstrable. There was a time when experienced educators, then called teachers, decided what their inexperienced clients, then called students, should be taught and graded their students. Then a later time came when the students began to play a major role in determining curricula and to grade their teacher. Grades inflation was part of the phenomenon. It must be admitted, however, that today’s graduates are certainly not inferior to their predecessors.
at least by their own self-evaluation…
I think there are still elites – not very popular – but they are different, mostly show business characters. Everybody wants to imitate somebody.
To slightly paraphrase a wise person: everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not (even if he is a blogger) to his own facts. The ease of spreading untruths, either knowingly or with indifference to their nature, is surely one of the most pernicious characteristics of the blogosphere.
The first definition of “the elite” in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary is “the best or choice part of a larger body or group.” Anyone who embraces the notion of excellence cannot deny that those who meet that criterion must be members of the elite in that sense.
Egalitarian preoccupation with gangs like “the power elite” or “the cultural elite” (inevitably but unnecessarily) carries a corollary that makes it politically incorrect to seek and nourish the best. This is a nonsense.
It is not elitist to acknowledge and celebrate the elite. I for one unashamedly do. How else might one strive for a meritocracy?
(I suppose true egalitarians oppose the notion of a meritocracy, too. What barbarism! – no offence to any living North African intended. Perhaps I should have written philistinism, in the hope that there aren’t any actual Philistines left to complain.)
Much of Eric’s charm is due to the fact that he clings so tenaciously to Victorian ideas and sensibilities. Thus he blames the present deplorable public taste on “egalitarian democracy.” He says this even as the Occupy Movement attempts to dramatize the hideous discrepancies that presently exist between rich and poor. The appalling lack of taste displayed on television, in art generally and in other aspects of modern life is due to the collapse of standards among our elite, which is interested only in money. I keep telling Eric that in such a society as ours he should trust the poor and defeated. They alone can judge the monstrous pretext that what is on offer from the media is a response to “popular” demand.