It was somewhat ironic that Peter Gilderson cited Shakespeare in the lead up to his rendering of Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn's "gotcha" question of now Justice Jackson. The redoubtable Mississippi State graduate (one of its first alumnae) is infamous for attributing to Jesus the phrase "first, we kill all the lawyers." No, Senator, there is no passage in the Revealed Word of God where our Savior says that. Those paraphrased words actually come from Shakespeare's Henry VI and, rather than a way to improve government, as she would have it, it was Dick the Butcher's suggestion to Jack Cade of how to achieve their goal of anarchy.
So does Googling that tidbit make me that most reviled of current characterizations......
elitist? Minimalist grade point degrees from two mediocre ranked state schools belies that. But unlike University of Georgia graduate Marjorie Taylor Greene, I do know that gazpacho is not the Gestapo and that peachtree is not to be confused with petri. And unlike Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville (ne' Auburn football coach), I know that his father fought in World War II to defeat the Nazis, rather than the socialists, who were actually our ally at the time, however briefly.
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, the Roosevelts, Kennedys and Bushes were all elitists, arrayed all across the political spectrum. The thing they had in common was an upbringing, including education, that ingrained that their privilege is due a payback, a sense of noblesse oblige to inspire us and lead us. The jobs of our political leaders, elitist or not, require real knowledge and experience, and skills beyond hollering and dirty tactics. Would Jesus say Amen to that?
Warren Wiltshire is a Northsider.
