Katie Couric Confirms Own Stupidity, Snobbery

Minor footnote:  There's a "New Brunswick" in the U.S.?  Huh.  Here in 
Canada, it's the name of one of our four founding provinces.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/New_Brunswick

- - -

http://kylesmithonline.com/?p=7153

by Kyle

Thanks to those who pointed out that Katie Couric, after using the phrase 
"this great unwashed" to refer to non-bicoastal gentry, actually dug in 
her Louboutin heels on Twitter. Couric tweeted, quoting Dictionary.com:

    "Great unwashed": the general public, populace or masses. Referring to 
overlooked people who r politically in the middle!

I am pleased that Couric is tacitly admitting that she was correctly 
quoted. But, er. . . 1) the definition she quotes does not have anything 
to do with centrist politics. The second half of her tweet is a 
nonsequitur. 2) Anyone who reads books (I am not sure whether this applies 
to Couric; I suspect it does not) knows that "great unwashed" carries a 
strongly disparaging tone, implying as it does a citizenry too poor or too 
uncouth to bathe, and not only disparaging but fraught with de-haut-en-bas 
(look it up on Dictionary.com, Katie!) snobbery or rank condescension. It 
is precisely that condescension that has been identified as being a 
central operational characteristic of journalists such as Couric and Peter 
Jennings, who said the voters were having a tantrum when they opted for 
change in 1994. (None of Jennings' survivors in the TV news politburo, you 
will recall, characterized the voters as being petulant when they opted 
for change in 2008.)

I've been in journalism for 18 years -- granted, not as long as Katie -- 
and in that time I have noticed that the single dictionary most commonly 
relied upon by journalists and copy editors is the Merriam-Webster 
Collegiate Dictionary (which is published, as I was, in Springfield, 
Mass.). What does Web 10, as the tenth edition is commonly known, have to 
say about "unwashed"?

    unwashed (1830): an ignorant or underprivileged group: RABBLE -- usu. 
used with great

Katie Couric, then, referred to the majority of the country as rabble.

P.S. Couric was referring to a tour of "Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and 
New Brunswick, New Jersey". In other words, she thinks residents of 
everyplace that isn't New York City (New Brunswick is only an hour from 
here) are "great unwashed". Maybe, if pressed, she would have granted 
exceptions to D.C. or L.A. But the cosmopolitans of Boston and Chicago 
would surely be surprised to learn that they are mere rabble to Katie 
Couric.

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