Discussing the ways elitism codes itself into language, the editors of n+1 offer, “When Al Gore said his favorite book was Stendhal’s Red and the Black, this could be boiled down to mean, You know what? I’m an upper-class guy who went to Harvard.” It’s a great observation — the kind n+1 editorials are full of. The next sentence, however, is something strange. Not content to leave the point where it stands, the editors add, almost offhandedly, “Of course, everyone with power in America is an upper-class guy who went to Harvard.”

A fairly innocuous statement, until you realize that nearly everyone on n+1’s editorial board went to Harvard — the lone exceptions of the six-person group being a graduate from Columbia and a graduate from Wesleyan. Hearing that everyone who matters in the world went to Harvard isn’t, in and of itself, all that obnoxious — unless you’re hearing it from four people who went to Harvard. Then it’s really, really obnoxious.

From Jamie Berk’s fantastic critique of n+1 in American Circus.

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