Let me grab two key excerpts from the article (one from the beginning and one from the end) and reverse the order in which they appear. > Taken individually, m

Let me grab two key excerpts from the article (one from the beginning and one from the end) and reverse the order in which they appear. > Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth in the accusation. > What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans. Taken in that sense (and I believe that is the basic point of the article) there is reason to believe that a large segment of the population feels unrepresented. Probably unrespected, too. Looking at some of the early comments I can see HN-ers writing "Why should we care about X?" or "What makes X more American?" when X is characteristic of small town, rural, or blue collar America? Despite the slant the article implies, X isn't more American, but it is still American. This is my theory: the Tea Party folks see the things that the "New Elites" care about and see "New Elite culture" on TV/etc. and in that sense have some exposure to it, but the reverse doesn't seem to be true. Those on the bottom spend more time looking up than those at the top spend looking down. And there are very few non-"New Elites" in positions of power to represent them. That's my best guess. When people in power make decisions that can affect thousands or millions, you don't want to have a blind spot that misses how your actions will impact or be viewed by a large swath of the population. It does seem like the "New Elite" occupies many positions of power in government and society as a whole. And it looks at least plausible that the "New Elites" have a cultural blind spot for the people that now rally under a Tea Party banner. Despite some of the political slanting of the article, I think that's an important point to recognize.