I grew up with symphonies, operas, and golf. That world shaped me. It didn’t make me sneer at anyone else’s.
Not once have I looked at another person’s entertainment - their sport, their music, their crowd - and felt embarrassment on their behalf. Curiosity, yes. Condescension, never. Subcultures fascinate me precisely because they’re not mine. I have enjoyed new experiences and bonded with many different kinds of people. It makes me like people more.
So when I watch people mock tonight’s White House events - the performers, the fans, the whole aesthetic - I don’t see cultural criticism. I see bigotry with virtue-signaling vocabulary.
The same impulse that has always driven people to diminish those they consider beneath them, dressed now in the language of taste.
What they’re actually doing is simpler and uglier: filling a hollow place inside themselves by making someone else feel small.