A Master Class, but maybe not as intended…

I hadn’t heard of David Sedaris until I signed up for the Master Class website. I’d signed up mostly for the writing and had been inspired to do so by the trailers for Steve Martin’s and Neil Gaiman’s courses. The first I saw of Sedaris was his MC trailer and when I finished the Gaiman course I thought I’d give him a go.

It’s very interesting that he speaks about getting people wrong on first impression, because I had him spot on in the first minute.

My gaydar is a rubbish old 1970s analogue one, barely fit for purpose, but I wasn’t in the least surprised at the first mention of his boyfriend. Nor did the first derogatory comment about Republicans raise an eyebrow, or the revelations that he hates dogs and is fussy to the point of OCD. My 60 second evaluation of him as a spikey, pernickety old lefty New York queen has yet to be debunked.

I’m not judging Sedaris here, more summing him up for any of you unfamiliar with him. I’ve enjoyed his classes so far and even though he would mostly likely loathe me and all I stand for, I rather like his style, if not his politics, and I will now certainly read some of his stuff. What I’d like to lay before you are a couple of rather glittering examples of the metro/progressive/media mindset at work.

The first is the sheer unquestioned, offhand nastiness towards those of us that disagree with them and how this is simply accepted as part of the landscape by the left. In one of the first classes Sedaris reads some of his writing about a flight he took. One passenger is trying to get the overhead locker closed but is having trouble and compares it loudly to Obamacare, saying they were both broken. Sedaris writes.

“Several of the passengers around me laughed, and I noted their faces, vowing that in the event of a crisis I would not help lead them to an emergency exit. You people are on your own, I thought, knowing that if we did go down it would probably be one of them who’d save me. Not that Republicans are braver or more clear headed in times of crisis than Democrats. Rather, it’s just my luck.”

Now, I know he’s a humourist and passages like this shouldn’t be taken too literally or seriously, nevertheless, just think for a moment about what he says. He effectively says he’d happily let people die because they disagree with his position on healthcare. I’m not suggesting he would actually do any such thing for real, but the fact that he knows his audience will find this funny is what is really telling. I am, of course, indulging a little in the oversensitivity and excessive literalness of the left, but that is really the point. Imagine the deranged howls, the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth that would greet a similar statement from a patriotic conservative writer, outside the charmed circle.

Which brings me to that charmed circle. Having googled Mr Sedaris, I’ve read a few articles and found out that, for the time being at least, he lives here in England, in a tiny village in West Sussex. He has a charming 16^th century converted farmhouse there, one of eight properties that he owns in the US, France and England. Owning multiple properties is fine for the lefty faithful as the Venereable Bernie of Brooklyn has taught us, it is only a sin if you do not sing the progressive hymns, renounce the Orange Man and all his works and worship at the altar of the gilded donkey. No, I was not struck by the revelation that Sedaris is a conventional Democrat hypocrite about money, or that he is very much an anywhere, rather than a somewhere person. What struck me was a quote in People magazine about his reception when he moved here, not from the villagers but from the media types in London (where he keeps a flat, naturally).

 “People said, ‘We’ll scootch down a little bit, make a place for you. Would you like a radio show? We’ll give you a little show. Would you like to write for The Guardian?’ I was so touched.”

The charmed circle of the progressive/media complex in action folks. If you’re big enough and say the right things, or more importantly, hate the right people, the world is your oyster. It simply does not occur to them, or him, just how corrupt this feels to those outside the circle, slightly sinister even. He just drops it into the interview as a dear little example of people being lovely. How nice.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it’s often good to air real world examples of the sheer bare faced double standards we’re up against. Here I think we have a real Master Class.