Now I like George Will. In a sea of liberal blather on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," he's the only guy who has the stones and the historical data to back up his point that our current economic policies are completely insane. As a cultural commentator, however, he's about as clueless as they come -- no surprise from a man who hasn't updated his own wardrobe since 1958. Here's the interesting thing, though. Will's comment only seems stupid when you disagree with the premise. As I dig deeper into the attitudes underlying such a comment, I've come to a frightening realization. I am George Will. And so are you.
The nexus of politics and culture is far more complicated than is often given credit through the facile labels that are attached to it. All too often we view opinions as though they belong on a two dimensional spectrum that goes from left to right. You are "liberal" or "conservative" as though that completely defines your character. There are other axes upon which people fall that are just as important and just as diametrically imposed, though. One of these is the classic conflict between elitism and populism. In denying gamers the right to vote -- even in a joking manner -- Will has planted his flag with the elitists. The thing is, whether we'd like to admit it or not, this is territory I and every other hardcore gamer know very well.
The classic logical fallacy of the elitist is the confusion between moral superiority and some other form of achievement. The elitist believes that advancement in a particular area necessarily imparts a sort of enhanced moral judgment. You see it all the time when famous Hollywood celebrities that can't find two brain cells to rub together spout off on political topics they know nothing about, when mainstream media types dismiss bloggers as "people in pajamas" and when people automatically assume that any given novel is automatically superior to any given comic book. The elitist assumes that the form of a given work is as significant as its content, and the superior form always happens to the one that commentator prefers.
For Will, whose sartorial tastes were apparently formed in the "gray flannel suit" era of the late 1950's and early '60s, his comments make it seem like he places more worth on the cost, cut and fabric of a person's wardrobe than the actual work they do or their contribution to society. That's not to dismiss the role of fashion, surface appearance and dress. There's a reason that the military wears uniforms, tech entrepreneurs deliver new ideas in blue jeans and first-person shooters tout polygon counts and physics engines. Looks do matter. What's important though is the context in which such looks are based and what they symbolize underneath. The reason that a tech entrepreneur delivers the lecture in blue jeans is that that is the preferred uniform of the tech industry -- a social more every bit as valid as the Brooks Brothers suits Will and the rest of his talking head punditocracy compatriots wear on Sunday morning talk shows.
The tragedy is that Will is not alone in passing such superficial judgments. We're all guilty of judging certain forms to be unworthy in and of themselves without taking in the context of what they're trying to do. A quick perusal of any hardcore gaming forum will inevitably turn up a flame war between partisans who believe things like Final Fantasy games not played on Nintendo systems can't possibly be any good or that only turn-based strategy games are "real" strategy games or that all console games are "dumbed down" for gamers who can't hack it on a PC. There are entire communities (I'm looking at you Fallout people) who have built their entire Internet reputations on rejecting every aspect of the post-1998 RPG universe. I've done it -- I've condemned games I've never played because they had the audacity to do something I considered "less than." And so have you. It's the times that I haven't done that that I consider some of my best moments as a reviewer and a gaming fan -- the moment of discovering something new.
