Moral Vanity Masquerading as Maturity: A Response to the NYT’s Latest Self-Congratulatory Sermon on Political Ostracism

It’s rare to encounter an essay so saturated with smug self-regard that it inadvertently exposes the very rot it claims to transcend …but the New York Times has delivered exactly that in its July 13 opinion piece. What begins as a confession of familial rudeness ends as a slow, awkward pat on the author’s own back for discovering…miracle of miracles…that his blue-collar brother-in-law might actually be a decent human being.

Let’s start with the obvious: this author, a former Obama speechwriter with an Ivy League degree, makes no effort to hide the fact that he believes himself superior to his wife’s younger brother…not because of moral action or character, but because of taste, credentials, and cultural affiliation.

Matt, the electrician, listened to Joe Rogan and liked lifting weights to death metal. The author jogged to Sondheim. And somehow that’s supposed to be proof of intellectual inferiority? Let’s be blunt: this isn’t a tale of divided politics. It’s a case study in elite liberal classism, where the tradesman is presumed backward, ignorant, or unworthy simply because he works with his hands and didn’t attend a legacy university.

The arrogance is palpable. The author doesn’t argue with Matt…he doesn’t even try. He “strategically” shuts down conversation, meting out frostiness like a parent grounding a child. Why? Because Matt didn’t get a vaccine. That’s it. The author never considers Matt might have had valid concerns, weighed risks differently, or simply exercised bodily autonomy…a concept the left once championed. No, he treats Matt’s decision as a betrayal of the "social contract," a phrase that in this context means nothing more than: he stopped obeying the rules set by people like me.

What’s worse is the casual cruelty. The piece approvingly cites articles that suggested mocking unvaccinated people as they died…as if death by COVID was a punchline for the morally enlightened. This is not public health. This is dehumanization dressed in academic language. It’s the politics of contempt, not compassion.

And then, with zero self-awareness, the author expects applause for eventually tolerating Matt again…not because he rethought his behavior, but because he wanted a surfing buddy. Only once Matt’s skills in the ocean put him on top in some invisible hierarchy does the author finally acknowledge his worth. Suddenly, the electrician becomes an “elite” in the water, and the speechwriter is forced to confront the hollowness of his status.

But even then, he never truly reckons with his own prejudice. He doesn't apologize. He doesn't show regret. He doesn’t say, “Maybe I was wrong to treat my family member like a leper for thinking differently.” Instead, he frames his renewed relationship with Matt as an act of heroic bridge-building…as though discovering the basic decency of working-class Americans is some radical social experiment.

Let’s be clear: if the roles were reversed, and a conservative wrote about shunning their liberal in-law for voting for Obama, it would be labeled cruel, anti-intellectual, and dangerous. But because this condescension flows in the “acceptable” direction…from the credentialed toward the uncredentialed…it’s published as insight.

This isn’t an essay about unity. It’s a monument to moral vanity. It reaffirms everything ordinary Americans despise about the coastal elite class: their disdain for laborers, their shallow definitions of intelligence, and their inability to imagine that wisdom, courage, and decency might exist outside a Columbia seminar room.

If the best we can hope for is that our self-appointed betters grudgingly tolerate those who do the electrical work that keeps their Pelotons running, then we don’t need more essays. We need a reckoning. Because what this country suffers from isn’t too many disagreements…it’s too many people like this author, who think disagreement is disobedience, and that being “educated” entitles them to moral superiority.