Rampant Snobbery

OK, so I drive a lot for my job. Mostly to Wyoming and Fort Collins. This gives me a lot of time to do two things: think and listen to NPR. Most of the time, those two pursuits are complimentary. Sometimes, however, my thinking gets all bothered by NPR. Those times produce rants like this one:

I was listening today to a report about milk, of all things. And no, it was not related in any way to the new movie about the openly gay politician played by Sean Penn. It was about actual milk, as in from cows and other mammals. It seems some elderly woman with a very shaky 'On Golden Pond'-esque voice has written a book about the history of milk through the ages, and she had been invited as a guest on All Things Considered.

I have no problem with her writing a book about the history of milk. It is not a book I am going to read, but I am sure there is some bibliophile out there somewhere who is just dying to find out what the Assyrians or Huns did with their dairy products. I mean, this lady is more than entitled to write a book about the history of Velcro or yodeling for all I care.

What bothered me was this: she is a milk snob. She was talking, without even the slightest hint of sarcasm, about the 'zest' and 'depth' of milk, and about qualitative differences between the milk of cows raised on too much corn, vs. pure grass and hay. She claimed that grass and hay fed cows produce milk that is 'thicker and more full-bodied.' She also went so far as to dispute the value of the 'organic' label, and stated that she will only drink milk that has been produced by free-ranging, grass and hay fed cows, whose grass and hay was free of pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers. It was snobbery writ large, and over milk of all things.

Now I like milk as much as the next guy. I love the stuff. I even admit to a modicum of milk snobbery myself. I will not drink skim milk, and the closer to whole the better I like it. There is also this ultra-high-heated sterilized milk that is like hitting your tongue with the nasty stick. I don't drink that either. But that is as far as I can go. I feel silly about not drinking skim milk. I don't understand how this lady can be so picky and so hyper selective without having at least some sense of her own looniness and oddity. She is an odd duck, but is unaware of it. Her intense interest in milk is laughable, yet she is not laughing. She doesn't get it.

I think this is true of all snobs, and I think that is why snobs tend to seek each other out. Snobbery is an abnormality. It is weird. Wine snobs, Jazz snobs, ballet snobs, BBQ snobs, and even milk snobs are just plain goofy. It is odd to be so selective and judgmental about something mundane and trivial. So, rather than hang out with the normal crowd and feel weird, the snobs hang out with other snobs, so they can feel normal and can have someone else to talk with about the 'smokiness' and 'sultriness' of a jazz saxophonist, or about the 'zest' and 'depth of creaminess' of milk.

Snobbery is an artifact of societal luxury. If you are starving, you will eat just about anything, including frogs and snails. Hence the vast majority of French cuisine that traces its origins to the French peasantry. None of those old Gauls cared at all about the 'pep' or 'earthiness' of their meals. They were starving, and snails were easy to catch. Only later on did people start to try to become appreciative and selective about these necessities. The same is true for milk, wine, cheese, bread, cars, sub-atomic particles, opera singers, nebulae, poems, philosophy, and just about anything else you can snob about.

There is a place for everything, and just about anything that exists has a function and a purpose. When we begin to over analyse something beyond the scope of its purpose we have entered, not into the realm of refinement and culture, but into the realm of silliness and snobbery. Lets stop treating snobbery as a virtue, and start admitting that an abnormal interest in something like milk is, at very least, abnormal. Not bad or good, just odd, like Donald Trumps hair, or Australian animals.