This story casts Dan Rather as the obnoxious “elite” and makes humble contractor Jerry “Doin’ the News” Kelley the working-class victim. But it’s all in service of selling the politics of the ultimate aristocrat, Steve Forbes, a man who probably didn’t blow his own nose until he was at least thirty. In that one unholy trinity you have the outlines of modern conservatism’s whole argument, which casts the press and Hollywood as “elites,” while their corporate overlords are kept off-camera.
