Bruschetta and Chips

I saw in the paper the other day another snide reference to the 'bruschetta brigade'. What is the imitative zeal that sends a phrase like the ‘brushetta brigade’ through the press and blogosphere? What makes it so infectious?

For those non-U.K. readers, this phrase designates a certain middle-class, dinner-party attending contingent. Perhaps more specifically, it equates this leisured class with left-liberal/ intellectual opinion. Behind it is a history of cognate terms - chattering classes, intelligentsia – which are all pejorative designations for a perceived group of ‘liberal intellectuals’. They are all terms which designate people removed from practicality and from the real world, who guiltlessly enjoy bandying ideas and opinion without bearing any of the consequences, who are therefore ‘irresponsible’ and so on. Here is ‘mere talk’; meanwhile others must make tough decisions etc. ‘Bruschetta’ has the added advantage of sounding foreign – there is always something somehow foreign and unpatriotic about these intellectuals, non? Thus, the phrase glides along grooves ideologically pre-prepared. It is little more than a Barthesian mytheme. So, after been coined by David Aaronovitch it was eagerly seized on and reproduced by predictable others.

Being flippant, perhaps ‘bruscetta’ is the giveaway here. It’s likely that anyone who, like Aaronovitch, refers to bruscetta with such casual familiarity is on that account probably one of the people designated by the term ‘bruschetta crowd’ – a habitué of the dinner party, the bourgeois get-together, or a whole array of media soirees where canapés aplenty are on offer. Aaronovitch is of course absolutely part of the class of people he pejoratively designates. A well rewarded bourgeois opinion monger, whose ‘opinions’ are free of consequence or accountability; or rather, accountable only to newspaper sales figures. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps he heads off to the boozers and caffs of Roman Road at the weekend to gorge himself on pies and animated proletarian discussion. I doubt it

Of course there are people who, from the privilege of their dining rooms, or fancy restaurants, pontificate about a world from which they are safely insulated. But these are as likely to be High Tories, or a Michael Winner or an Aaronovitcha as ‘left-liberals’ or anyone else. What we are dealing with is a tiresome and well-rehearsed gesture of self-disavowal – intellectuals and pontificators of a certain hue drawing on exisitng reserves of anti-intellectualism in order to denigrate fellow pontificators whose opinion they don’t like. It's as boring and obvious as that. I suspect this also relies on a familiar and patronising line to the effect that 'left opinion' emanates largely from the 'middle-classes,' their misguided preoccupations and wishy-washy idealism, rather than being anchored in the 'real world'.

Finally, there was also, in the ‘bruschetta brigade’ trope a more specific project, a familiar rhetorical trick or fallacy whereby you discolour a particular argument through tying it to some disliked group. (Of course, referring an argument back to the question of 'who speaks' is basic sophistry). In this case, the particular suggestion was that the anti-war argument was somehow the preserve of an ensconced and self-referential metropolitan elite. This is course is nonsense, but (nonsense + familiar mytheme) quickly congeals into fact.

nb The predictable chorus from HP in response to the above post is dissected here.