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“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” former President Barack Obama joked on the campaign stump, giving a much-deserved backhand to Trump’s tacky-gold-shit-on-the-walls approach to redecorating the Oval Office.
It’s a solid line, and it hit a nerve. Republicans were outraged—outraged!—that Barack Obama would dare to criticize…the Cheesecake Factory?
Yes, apparently, the GOP loves the Cheesecake Factory and they refuse to see its name besmirched. CNN host and slime-ridden goosestepper Scott Jennings declared that the Cheesecake factory was beloved by normal salt-of-the-earth Americans and that Obama was “Undefeated at condescending to regular folks.” Some conservative dodo named Matt Whitlock burbled similar populist boilerplate. “Classic Obama snobbery.” he fulminated. “Cheesecake Factory is a great option for people who can’t afford a private chef at their Martha’s Vineyard estate.”
It’s possible I am inordinately skeptical, but I somehow doubt that last week Scott Jennings and Matt Whitlock believed in their hearts and nether parts that the Cheesecake Factory was a central symbol of American working-class authenticity.
And in fact Trump—who is always slow to get the memo—didn’t defend the Cheesecake Factory from Obama’s elitism. On the contrary, he whined about how the White House is a “symbol of America” and that he needed to maintain it properly by pasting tacky gold shit all over it. Obama, he said, was stupid and didn’t understand cleanliness.
He’s not a smart guy…he’s not smart at all….Guys like Obama, he doesn’t see dirt. He doesn’t see filth…For you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory that just shows why you were a lousy president!
So, Scott Jennings loves the Cheesecake Factory and thinks Obama is a snobby elitist. Trump sneers at the Cheesecake Factory and thinks Obama is dirty scum. These seem like contradictory responses. Shouldn’t there be some dissonance there, or at least some shuffling to try to get the messaging coordinated?
But no coordination is needed. Trump and Jennings are really saying the same thing; it’s just that Jennings is slightly oilier and Trump is slightly more rabid. They are both indulging in what scholar Koritha Mitchell refers to as “know-your-place aggression.” Jennings calls Obama an elitist; Trump calls him dirty riff-raff. They both mean that Obama’s true place is as a subordinate, and he dare not, therefore, criticize the décor of the big house.
Elites are those who do not know their place.
Mitchell explains that know-your-place aggression constitutes
The flexible, dynamic array of forces that answer the achievements of marginalized groups such that their success brings aggression as often as praise. Any progress by those who are not straight, white, and male is answered by a backlash of violence—both literal and symbolic, both physical and discursive—that essentially says, know your place!
It’s easy to see know-your-place aggression in Trump’s foam-flecked response. He says, flat out, that Obama is too stupid and dirty to understand beauty or patriotism. Black people are low, disgusting, uncultured, unintelligent. They cannot criticize the actions of elevated white people like Trump, because they are naturally debased and inferior.
MAGA is powered by resentment that a Black man dared to inhabit the White House; Trump’s spluttering rage at being called out as a shit interior decorator as well as a shit president and shit human being is also spluttering rage that a Black man is doing the call out, and more that the Black man in question was President. That’s straightforward know-your-place aggression; Obama’s success triggers, not admiration or respect, but anger, bullying, and violence.
Jennings and Whitlock’s version of know-your-place aggression is slightly more distanced. They accuse Obama of being a snob and of looking down on everyday Americans. This was, of course, a common right-wing attack on Obama—and is in general a common attack on Jews, queer people, and for that matter on Democrats, who are associated with marginalized people. All are, supposedly, elite snobs who look down on the authentic working-class Americans who live in the real America of manly factories, manly diners, and, apparently, manly Cheesecake Factories.
Mainstream commentators take these sort of accusations seriously, or at least don’t connect them immediately to racism or know-your-place aggression. But the mechanics behind them are much the same as Trump claiming Obama is filthy. Whitlock says Obama is a snob not because Obama actually insults poor people or passes policies to hurt working class people. He calls Obama a snob because Obama is a successful leader, and any Black person who is a successful leader is presumptuous and getting above themselves. Black people are supposed to be subordinate; if they are not they are elitists, because they dare to have any status at all.
Elites vs. capitalist pigs
This rhetorical and ideological trick is everywhere. J.K. Rowling, a billionaire who has waged an endless campaign to drive trans people from public life, accuses trans people of being “elitist”—by which she means that trans people dare to exist and ask to be treated humanely, when by rights they should be subordinate, silent, and ideally erased. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, claims that Ukraine’s leaders are “elites”—by which he means that they dare presume to continue to defend their country, rather than kowtowing to Musk’s fascist allies in Russia as they should. College students are always sneering elites because young people are supposed to know their place; the powerful donors ordering the students be arrested or expelled, on the other hand, are the salt of the earth, because old white guys holding power is natural, normal, and righteous.
The (not very) subtext is always that certain people who should be subordinate are lording it over their betters. This is why the term populist right loves to talk about “elites” and is much less interested in talking about rich people, or billionaires, or capitalist pigs—the people who actually control the country and who actually have outsized power. But (virtually) all those billionaires are straight white guys like Trump and Musk, whose position at the top of the world is divinely ordained.
The accusation of elitism, then, is not generally about class or wealth. Rather it is an exercise in know-your-place aggression—a way to signal to bigots that the wrong people over there have dared to succeed, or speak, or exist. An elitist is someone who is occupying the place rightfully held by powerful white men, or who threatens to challenge the hegemony of powerful white men. That’s why “elitist” is so often used to target people who are seen as challenging or integrating traditional hierarchies. It’s why Obama can be attacked simultaneously for being too debased and too snooty to understand Trump’s aesthetic. Those seemingly opposite accusations are the same accusation—you don’t know your place.
Don’t believe the populist hype
The Nazis called themselves socialists because they hoped to co-opt left movements. Scott Jennings and Elon Musk and their ilk use the term “elitists” for similar reasons; calling your enemies elitists sounds like you are launching some kind of left critique of power. Sometimes you can fool the media. Sometimes you can fool leftists who, for instance, believe the Democratic party is too much in hock to big donors.
The Democrat party does do much too much kowtowing to big donors. But the GOP does even more. If anyone singles out the Democrats for being too conciliatory to the rich but fails to note that the GOP is all in on grotesque corruption for billionaires, then probably what really irritates them about Democrats is not the kowtowing to the rich, but the fact that Democrats (however ambivalently) are the party of the first Black president, and of Black and LGBT and women voters in general. Democrats are “elitist” because they are the venue for political action by the marginalized, and the marginalized are presumptuous when they take political action of any sort.
Personally, I’d like to see the term “elitist” excised from the vocabulary of people of good will. If you want to attack billionaires and capitalist pigs, call them “billionaires and capitalist pigs.” But at the very least, we should all pay attention to who uses “elitist” and why.
Because very often, people who use “elitist” don’t use it to mean, “we should all be equal and eat together at the Cheesecake Factory.” They use it to mean, “certain people should be subordinate to the king of MAGA, and should genuflect to his ugly gold shit.”
Excellent, well-written, and thought-provoking.
I’ve never been in a Cheesecake Factory. Plenty of IHOPS though. Now there’s a chain restaurant for the masses! The ones near me closed awhile back when the company went bankrupt (was that private equity? They kill so many good things. (RIP Joann’s Fabric)).Are there any left in other places? I would go for nostalgia at this point.
Seems like they're substituting elitist for uppity.