Take the cultural elitist test

It’s commonly believed that Canada’s cultural elite have a cushy life.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Keeping your official standing as a cultural “elitist” requires a lot of hard work, such as marching in anti-Israel parades, filling out applications for government grants and producing vast quantities of “art” and “literature” no one in his or her right mind would ever want to buy.

And now, sadly, things are getting even harder for the elite crowd, thanks to Canadian voters.

What did Canadian voters do?

Well, in the eyes of Canada’s elitists they committed the unforgivable sin of giving Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives a majority government.

For Canada’s intelligentsia this was a stunning result, especially considering the fact that one of their own — famous book writer and deep thinker Michael Ignatieff — was Harper’s opponent.

Now elitists must contend with a prime minister who (horror of horrors) probably prefers the company of Don Cherry to David Suzuki.

The elites see this as potentially bad news for Canadian culture, which they define as any cultural activity that, a) nobody cares about, b) requires vast government subsidies, and c) somehow praises Mao Zedong or some other communist dictator.

An example of cultural funding occurred when the Canada Council for the Arts doled out $55,000 in tax dollars to an artist who wanted to construct a 300-metre yellow banana and float it over Texas.

Anyway, to save future “floating banana” projects, Canada’s cultural elite will likely wage a campaign to mobilize public opinion to stop any cutbacks to government-sponsored art.

However, before you succumb to their arguments you should ask yourself whether you support the cultural elite ideology.

And to find out if you do, just take the following, “Are You Really an Elitist? test:

- Do you ever experience feelings of crazed panic whenever the words “majority government” and “Stephen Harper” are mentioned in the same sentence?

- Do you find Margaret Atwood novels tedious but read them anyway?

- Do you live or work in an Ivory Tower, completely isolated from any sense of reality?

- Do you wake up in a cold sweat at night wondering if some farmer in Estevan, Sask., owns an unregistered rifle?

- Do you routinely mock Christian beliefs as preposterous compared to your religion, which is to worship the Earth Goddess Gaia and her prophet Al Gore?

- Do you switch off the TV in a rage whenever NHL play-off games on CBC interrupt The National?

- Do you think anyone who lives outside the downtown core area of a major urban area is a “rube,” “redneck” or “hayseed?”

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you are probably a cultural elitist.

Otherwise, you are just a regular, hard-working Canadian taxpayer.

And as a hard-working taxpayer, you should offer Canada’s cultural elite the following helpful advice when they whine about government funding: “Get a job.”

— Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant.