The snobbery epidemic

People have picked up on some of the outside or secondary dimensions of the BBQ standoff.

The tight COVID regime has much to do with it, certainly. But leaking through the high thoughts about public health and personal responsibility are strands of comment and observation far distant from either.

Cheri DiNovo, a one-time celebrated politico and veteran activist, has released her insights via everyone's favourite publisher, Twitter, on Adam Skelly. He's the young guy with the reversed ball cap on his head, the great-looking youngster in his arm, who's at the centre of this brewing storm.

The tweet was: “Love that eating at #AdamsonBarbecue, a third rate ribs place in what looks to be a used car parts mall has become the picture of freedom for some.” (Emphasis mine.)

Would I be, am I, wrong here in thinking that if Skelly had a finer taste in commercial real estate, that he would not be regarded, as here, so scornfully, by so eminent a voice?

Were he serving lusciously swabbed swine-parts and chicken-bits in some velvet-wallpapered venue in Yorkville, or a must-try “hot spot” in the glades of Forest Hill — would then his little “civic demonstration” receive more, how shall we say it, delicate attention?

Could I speak with him, I would perhaps ask some questions. Skelly, what is wrong with you that you sought out a “third-rate place” in some used-car style venue to open a business? Did you not speak to any retired and pensioned politicians on the question of stylish establishments in the better parts of town?

Did you really want just truckers and plumbers and carpenters and taxi drivers and furniture movers and low-income types in overalls, single moms and old-age pensioners, littering your counter? Looking for a good feed of ribs for an honest price in an area that looks like a “used-car parts mall”?

This disposition of yours to regard ordinary people as customers is deplorable.

The extra or secondary dimension referred to earlier is rank snobbery.

As can be seen in another Twitter observation cited as the “line of the week” by one journalist quoting another: “We don't want a barbecue guy with a backwards ball cap making health policy.”

Such a brave caution. Who could disagree with such an obliging sentiment?

Why would anyone want a guy from the barbecue class — so déclassé — making Toronto's or Ontario's or for that matter Canada's health policies? Especially one with unfashionable headgear. If only he'd ditched the cap and gone for more vivid sock wear instead. That would have been the ticket.

Wild socks are always a winner, or they used to be.

The tweet is wrong on a major point, however. Skelly does not make, nor will ever “make,” Canadian health policies. He's just a guy trying to survive under the policies that others have made for him to bear — without overwhelming regard for people in his kind of circumstance. There is a difference.

It is not a matter of him being right or wrong. It is the smugness of his detractors and their distance from his experience, which makes their smug snobbery so disqualifying as a legitimate response.

Everyone bears the health risk of the current moment. Not everyone faces losing their employment or their business. The latter deserve better thoughts, maybe more understanding, than have been shown by the better off and more comfortably situated.

To bring it all home — snobbery is a comfort mattress for those who are already well endowed with comfort. Sneering at people facing a hard time and on the edge of making it through this business is a cheap amusement.

Before anyone dumps on “third-rate” rib joints: try starting one, running it and see it going to ruin, under a regime that lets great corporations thrive, some protests but not others receive benediction and a bended knee, and try a little empathy.

We're all in this together, remember. We've got each other's backs, I hear.

Sure we do.