"Elites" = 60% of the country.

As Thomas Frank documented in What's the Matter with Kansas?, a narrative that's told again and again on the right is that a cabal of liberal elites in the media, the sciences, the judiciary, academia and in Hollywood actually run the country.

This is effective propaganda, Frank explains, because it allows the people who really run the country (the Republicans, corporate America, the extremely wealthy) to pursue the ruthless economic policies that benefit only them, while hiding behind the social issues that rile the GOP's red state base, that they never seem to actually do anything about.

Putz spins the same yarn, today:

He [Scott Norvell] also says that many Iranian elites view Ahmadinejad the way many American elites view Bush, as a not-very-bright guy who's using saber-rattling to secure power.

Scott Norvell is the Fox News bureau chief who accidently let it slip in the Wall Street Journal Europe that his network is essentially a propaganda arm of the Bush Administration.

Apparently, Putz and Norvell haven't looked at any polls lately, because currently, 60% of Americans disapprove of President Bush. As for the saber-rattling part, 62% disapprove of his handling of Iraq, and 54% don't trust Bush to do the right thing about Iran.

That's a heck of a lot of elites.