In a recent episode of Top Chef, the American cooking show I appear on, I complained about the other judges’ insistence on pronouncing ‘paella’ as ‘py-ay-a’. ‘You don’t say “Bar-the-lona” or “Me-hi-co”,’ I pointed out. ‘So why say ‘py-ay-a’?’ I thought this was fairly uncontroversial, but it was as if I had just produced a white hood and a burning cross. [...] the only people who take offence if you Anglicise foreign words are upper-middle-class Caucasian Americans. They imagine that other, less fortunate people will be insulted by your ‘imperialist’ attitude and they get offended on their behalf. In fact, to imagine that non-English-speakers are a poor, victimised group, requiring the protection of the American elite, is far more condescending than mispronouncing non-English words.

I don’t know why, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I’ve even had a similar conversation.

I used to share an office with a guy who was reared in the elite private schools of Northwest DC. He was an okay fellow for the most part, but his condescension towards those he viewed as his social inferiors was repugnant. He would go off on tangents about the commoners (he didn’t use that word, of course) and I would mostly ignore him. One day, when someone was chatting with me in our office, he interrupted us by saying, “the country (Chile) is pronounced chee-lay, not chilly,” and rolled his eyes.

I argued, “the American word is Chilly.”

He giggled and said, “there is no American word. It’s the name of their country.”

I replied by saying, “remind me again, Berlin is the capital of…”

“Germany,” he answered smugly.

I added, “and Rome is in…”

“Italy,” he answered with a hint of pique. I think that’s when he caught on.

I asked him why he didn’t say Deutschland and Italia, and he snapped back with something like, “that’s different.”

I smiled and left it at that.

As regular readers know, this elitist attitude, which is just the gilded version of bigotry, really gets under my skin. It almost always comes mixed with equal parts of ignorance and hypocrisy. In fact, the part of the article quoted above about white people being offended on behalf of the less-fortunate is so spot on that it was parodied on the blog, Stuff White People Like. By feigning empathy with poorer people, elitists hope to appear more contemplative of foreign cultural mores. As if embracing poorer cultures absolves them of the the white colonialist guilt they believe plagues our nation. But in a way, this is just the contemporary iteration of the “little brown bother” instinct that led to our invasion of the Philippines and contributed to American colonialism at the turn of the last century. So, in effect, the elitists are trying to expunge their imperialist heritage by evoking the same condescendent paternalism that enabled the American empire. How’s that for irony?

Obviously, elitism infects every issue in some way, but its growing influence over cooking is really starting to piss me off. I don’t know if it’s the growing popularity of celebrity chefs, the emergence of cooking appliances as status symbols, or the cult-like locavore movement, but suddenly everyone is a culinary expert and eating has become an exercise in social climbing. Many people think that because I shop at farmers markets and subscribe to magazines like Gourmet and Bon Appetit, I’m one of the initiated. They regale me with tales of gastronomical adventures throughout the world and the lengths they go to ensure that their food is organic and in season. They complain about friends and family members who neither know where their food comes from nor recycle their waste. They even go so far as to let me in on secret places where you can still get wild salmon that comes from sustainable schools in carefully regulated waters. I take more delight than they’ll ever know by replying, “that’s great to know, but you can get all the wild salmon you want for half the price at Sam’s Club.”

They think I’m kidding. I’m not.

And for the record, before anyone calls me a hypocrite, I pronounce “paella” as py-ay-a. It’s just the way I was taught.

See! I told you the elitism was spreading!