It probably fell out of usage because this became confusing. It would be fun to trolley Lowry with a letter to the editor saying “why do you hate pastors and other men of God?”
Stretching is all that an actual affluent coastal elite like Lowry can do to vilify other affluent coastal elites. And while he and others in movement conservatism reserve a lot of antipathy for left-leaning academics, he’s also including liberal and progressive writers, artists, actors, journalists, techies, etc. – whether or not they’re actually neoliberal globalism’s winners in terms of economics.
It’s still a dangerous populist game for Lowry and the NR crew to be playing, given their own educations and the places they choose to live, and given that the magazine’s founder always acted and sounded like Thurston Howell III on a bad day. But it’s an old habit that American conservatives can’t kick:
