Ian Buruma, writing on the Guardian on-line:

Why bashing the US is chic...in America

... However, in the populist hurly-burly of American cultural and political life, the book-loving intellectual, or those who aspire to that, will feel a little marginalised, a little beside the point. This might afford enough reason for resentment. But this resentment can also become a self-regarding mark of superior status, of a kind of upper class, if you like. Money, as everyone knows, is vulgar. Dissent is smart. It lifts you above the vulgar masses who like Jerry Springer and vote for George Bush. Opinion, in a highly commercialised society, becomes a sign of class. It is chic to disapprove of America, not only of its rulers or those who elect them, but of the idea of America itself. What Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, and Tariq Ali have in common, then, is snobbery apart from anything else.