Even some of Obama's media lackeys are irritated at the intellectual elitism on display in the White House. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a video of Chris Matthews saying something that I heartily agree with in toto.

"If I hear one more time that Secretary Chu has a Nobel Prize I'm going to barf. I don't care. This idiotic cerebral meritocracy has got to step aside and let people who do things take over".

A still earlier - and more pertinent - use of the phrase is in the letter of Junius published February 7, 1769 in the Public Advertiser. There Junius uses it mockingly and ironically in reference to King George III's ministers, whose capacities he had disparaged in his first letter the previous month. In response to Sir William Draper's letter defending one of Junius' targets and attacking their anonymous critics, Junius wrote:

‘To have supported your assertion, you should have proved that the present ministry are unquestionably the best and brightest characters of the kingdom; and that, if the affections of the colonies have been alienated, if Corsica has been shamefully abandoned, if commerce languishes, if public credit is threatened with a new debt, and your own Manilla ransom most dishonourably given up, it has all been owing to the malice of political writers, who will not suffer the best and brightest characters (meaning still the present ministry) to take a single right step, for the honour or interest of the nation."