About that "affluenza."

Those who think the rich teenager — who, driving drunk, killed 4 persons — should have gotten a harsher punishment than 10 years probation are focusing on the expert testimony he presented in his favor. A psychologist named G. Dick Miller testified that having grown up in affluence, "He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way... He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle."

Miller used the term "affluenza" — a portmanteau of "affluence" and "influenza" — to refer to the young man's psychological deficit.

Affluenza, Miller acknowledged to CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday, is “not a medical term.” The psychologist said that it means “You have too much and you don’t know how to distribute it.” At Cooper’s prompting, Miller acknowledged that the boy was “a spoiled brat.”

The affluenza claim rightfully strikes the most absurd note since Dan White’s infamous 1979 “Twinkie defense.” Psychologists have loosely used the term for years to describe the emotional pitfalls unique to children raised in affluent settings.

Of course, psychologists will have a lot to say about the afflictions of rich people, since rich people are more likely to have money to throw into long, luxurious sessions with psychologists. And rich people have the money to put on a strong defense in a criminal trial, replete with expert testimony framing their deficiencies in the most compellingly sympathetic form.

It's the judge's responsibility to give this testimony the weight it deserves. The problem here is not that rich people have money to dump into a strong defense in a criminal proceeding or that psychologists have coined a catchy/cutesy term for the woes of the rich. It is the judge — Texas State District Judge Jean Boyd — who is accountable for anything that went wrong in the case of Ethan Couch. And we don't know the weight she put on Miller's testimony or the notion of "affluenza."

I don't know how Boyd has treated other teenagers. Perhaps she's deeply informed about the deficiencies of the teenage brain and has shown mercy to a great many poor and working class teenagers and her sentencing of Couch is — within her record — a model of equal treatment of the rich and the poor. Maybe she knows the research that has led, for example, to articles like this — "Developmental Psychologist Says Teenagers Are Different" — in the New York Times.

That's a 2009 interview with Laurence Steinberg, "a developmental psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia... one of the leading experts in the United States on adolescent behavior and adolescent brain biology." He says:

I’m not one of those people who labels adolescence as some sort of mental illness. Teenagers are not crazy. They’re different.

When it comes to crime, they are less responsible for their behavior than adults. And typically, in the law, we don’t punish people as much who are less responsible. We know from our lab that adolescents are more impulsive, thrill-seeking, drawn to the rewards of a risky decision than adults. They tend to not focus very much on costs. They are more easily coerced to do things they know are wrong. These factors, under the law, make people less responsible for criminal acts. The issue is: as a class, should we treat adolescents differently?

Asked whether the criminal justice system is "beginning to take these differences into account during sentencing," Steinberg says:

It’s been coming up in cases. I went to Washington in November to watch the oral arguments in two related cases before the Supreme Court that ask: should someone who committed a crime as a teen be subjected to life imprisonment without a chance for parole, ever?

With these cases, and another in 2005 where the high court threw out the death penalty for adolescents, I was scientific consultant to the American Psychological Association on its amicus brief. What we said in the death penalty case — and now — was that we have considerable evidence showing that adolescents are different from adults in ways that mitigate their criminal responsibility. But since 2005, there’s been a lot of new scientific evidence supporting this position.

At the link you can see links to the U.S. Supreme Court cases and descriptions of the neuroscience research about the teenage brain.

Speaking of brains: Let's try to think clearly about this case and the larger context. Don't get too distracted by the word "affluenza" — which no one said was an actual disease. Don't impulsively slot this into a class warfare template. Remember that the criminal defendant has a right to present the evidence in his favor. And the responsibility for sentencing lies squarely with the judge, but don't succumb to impulsive emotion as you judge the judge.

Juan Williams thinks he's defending Obamacare by observing that it has no effect on him and the other members of the Sunday talk show pundit panel.

This is the sort of thing that a Republican would be pilloried for saying. It was yesterday's "Fox News Sunday," and the moderator Chris Wallace had just read a question tweeted by some guy named Skip. The question was "other than hope, what substantive argument do the ACA, Affordable Care Act, supporters have that the law will work as intended?" Juan Williams threw out a big word storm, but one line jumped out at me, and I will boldface it:

Well, Skip, I think you're deserving a straight answer. There's such a snowstorm of partisan politics around the ObamaCare thing right now. 

When I wrote "big word storm," above, I'd forgotten that he'd said "such a snowstorm." Normally, I'd rewrite to eliminate a clumsy repetition, but I'm leaving this one for effect.  And I'm also amused by that first sentence. To say that Skip is "deserving" of "a straight answer" is not to promise you're about to give one. I'm reminded of the way we used to laugh when Nixon said "let me make one thing perfectly clear." And I'm reminded of the way Obama et al. keep blaming others for hearing promises when, technically, there were none.

All Williams said is that Skip deserves — or, oddly, is deserving — a straight answer. He never said he was going to give Skip a straight answer, and if Skip somehow gets the impression that a straight answer is forthcoming, well, then Skip ought to sharpen his critical listening skills. And when Williams said "There's such a snowstorm," he did not say: And I'm here to guide you through the storm, Skip. The passive voice preserves the possibility that Williams himself is part of the snowstorm. Why wouldn't he be?

Back to the text:

So I'd say the number one thing I would say is....

What a locution! Why not just say what you have to say? When you say that you're going to say what you would say, it sounds as though you are dissembling.

... just look at this week. A million people went to the website as it was working. So there's obviously an appetite, a real need. 

A need?! People are required to buy insurance. The need is to comply with government force. How is that evidence of appetite? (I picture a parent saying "You're going to eat it and you're going to like it.")

30 million people uninsured. Millions more inadequately insured who can avoid bankruptcy and illnesses as a result. Number two, I think it the reason [sic] I think this is going to work is it doesn't disrupt the market for most people. Nobody on this panel is going to have their health care affected, impacted, by what's taking place. 

There it is! He looks around at George Will and Brit Hume and the AP's Julie Pace and says, hey, we're all doing fine. So what's the big deal? People like us aren't hurting! 

ADDED: Williams shouldn't get away with that callousness. Where's the empathy? And now I want to take a shot at George Will. Just before Williams got his question, Will said something that also struck me as distanced and out of touch in a way that maintains the aversion many people have to conservatives:

The education of this president is a protracted and often amusing process as it was this week. 

Oh? You were amused? Is that what this is, entertainment for you, old man, as you sit back and — whatever you do — puff on your pipe and sip your Scotch? Real people are really struggling with this. It's not funny.

As he continues to alight upon the obvious with a sense of profound and original discovery. He's alighting on what is obvious to governors. This is really why we should have governors more often than senators as president. The president is saying the trouble with big government is it's so darn big. And like a lot of big organisms, dinosaurs spring to mind. It has a simple nervous system. It's erratic, it's governed by inertia. And it's hard to move. This from a man who's devoted his life to increasing the power of government as an instrument to the redistribution of income because government is wiser than markets. And it's, as I say, highly amusing.

There are some great points in there, but why does he have to begin and end with his own amusement? I understand the temptation to sit back and find amusement in the foibles of humanity, but it's not very attractive. If people are struggling, you might want to shut up about how funny it seems to you, that is, if you want to win favor with those people and not, you know, enrage them.

Yesterday, we were looking at an article in USA Today about how healthcare.gov was incorrectly putting people into Medicaid and depriving them of the chance to buy the insurance they're supposed to buy. A commenter, David, snarking "Customer service, government style," quoted the line:

"If the Medicaid determination is wrong, consumers should file an appeal with the federal marketplace, says Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters, but she says she does not have an estimate on how long that would take."

And I said:

So people who thought they'd get the subsidy — which seemed sort of friendly like a low tax rate in a system of progressive taxation — find themselves shunted into welfare, which has to feel insulting or at least surprising, and then if they realize they aren't supposed to be there, how do they get to the subsidy they actually deserve?

This is causing so many people to feel so much anguish. I can't imagine how upset I would be trying to get this straightened out or even trying to understand if something is wrong.

And that's with no health problems. What if you had to deal with this while hurting from a physical (or mental) problem and on top of the actual malady, you had to worry about losing the ability to pay for your treatments?

There is so much suffering here. I assume it's a huge snowballing mass of problems that we are only seeing the very beginning of.

I think the Republican message should be: How dare you create such an uncontrollable machinery of suffering? How could you be so arrogant and reckless? And how dare you hide the damage that you knew was coming? What are you still hiding?

I wrote that before listening to George Will, and then when I heard him, I thought: No! That's exactly what conservatives should not say! This is the time to show empathy — if you can scrape it together somehow — to forefront the suffering, and George Will is passively chuckling over how amusing it is to see Obama stumbling and bumbling. Republicans are doomed to lose over and over again if they can't at least look like they care about people. They seem to care so little that they don't even notice how much it shows.

"The whole thing boils down to class warfare... People all over the world are wondering why they did that to 5Pointz. My answer is, why not?"

"Do we really think some landlord is going to give a damn about the culture of the working class? This was an art form invented by the children of the working class, not children with last names like Trump or Rockefeller."

"There are hardly any spots left in the city for graffiti writers... It’s going to mean that everybody’s going to be fighting for space. And you know what happens if they don’t have space to express themselves."

"But as you sit there sipping wine and eating pork belly, watching a marathon of The Sopranos — which sounds like a very nice evening..."

"... keep in mind that the distance between you and some imagined figure pounding Mountain Dew and Quarter Pounders while watching hours of Pawn Stars is not so vast."

Willa Paskin, tweaking the snobbish consciences of Slate readers who may have lost touch with old-fashioned it-will-rot-your-brain snobbery about watching too much television.

"To African Americans on the Dolphins, [Jonathan] Martin was a 6-foot-5, 312-pound oddball because his life experience was radically different from theirs."

"It’s an old story among African Americans. Too often, instead of celebrating what makes us different and learning from each other, we criticize more educated or affluent African Americans for not 'keeping it real.'"

A black WaPo columnist criticizes black football players for siding with their white teammate and not the black teammate (whose parents both went to Harvard, and whose father is a college dean and mother is a lawyer).

ADDED: The Daily News interviewed the Giants' Lawrence Taylor:

"Martin wouldn't be allowed back in my locker room... I understand Incognito may be a bad guy, but all that stuff should have stayed in the locker room. I don't know if I would let Incognito back in the locker room either, but he would be allowed back in my locker room before the other guy would. They are texting each other like two women. I don't understand that.... If you are that sensitive and weak-minded, then find another profession.... That's the way I feel about it. This is the NFL. This is football. This is not table tennis. This is not golf. I don't know how you bully a 350-pound player."...

"If he's calling you n----, there's a whole bunch of black people in the locker room. Call a team meeting," LT said. "You stand up and ask the coach, ‘I want a few minutes,' and ask the coaches to leave." Then you say, ‘I've got to get this off my chest.' That's when people are going to respect you. At some point, you got to be a man. But it's a whole other league now from when I played. Now you got to take your lawyer with you to work. This should have been handled in-house. (Martin) took the dirty laundry out for everybody to see. Everybody is evaluating and investigating unnecessarily."

Taylor said the n-word was tossed around plenty in the Giants locker room. "I have a lot of friends on the team who used the word n---. You know where they are going with it," he said. "If they used it in a derogatory way, then we got a problem. You don't have a problem with just Martin, you got a problem with all of us. That's how you stop that s---."

3-D printed food.

This seems incredibly dumb, unless you are hyper-focused on the shape of food — enough to ignore that it's all processed from already-highly-processed food paste.

[W]e had (once again) food in the shape of our initials. It was creamy and light, though the monogrammed letters made us feel uncomfortably Trump-like.

Are billionaires into monograms? Seems to me monograms are a pretty squarely middle-class affectation. Here's Pottery Barn's Monogram Shop, where the promotional copy stresses "personalizing" things like towels and pillowcases to make them "extraordinary."

I mean, it's funny to purport to squirm over feeling like a very rich man, when what you are doing is the sort of thing that stolidly mainstream retailers use to make the most conventional shoppers feel special.

What's funny is that the writer of that lengthy NYT article indulges in the liberal's cliché snubbing of Donald Trump, when he would know enough to refrain from displaying snobbery toward the actual middle-class Americans who patronize The Monogram Shop.

If you really care about global warming, stop all unnecessary travel.

Via Instapundit, Megan McArdle asks: "Why does air travel get left out of the mix when we’re talking about reducing our carbon footprint?" She considers the class politics:

And although many car trips are hard to avoid, given 60 years of infrastructure development, a lot of the air travel is unnecessary -- and concentrated among the so-called one percent. Only about half the country takes as much as one flight a year; I’m willing to bet that virtually every U.S. citizen gets in a passenger car at least once per annum. And while most of those car trips are the business of everyday life -- getting to work, procuring food, etc. -- most of those flights are either vacations, or elite workers flitting to conferences and business meetings....

Giving up air travel and overnight delivery is much more personally costly for the public intellectuals who write about this stuff than giving up a big SUV....

If we’re going to get serious about greenhouse gasses, we need to get serious about air travel. Going to a distant conference should attract the kind of scorn among the chattering classes that is currently reserved for buying a Hummer.

I have a number of arguments against travel, so it's easy for me to adopt one more. I have thought about — but thus far resisted — gibing about global warming when the topic of travel comes up in conversation. I sometimes imagine dialogues in which someone asks me — as people so often do — if I've got travel plans for summer/winter/spring break and I claim to be doing my part in the fight against global warming, or someone goes on about their wonderful destinations and I puncture the  mood by inquiring about the morality of needless carbon emissions.

By the way, I love seeing McArdle use the word "flitting" — "elite workers flitting to conferences and business meetings." I used that word yesterday in my response to Elon Musk's "hyperloop":

I believe the truly modern technological solution is not to travel at all. Overcome the need to have the body go anywhere. That's the most efficient answer to our transportation problems. Musk's tube would supposedly get people back and forth between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Why? Pick a city. Stop this senseless flitting from one city to another.

In the comments at that post, mikee said:

A late 1970s anthology of short story Science Fiction included a story describing Althouse's ideal.

Instant video/audio/text/data communication between people and total availability of all information resources via something quite like a super duper internet led to the rich becoming isolationists in the extreme, to the point that a woman forced to travel finds herself flying over the Himalayas and sees nothing worth the effort of observing.

With great introversion comes great disassociation.

I said:

@mikee I think it's a limitation in the capacity to observe that makes people think they need to rove. If you really paid attention to your surroundings, you could be endlessly fascinated by your home town. It's similar to the value of a marriage compared to multiple sex partners.

And I say it's funny that the Himalayas came up in this context, because my favorite lines in my favorite movie — "My Dinner With Andre" — use a trip to Mount Everest to signify looking for meaning by going far afield instead of seeing it nearby:

Tell me: why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? I mean...I mean: is Mount Everest more "real" than New York? I mean, isn't New York "real"? I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out! I mean... I mean, isn't there just as much "reality" to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest? I mean, what do you think? You see, I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest, I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way. I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way. So that if you're--if your perceptions--I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly, it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd! Because, I mean, it's just--I mean, of course, on some level, I mean, obviously it's very different from a cigar store on Seventh Avenue, but I mean...

I had just quoted that last month in a post called "What do you think the difference is between a tourist and a traveler?" where I had said "Most of our depth comes from the life we live at home, and if we were really observant we would never run out of things to perceive and contemplate at  home."

These ideas are not about fossil fuel and global warming, but about psychology and philosophy. But it is the elite class that pushes environmentalism and (hypocritically) flits all over the earth (sometimes to talk about environmentalism), and it is the elite class that ought to be delving into the psychology and philosophy of travel.

But what about you, Althouse, don't you travel? The truth is, I haven't left Madison — other than to go to a nearby state park — since last August.

"Working-class students struggle with 'composite masculinity,' study finds."

"Combine the 'chiselled out of rock' body of actor Ryan Reynolds, the intellectual prowess of writer Christopher Hitchens and the 'funny, quirky' demeanour of film star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and you have the perfect role model for male middle-class undergraduates."

But while bourgeois students can “seamlessly integrate” many types of masculinity, a study at two universities concludes that their working- class peers find squaring the many demands placed on the modern man more challenging....

Both groups say that brainpower is a part of masculinity, but as Nicola Ingram, lecturer in sociology at the University of Bath and one of the project leaders, explained, working-class students... "are partially struggling to pull [together] different forms of masculinity,” she said. “The middle-class men on the other hand seamlessly integrate [them]…to create a ‘composite masculinity’. This…allows them to be many different types of men at once, although they emphasise ‘intellectual masculinity.’”

One middle-class interviewee spoke of admiring how the late Mr Hitchens threw “his weight around intellectually” on debate shows, adding that the way he talked with female panellists showed “intellectual masculinity.” This kind of attitude “belies an assumption of entitlement to dominance,” according to Dr Ingram, and was “arguably a refashioning of traditional male hegemony.”

Do you know how to be dominant the Christopher Hitchens way?  You have to crush the opposition through the force of your ideas not out of the feeling that you must win because you are the man.

Has feminism made it much harder for lower class men to do well in life?

"But maybe he should have asked before the gallery opens. Everybody’s talking about it."

Well, if "everybody's talking about it," then the artist made a great decision.

[T]he residents of a glass-walled luxury residential building across the street had no idea they were being photographed and never consented to being subjects for the works of art that are now on display — and for sale — in a Manhattan gallery.

Key word: luxury.

A middle-class value — privacy — is challenged. But it's built into the scheme that only the rich have had their privacy invaded. The artist — Arne Svenson — gets his publicity in the major media. And to top it all off:

Svenson’s apartment is directly across the street, just to the south, giving him a clear view of his neighbors by simply looking out his window.

Easiest art project ever.

“For my subjects there is no question of privacy; they are performing behind a transparent scrim on a stage of their own creation with the curtain raised high,” Svenson says in the gallery notes.  “The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs.”

"Girl’s Death by Gunshot Is Rejected as Symbol."

Headline at the NYT. 

Under the headline: a photograph of the dead girl's house that seems framed to induce feelings of contempt in NYT readers. Low hills in the background. A rusty, non-upright, rural-style mailbox in the foreground. Unpaved driveway. The house — which seems to be constructed from a long trailer attached to a cinderblock foundation — has a porch with a rusted metal roof held down in one corner by an automobile tire.

The Times's reporter, Trip Gabriel, attended the funeral of the 2-year-old Caroline Sparks (who was shot by her 5-year old brother with a "My First Rifle") in Burkesville, Kentucky.

The death has convulsed this rural community of 1,800 in south-central Kentucky, where everyone seems to know the extended Sparks family, which is now riven by grief. But as mourners gathered for Caroline’s funeral on Saturday, there were equally strong emotions directed at the outside world, which has been quick to pass judgment on the parents and a way of life in which many see nothing unusual about introducing children to firearms while they are still in kindergarten.

Equally strong? Does Trip Gabriel really know how these people feel? He's there, at the funeral, talking to them. But he's the reporter the NYT sent! Imagine yourself in a small town, at the funeral for a 2-year-old girl and there's a NYT reporter, who you know is there because these elite people somewhere, who never otherwise pay any attention to you, see potential to use that girl's dead body for leverage in a national political debate. I don't imagine myself anything nearly this polite:

“This town, there’s nothing like it. They pull together,” Anne Beall, a family friend, said as she left the Norris-New Funeral Home....

Ms. Beall, a 64-year-old retiree, said she had not heard anyone in town call the parents irresponsible for giving a gun to a 5-year-old or for leaving it unlocked. “Pointing fingers doesn’t really accomplish anything,” she said. “Terrible mistakes happen, and I think that’s what happened here.”

I would have said something far less fit to print. And yet Gabriel — no angel — sees fit to write that the mourners' emotions toward the outside world were "equally strong" as the grief over the death. I'm trying to concoct a quote that could have been directed at Gabriel that would actually have be as strong as the grief.

The shooting came after the recent failure in Washington of gun control legislation inspired by the shootings in Newtown, Conn., which exposed a bitter divide on guns. But Burkesville seemed to want no part of being a symbol in a national debate.

“I think it’s nobody else’s business but our town’s,” said a woman leaving a store, who like many people here declined to be interviewed. A woman who answered the phone at the office of John A. Phelps Jr., the chief executive of Cumberland County, whose seat is Burkesville, said, “No, I’m sorry — no more statements,” and hung up.

Apparently, they didn't say "Fuck you" and "Go to hell." The gun-wielding hillbillies did not step up to the task. I’m sorry — no more statements?! How damned disappointing! I wonder how hard Gabriel tried, catching ladies leaving stores, calling people up, creeping around the casket. I wonder how he felt about himself.

After the funeral service, two men advanced across North Main Street toward a single television crew present, from the German network RTL, and punched the cameraman, bloodying his face and knocking him down.

Two other men told a newspaper reporter, “If you had any sense, you’d get out of here. You’re next, buddy.”

Ah, so the media did get some satisfaction. How long did they harass these poor people before they tipped some grief-stricken man to say what they knew somebody ought to say? I'm assuming one man said that quote, even though the article says "Two other men told..." (as if we are to picture a unison declamation). 

The reporters at the funeral call to mind the Westboro Church protesters, who target funerals and love to stand their ground, exercising free speech rights, as if their very purpose was to cause some emotionally overwrought mourner to lash out physically.

"There’s a strong relationship between how many dollars you have and how many trees you request to be planted in your neighborhood."

Said Earl Eutsler, of Washington D.C.’s Urban Forestry Administration.

Eutsler mapped requests to the city for trees along streets last year and found a heavy concentration in Northwest and Capitol Hill but merely a sprinkling in the city’s poorest wards.

Doris Gudger of Anacostia is among those who see little to like about lots of trees. When city crews showed up one recent day and planted some in front of her rowhouse in Southeast Washington, she wanted them gone.

The pollen would aggravate her allergies, she said. The leaves would be a pain to rake. The shade would draw drug dealers. And, she feared, soon would follow affluent gentrifiers and higher taxes, pushing out older residents like herself.

Environmentalists are pushing city trees, and that policy meshes with the values of the affluent, so that lots of trees make a neighborhood look affluent, and you might think it would be good to bestow trees on the poorer neighborhoods, but what if poor people don't like trees?

What should happen to the pro-tree policy if people in poor neighborhoods don't like trees?
	The city should only plant trees where people want them and will care for them.
	People who don't like trees should be taught to like them. Then, if they do, plant trees.
	Teaching the love for trees should proceed simultaneously with the planting of trees in all neighborhoods.
	The city should not plant trees in residential areas. Permit owners to plant trees if they like.
pollcode.com free polls

"Why Elitists Hate" the Brad Paisley/LL Cool J song "Accidental Racist."

According to novelist Will Shetterly (one of six commentators on the much-maligned recording):

The song’s first sin is it’s earnest. There’s no irony to please hipsters.

Its second sin is it’s about members of the U.S.’s racially and regionally divided working class, a southern white Lynyrd Skynyrd fan in a Confederate battle flag T-shirt and a northern black rapper in a do-rag, gold chains and sagging pants. This song wasn’t made for, by or about people who consider themselves the cultural elite, and elitists hate the idea of being irrelevant, especially in a discussion of an issue as important as race.

Its third sin is featuring a rap artist. Many elitists hate rap as much as they hate country, though they don’t like to admit it for fear of appearing racially insensitive....

Its last sin is its title -- "Accidental Racist" -- which reminds academic race theorists of a pet term, “unintentional racism,” the racism practiced by people who don’t realize they’re racist. The song is about the opposite phenomenon, the assumptions of people who see racism where it isn’t present because they misunderstand the symbols of a different culture....

"It is not enough to call for measures that stop suburbanization..."

"... the suburbs aren’t going anywhere. If all we do is try to pretend away their radically unequal fortunes, we will just drop a new suburban inequality on top of the old one."

"Coming with me to clean up dog poop?"

Meade asks. I say, "That's not me... but can I blog about it?"

Meade, who's getting ready to go out for some dog park volunteer work, says okay, but only if I link to this comment on yesterday's "Obama’s insulting salary stunt" post:

garage mahal said...

He won't even feel his sacrifice. And if he does, he can ease his tiny pains with another deluxe vacation and a few more concerts at the White House performed by whichever pop stars his daughters are enthusing over this month.

Just like you didn't have to feel any real sacrifice from Act 10.

I doubt you ever rub elbows with the peons at the bottom of the food chain who did feel it.

IN THE COMMENTS: Phil 3:14 said:

OK Professor, help me understand, who are the "peons" in this analogy?

Or is this another of you word plays (i.e. pee)?

And think plants are at the bottom of the food chain.

Okay, I'll accept it as my job to pick up the metaphorical poop. I didn't call people "peons," and I didn't mix a metaphor of "peons" and "food chain." I don't even know why Meade imposed that condition on my use of his poop quote.

A "peon" — according to the (unlinkable) OED — is "An attendant, an orderly; a footman or messenger having subordinate authority over other staff. Also: a junior member of staff in an office."

1973 P. G. Wodehouse Bachelors Anonymous i. 8 ‘She treated me like one of those things they have in Mexico, not tamales, something that sounds like spoon.’ ‘Peon?’ ‘That's right.’

"Peon" actually used to be pronounced pyoon. The pronunciation "pee on," however, is better for punning.

Anyway, "peon" seems to be an unusually apt word to refer to public sector employees, who are the people affected by Act 10, the GOP's approach to budget balancing here in Wisconsin. We — I include myself — were required to make contributions to our pensions and health insurance. (Before the 2010 elections, we lost money via the Democratic plan, which imposed furloughs.)

Given the "pee on" pun, perhaps garage meant to evoke pity for the public workers and outrage at me and Meade for declining to condemn Act 10. 

A "food chain" is "A series of organisms, each of which is dependent on the next for food, esp. by direct consumption or predation." Where are the public sector employees in the metaphorical consumption and predation? Maybe taxpayers think they are at the bottom of the food chain? The public servants paid by tax money should hardly want to be seen as the predators at the top. But that makes more sense than perceiving the taxpayers as the predators.

"Rub elbows" — the OED tells us — means "to come into contact."  Examples:

1916   L. N. Parker Disraeli ii. 56   You would pass him in the street without the faintest idea you had rubbed elbows with one of the world's greatest powers!
1956   ‘B. Holiday’ & W. Dufty Lady sings Blues i. 16   A whorehouse was about the only place where black and white folks could meet in any natural way. They damn well couldn't rub elbows in the churches.

But you damn well could rub elbows with one of the world's greatest blog commenters at Poopstock '13.

It's not just Phil Mickelson — plenty of high-income athletes want out of California taxes.

Mickelson was just the one who was PR-deaf enough to let us know how he feels.

Why do you think Tiger Woods lives in Florida?

In November, voters in California approved a ballot measure raising the top rate on income over $1 million to 13.3% (the increase applies retroactively to last year). ... Mr. Woods grossed $56.4 million in 2012. As a Floridian, he will keep about $7.5 million that he otherwise would have owed to the state of California. His net tax savings over his 16-year career come to about $100 million. Mr. Mickelson last year earned $60.7 million. Paying the 13.3% California rate, he will owe the state $8 million.

That takes Mickelson down to $52.7 million, putting him behind Woods, when he was ahead of him on the money list. Aggravating! (I know, I'm failing to take account of the way state taxes are a deduction on your federal income taxes and everything else that affects after-tax income.)

The benefit of living in a state without an income tax can be diminished by the "jock tax" that states impose on money earned by athletes when they're playing or training in the state. (Luckily for baseball players, spring training is in no-tax Florida or low-tax Arizona.) But in sports like tennis and golf where athletes can train anywhere in the world, a preponderance happen to migrate to states without an income tax.

These celebs — with their endorsements — need good PR, as the Mickelson slip proved. State tax proponents could get proactive and actively shame the sports stars who live in Florida without an adequate cover story. 

For instance, Serena and Venus Williams grew up in Compton, Calif., but moved with their father to Florida in the early 1990s.

Krugman sees a "major rhetorical shift" from Romney's campaign to Bobby Jindal's recent speech.

Krugman's column is titled "Makers, Taker, Fakers." Here's one thing that seemed off to me:

Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. “We must not,” he declared, “be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive.” After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an “attack on success,” this represents a major rhetorical shift.

There are 2 propositions: A. Those who are successful should be able to keep the fruits of their efforts, and B. All Americans should have the opportunity to work toward their own success.

Krugman comes close to saying Romney only said A and Jindal only says B.

But Romney continually said both things. His opponents worked constantly — and successfully — to make people feel that he was only saying A.  And Jindal is also saying both things. That's the function of the word "simply."

Jindal — in the quoted sentence — isn't saying Romney only said A. He's talking about the way people think about the Republican Party, which is in A terms, because that's the way Democrats have successfully framed them. Jindal is saying the B frame is better political rhetoric.

Krugman goes on to explain why B rhetoric doesn't properly apply to what Jindal and the rest of the GOP are really doing. That is, he's continuing the process that was used so successfully in the campaign to defeat Romney — pushing A, obscuring B.

There is no major rhetorical shift. Not from Jindal and not from Krugman. Everyone is doing, rhetorically, what they've been doing all along.

There are 2 propositions — A and B — that relate to GOP policy. GOP proponents portray them as 2 sides of the same thing: The reason why A makes sense is that it's part of how B works. Opponents of the GOP de-link A and B and portray B as a trick to get people to vote for the party that's only about A.

2 questions for the GOP: 1. How can you truly be about B, with A as a subordinate proposition? and 2. Can you get people to believe that's what you are?

Bill Clinton says: Do not look down on the bitter clingers.

"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them..."

"A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things... I know because I come from this world."...

"A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing... Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all."

He feels their pain...



He feels their pain, which includes feeling that they are getting looked down on, so don't let them notice, he's saying, even as he lets the big Democratic donors see that he knows just as well as they do that the bitter clingers are a bunch of losers.

Don't look down you nose at them. Whenever you eyes are trained on the bitter clingers, project feel-your-pain empathy. Save your condescension for the off-camera, off-mike back rooms.

"I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee."

It means something that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "pig" instead of "pork." I think about how George Harrison sang about piggies, the bigger piggies, "in their starched white shirts... stirring up the dirt" as well as "the little piggies... crawling in the dirt." (He stirred up Charles Manson to deliver "a damned good whacking.")

Life was "getting worse" for the little piggies, while, by contrast, the bigger piggies "always had clean shirts." Now, I'm not going to veer off into the topic of The Great — big pig — Gatsby's shirts. You know if you've read "The Great Gatsby" or seen the movie that a huge to-do is made at one point about how many beautiful shirts Gatsby had.

But here in this Gatsby project, we look at one sentence in isolation. That way, everyone's on the same footing. You don't have the little readers and the bigger readers. Life isn't getting worse for some of us and just fine for others. We gather here, in the daily post, to consume one sentence, so let's lunch.

Let's know each other by first names. Here we are equals. We have all read the sentence, and we can all very well speak out about it. Here, we actively exclude extrinsic evidence. About the book, I mean. We're free to drag in anything else, such as The Beatles, as betamax3000 did so well in yesterday's Gatsby thread, the one about warm human magic.

So pig, then. Pig, not pork. Which makes us think that the clerks and bond-salesmen are little piggies. The men eating humble food — all the humbler for saying pig, not pork — in a dark, crowded place. A pigsty? Our narrator is crammed in close quarters with them as he chows down. He's on familiar terms with them: He calls them by their first names. He's a member of the herd of little piggies.

Did you notice the words are right there one after the other: little pig? As a competent and tolerant reader, you can tell it's the sausages and not the pigs that are supposed to be little, and as a picky reader, you might say it's bad writing to permit that ambiguity to survive the final draft. But maybe the writer wanted you to see little pig. And the bigger question is why insert the pig at all? We'd presume that sausages were pork. Obviously, Fitzgerald wants us to think about pigs and think about the men as pigs. He wasn't as blunt as Mr. Harrison, but he was calling these guys pigs.

Another reason to throw pig in there, permitting the ambiguity, is to call the sausages little without being too aggressively Freudian about saying little sausages and making us think too quickly — before we'd noticed all these other things — of pricks.

ADDED: Meade, helping me proofread, questioned "herd" as the proper collective term for pigs. I know there are some other options, but I like it because it evokes Jesus:

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

"It’s almost always a mistake to read only a first-rate writer’s masterpieces."

"A great deal of Fussell’s best, most perceptive and, frankly, most hilarious work arrived in books like 'Class: A Guide Through the American Status System' (1983). The idea of talking about social class is so taboo in America, Fussell reported, that when he explained his book’s topic to strangers, they reacted as if he had said, 'I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.' It’s a book that, especially if you are uncertain of your own class status, can still draw blood."

Ha. Well, I loved that book.

"The Ultimate Amenity: Grandparents."

A NYT article about highly affluent couples who are spending their copious money to purchase housing for their own parents, so that their immensely privileged children will have the ultimate amenity: grandparents in their daily life.

Published the very next day in the NYT is an article — charting at #1 on the NYT most-emailed list — "For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall." ("Melissa, an eighth-grade valedictorian, seethed over her mother’s boyfriends and drinking, and Bianca’s bubbly innocence hid the trauma of her father’s death.") Proposed alternate title: The Ultimate Privation: No parents.