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Friday, September 01, 2006
Snapshots from Home A Regular University Diaries Feature The computer still works, but the rest of the power in the house has just gone out -- Ernesto's here in earnest, I guess... GWU has issued warnings and suggestions for students as they move into their dorms during what looks to be a nasty storm ... I can't really see my keyboard -- good thing my mother insisted I learn to touchtype when I was fourteen... It's dark and getting darker; and it gets really dark in Garrett Park, where you can't see the sky for the trees. I'm all alone, too -- Mr. UD's in Philadelphia, at the American Political Science Association convention... Joyce-Themed Spawn is with Zuzu, her Slovakian friend, who lives down the street... But before you really begin to pity me, huddled alone in a dark house, consider how well-heeled I am nonetheless! The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country. That's from the Washington Post. And here's Thomas Frank, in the New York Times: When you view the world from the satisfied environs of Washington — a place where lawyers outnumber machinists 27 to 1 and where five suburban counties rank among the seven wealthiest in the nation — the fantasies of postindustrial liberalism make perfect sense. The reign of the “knowledge workers” seems noble. Longtime readers know that I have nothing in principle against Frank's effort to get the rest of the country outfitted with pitchforks and sent to Garrett Park. But I think he's wrong to assume that "Democratic leaders" are going to want to "talk about class issues." I've lived here a long time and met scads of Democratic leadership types -- in politics, academia, journalism, think tanks, etc. -- and the problem is that their class is absolutely equivalent to the Republicans' class. Bill and Hillary vacation on Nantucket. Then there's John Kerry. These are all happy satisfied rich people. You don't stir up class resentment among such people, whatever their theoretical ideological commitments may be. In a way, Frank's comment admits as much; he says that class war will have to come from the grassroots. Then why is he writing in the New York Times? If something's the matter with Kansas, why isn't he publishing his opinion pieces in their newspapers? E.J. Dionne, in the Washington Post, has a similar problem. He too tries to lay down some populist rhetoric in a recent column about economic inequality in America: The census had some very good news for the well-to-do. The top fifth of American households received 50.4 percent of all income last year, the highest proportion since 1967, when the Census Bureau started following that trend. The biggest gains were concentrated in the top 5 percent. It would have been far more honest - and probably politically more productive - for Dionne to have ended this piece with a little honesty and a little introspection ["In another big home sale, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and wife Mary T. Boyle bought a shingle-and-stone Colonial in Bethesda’s Glen Echo Heights for $1.6 million. The 2004 house has ten-foot ceilings on the first floor, three fireplaces, and an elevator."], as in we have met the enemy, and he is us. |