"Where real movers and Quakers connect."

Thoughts on being invited to join the Penn Club -- to "start realizing [my] future with a membership that opens doors."

Patrimonial capitalism -- a state of affairs in which the returns from capital grow and concentrate, allowing a small class of idlers the luxury of massive income from zero work -- carried with it an entire cultural apparatus of patronage and sycophantism. Ironically, however, its cultural assumptions and values were perhaps most widespread and reinforced among the class right beneath them, those striving for advantage and entry into the otherwise closed world of the elite and ruling classes, who did still have to work.[1] Such figures populate the worlds of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton, those who want entry to society (while  desiring the gates be closed behind them) but lack the capital or lineage required to be included as a matter of course. And as is often the case, few embraced more wholly or dogmatically the values of a culture than those outsiders who desired to be included.

But gaining access to this closed world required achieving a pedigree that one otherwise lacked. Institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania were organized not simply, or even primarily, to provide an education, but to provide such a pedigree. And their success hinged on providing an infrastructure of alumni networks that would turn an otherwise brief association with what is notionally a school into the basis for a connection or trust that could open doors for some--reproducing the culture and class of the elite--while making (as a sheer function of cartelization) such connections or opportunities closed or more difficult for others. It served the interests of some of the striving class, and reinforced the values and importance of the established class, and kicked in the teeth everyone who might have access to the professional class but lacked the connections needed for great success.

The Penn Club, a piece of nonsense in Manhattan, the center of the American upper class' universe and certainly not Philadelphia, explicitly caters to this purpose

'"When they [grads] are to enter the world, the trustees shall zealously unite, and make all the interests that can be made, to promote and establish them, whether in business, offices, marriages, or any other thing for their advantage." -- Ben Franklin

The Penn Club fulfills this mission.'

This, from a pamphlet printed in 2014, mailed without any sign that the content of Franklin's statement could be read as anything but a great and wonderful thing. Given the club's overpriced membership, rooms, and gym facilities, the pamphlet inviting recent grads to join is understandably pitched at the parents:

"Introduce your young graduate firsthand to the real world of networking. Create valuable connections for yourself."

Since arriving in the US I have been constantly reminded that there is a distinction between "real world" and whatever it is I do, and that a "real salary" earning "real money" was that which far less than half of Americans lived on. I always imagined the "real world," however, to involve production, consequential deadlines, decisions that in some way impacted the well-being of yourself and your colleagues. Little did I know that the "real world" is gladhanding in the Kit & Key Bar (where they offer $2 Yuengling's once [!] a month as a benefit of membership), "where real movers and Quakers connect."

 [1] Work in the sense of earning a salary from contributing something beyond their ownership. They could not sustain their desired lifestyle by simply counting the returns on investment. And of course, those who could sustain such a lifestyle likely 'worked' as well, although one suspects that they did this to build a certain type of respectability, and that they moved up in this fake world of not really needing to work not as a function of their actual marginal contribution but as a function of their connections. But no one would suggest that this occurs today.

Davy Crockett

I've never liked the man, and I still don't, but given the tightening legal environment -- renewed efforts to wish away the existence of free blacks by restricting their movements, by treating them as equal to slaves in various laws, by casting them as "outside the laws" if they didn't leave the state -- this seems like the right thing to do, regardless of what the relief in question may have entailed.

The last line on a page from the Tennessee Legislature's Journal from 1822 :

Slave labor and manufacturing

In case there was ever any doubt as to the underlying purpose of slavery, I submit the brief prepared by S.D. Morgan, "one of the most intelligent and extensive manufacturers in the State," for the Tennessee Assembly's joint select committee on manufacturing in 1845:

You ask... what are the advantages or disadvantages attending slave labor compared with white labor employed in manufacturing?

In answering this the most important of your questions, I am aware of having to encounter the old and deep rooted prejudices of most persons who have not investigated the subject for themselves, butwho have rather adopted opinions expressed (perhaps interestedly) by others. To such an extent has this opinion that slave labor cannot successfully compete with free labor in manufacturing operations, taken possession of the public mind, that it has become in a manner a proverb, and like all other old maxims is most difficult to eradicate.

In some of the more delicate and intricate operations, where there is much exercise of the mind requisite, I admit that it may be true— but to an extent beyond this I deny its truth; and I appeal to all whose experience qualify them as judges to bear, me out in the assertion--that in all operations, where patience, care, application and strength are the chief requisites, that the slave is found in all respects Competent. He is patient of toil, submits readily to discipline, and unencumbered with cares of the mind; hence it is more entirely brought to bear on the operation he may be performing. To this may be added his physical ability of enduring the heat of the iron-furnace or of the spinning room decidedly better than the white man.

Again: The employer of the slave operative is not deprived of his services from having him, called off to sit on juries; to attend musters and elections, and many other such drawbacks on labor.

Nor is he found uniting in combinations “to strike for higher wages” or for “shorter hours of work” at that particular juncture of time, too, when his services are most needed.

And yet another reason still more cogent is at hand, to prove that to the manufacturer, who is the owner of the slave, his services are doubly valuable. It is this; when the owner has taught him the art of manufacturing he is not called on from time to time, as improvement in skill take place, to increase his wages, as is always the case with the white laborer, who becoming more and more expert, demand and is certainly entitled to higher pay, because the instruction he has acquired, enables him to make for his employer more money.

Note also, that the committee insisted that Tennessee iron was the best the world over:

"English imported iron is not to be compared with our Tennessee iron, to the honor of which I beg leave here to mention that none of the steam boilers made of Tennessee iron, out of which I am informed several have been constructed in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, have burst, of course therefore our iron masters are free from any blame of having contributed to the sacrifice of the hundreds of lives that have been lost by those accidents."

p.594-97, Journal of the Assembly--Tennessee, 1845-46.

Some people are truly nuts.

From the Wikipedia description of the Crystal Palace

http://andreakb.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/thermal-comfort-lechner-ch4/

The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet (92,000 m²) of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m). Because of the recent invention of the cast plate glass method in 1848, which allowed for large sheets of cheap but strong glass, it was at the time the largest amount of glass ever seen in a building and astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights, thus a "Crystal Palace".

Sounds charming. Well, not everyone thought so. Colonel Sibthorp, the Conservative English MP from the constituency of Lincoln in 1851 certainly did not think so. For him, it was a celebration of free trade. And he was right. And it was also the site of considerable social anxiety, carefully arranged so that the classes would not mingle. But there was a limit to how much they could prevent mingling, given that the middle and industrious and the idle aristocracy were all invited and welcomed and (the last least perhaps) celebrated. He, disliking free trade and despising class mingling, had this to say:

With regard to the flourishing state of trade and manufactures, let them go down to the city he had just left [Lincoln], and they would soon find what was thought there of free trade, and of that which he did most strenuously condemn-that fraud upon the public called a "Glass House"-the "Crystal Palace"-that accursed building, erected to encourage the foreigner at the expense of the already grievously-distressed English artisan. Would to God-he had often wished it-that a heavy hailstorm or a visitation of lightning would but a stop to the further progress of that work ! Their property, their wives and families would be at the mercy of pickpockets and whoremongers from every part of the earth. Oh, it would be a beautiful sight! There was a charming building, and there would be the most entertaining recreation provided. This was another specimen of the encouragement of free trade.

From Hansard, Feb. 4th 1851, c.106.

Photo by R. Hooghe [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The dangers of maximalism

I am fond of John Russell, former UK Prime Minister, and, next to Gladstone, perhaps most important in establishing Liberalism and liberalism as a popular philosophy in the 19th century. I am not fond of his argument here, against universal suffrage.

Historians are frequently being warned, and warning each other, to judge people by their times and places: so the racism of our ancestors is not really a fair subject of critique, as the past was more racist than the present. This is Whiggism at its worst: the presumption that the past was always worse. Of course, in many ways it wasn't. The USA was anxious, worried, uncertain about racial supremacy at its founding; it was triumphantly racist by 1850; and from 1860 to about 1880, racial egalitarianism flourished, conquered, was defended, and then ultimately fell. This is not progress.

But another problem is that this Whiggism is lazy: the vilest bigotry can be defended by saying "this was a different time, a different place." In reality, and while not denying the differences between the past and the present, the fact remains that in almost all times and places there was a rejoinder, an opposition, very frequently large and 'respectable.' I read many who invoke the 'past cannot be judged by the present' as saying : "this was a time when this opinion was more popular than now, when it could be expressed without sanction, and while sure there was a vocal and sizable opposition, and thus a space for non-racism, non-elitism, non-sexism, why would one give up small privileges for moral righteousness." And I find this position more defensible and certainly more accurate a description than the implied "they could not imagine another way." Of course they could; others, no more imaginative, did, and these others were loud, insistent, adamant, annoying, fanatical, and righteous (both as a moral assessment and an aggravating posture).

But digress. Back to Russell, which is--detached from its anti-universal suffrage context--a useful articulation of the argument that institutions cannot operate when their implications are maximally exploited for small gain.

The whole of the constitution of this country depends upon the moderation and forbearance with which its various powers are exercised. If the Sovereign were to exercise the extreme power of the prerogative-if the House of Lords were upon every occasion to indulge its own views and its own opinions, and exercise its power of rejecting all the Bills sent up from this House-if the House of Commons used its extreme power of constantly refusing all supplies, unless its will were complied with-I say, if the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons, were all, or indeed any one of them, to use the powers which the constitution has vested in them, which by law they possess, and which cannot be denied to them-if they were to use all these powers, and push them to extremes, the constitution could not last a month. There would be an end of its powers, and at the same time there would be an end of the temperate liberties of this country. .... what I do say is, that the liberties we have inherited from our ancestors, and that temperate liberty of which we are now in the enjoyment, are enjoyed only by not pushing the rights of any parties to the extreme.

I am sympathetic to maximalism; this is in part a consequence of the constitutive experiences and texts that have shaped my experience. In reading history I see myself less with the defenders of the status quo, whatever this might be, than among the excluded. Hence, perhaps, my sympathy now for working class conservatives, for the Ulster rioters, and my great hesitation with liberal progressive triumphalism expressed in their pretensions to being 'reality based.' The feeling that one's interests are excluded, that one's lifestyle is looked down on, is a powerful one, even if it is felt by those with whom I disagree. 

And so that which is reasonable is often dressing for that which is exclusionary; and maximalism has the advantage of pushing whatever advantage one has. I believe that O'Connell's strategy for achieving emancipation was the aggressive use of whatever rights were enabled. The Catholic Association, the Catholic Rent, the use of the franchise by the 40 shilling freeholders to vote for their preferred candidate, rather than their landlord's candidate, the election of O'Connell itself, were all instances of maximalism. And they led Robert Peel to worry. Peel saw an evil that was “not force—not violence—not any act of which law could take cognizance” but rather “the peaceable and legitimate exercise of a franchise according to the will and conscience of the holder.” Long existing rights, which had maintained ultimate control in the landed élite, were being repurposed. It was the  

“novel exercise of constitutional franchises—in the application of powers recognised and protected by law—the power of meeting in public assemblies—the systematic and not unlawful application of all those powers to one definite purpose, namely, the organisation of a force which professed to be a moral force, but had for its objects to encroach step by step on the functions of regular government, to paralyse its authority, and to acquire a strength which might ultimately render irresistible the demand for civil equality” (O’Ferrall 1985, 202).

But still, I am fond of Russell. And so I read his opposition to maximalism with more sympathy than if it had been Peel, Wellington, or Inglis.

On filibustering...

... Robert Peel, having blocked several efforts to adjourn, states that he intends to block all public business until he gets what he wants.

all public business should be deferred until this question should be decided. This was the proposition he had to make to hon. Gentlemen opposite, and he assured them he made it in the most perfect good humour. And he would put it to them, was it not better that they should separate good humouredly upon this understanding, than they should continue a useless system of hostility and contention, such as they had that night witnessed.

T. Duncombe responds

[Duncombe wishes] the House and the country to understand what was the nature of the proposition which the right hon. Baronet had submitted. It was this-that because the House would not agree to encourage treating and bribery, the right hon. Baronet [Peel] would obstruct the progress of all public business. If hon. Gentlemen opposite should ever come into office again, he thought they could not  complain if those who might be in opposition to them, took a leaf out of their book. He thought the proposition of the right hon. Baronet would prove a most dangerous precedent in future cases.

And that's how you get the snowball rolling. 

Revise and resubmit

Not going to stay this way, but:

Popular Vote

	Obama	Romney
Total	60,192,897	57,463,325
Percent	50.4%	48.1%

Spread: 2.3

My prediction  : between 2.5 and 2.3. Granted, I did give 2.5 as the headline number, but with votes still being counted, I'm feeling pretty good about it drifting up.

Did I call states right? Well I absurdly didn't make an electoral college prediction here, but I did elsewhere:

Obama: 290
Romney: 248

I assumed Obama would lose Florida and Virginia. I was mistaken about this, but for the worst reason: I made that prediction on Oct. 29, and was in anxiety mode, rather than the much earlier prediction.

So not great on the EC, but pretty alright on the PV. Which of course doesn't matter.

Romney

I call this debate for Romney. He's wrong, but he is better at it. Obama is struggling on his language and rhetoric. Also, he is pushing his time better.

Reversion to the Mean and Nov. 6

My operating principle: reversion to the mean

My dataset: every national poll from June 1 to today

My prediction: Obama wins Nov. 6 by 2.5 points over Romney

Granted, Romney has had a bad month. So what was the mean Obama's lead in polls taken prior to September? 2.3

August was Romney's best month so far. Mean Obama lead in polls taken that month: 2.1

So Romney at his best is 2.1 below Obama; Romney at his worse is 2.9 below Obama. I'm going to go with that as the floor and the ceiling and split the difference.

And things do not get much better for Romney if you look only at likely voters: among likely voters Obama has a mean lead of 2.7 points.

What should Romney hope for? Well, Obama's smallest lead was in August among likely voters, at 0.8. If the Democratic enthusiasm post-convention and post-47 percent speech is not maintained, then Romney is in much better shape.

Trash, don't pick it up

Mitt Romney, intimate & in person:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

 ....

That's the part that's got people abuzz. What I found interesting was this:

They'll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

Three things, reversed:

Third thing: Taxageddon, or the fiscal cliff,  the sequester, or whatever stupid term you want, is the result of GOP intransigence on taxes. They were bluffing that they would default on the debt, and Obama was willing to call their bluff. But they were also willing to play chicken with it in an absolutely unprecedented manner. The result was the sequester. An underlying theme of the Romney campaign, however, has been: give in to the blackmailers. Congress can't work with Obama, not because Obama has not reached out, been willing to cross pretty much every red line that any Democratic constituency has ever drawn (Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare... and even the insistence that deficit reduction have some taxes; the sequester had no tax increases, which was supposedly the red line for any budget deal--although in fairness, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is a card in the Dems hand). No, Republicans in Congress have decided not to work with the President. Romney's argument is that this is frightening, and that accordingly, we should encourage this sort of reckless behavior.

Second thing: Gotta love me some magic. Given that the Romney forecast is for 12 million new jobs in his first term, which is the currently scheduled forecast, it strikes me that his plan is "no additional growth, no additional jobs, just additional tax and safety net cuts."

First thing: Markets are up in September, during which it's seemed as though Obama is pulling ahead. They went up considerably on the 6th, the day after Clinton's speech that so many apparently loved. And then they went up again in response to QE3, which Romney has criticized.

Here or there.

NYTimes article about India. Could read for U.S. as well.

Scandal Poses a Riddle: Will India Ever Be Able to Tackle Corruption? A brazen brand of crony capitalism has created huge fortunes for a few, at the expense of the nation as a whole, which is falling short in energy infrastructure.

Pockets of Prosperity

While the adviser apparently believes in a liberal media bias, they are absolutely right about the sociological insulation of the media.

But frustration is building behind the scenes, egged on by a conservative media and Twitter conversation that has blamed the media for accusing Romney of a premature response to the crises in Libya and Egypt.
The adviser, granted anonymity to criticize a press corps the campaign still relies on every day, went on to blame a "green room, green zone kind of divide," saying the national press, most of whom live in New York or DC, "pockets of prosperity," are isolated from the realities of the harsh economy — and therefore, unable to grasp Romney's message.
Instead, they are preoccupied by concerns akin to war reporters relaxing in the green zone: "Too much chlorine in the pool, the parties are going on too late, why can't we get the right flavors of Haagen Dazs? Most people aren't living in that world."

However, I do not care that this means they aren't sympathetic to Romney's campaign message. Because no one is more insulated in the pocket of prosperity than Romney himself, and certainly the entirety of their platform is absolutely indifferent to poverty and unemployment. That's at least suggested by the fact that under their 'plan' they project to create as many jobs as under the current baseline plan, meaning, they do nothing. But yes, reporters are insulated and that's why they have completely failed in keeping political attention on the jobs crisis.

Notes

This is just a note for my remembering, regarding work being done by a colleague on evolutionary models in the social sciences. It is interesting to see even in 1884 the rejection of progressive language for a very explicitly evolutionary one, one that insists that there is not moral value in the process, despite what the Spencer's of the time are suggesting.

Le démocrate raisonne comme si la démocratie n'avait besoin ni d'apologie ni même de conseils ou d'avertissements. Elle est le progrès, cela suffit. Et qu'est-ce qui prouve qu'elle soit le progrès? Est-ce la nécessité avec laquelle elle s'impose? Tout ce qui arrive nécessairement, par le développement des sociétés, serait donc ipso facto un changement pour le mieux? Mais c'est là répondre à la question par la question. Cette supériorité relative que l'on attribue à chaque phase successive de l'humanité, on ne l'y trouve que parce qu'on a commencé par l'attacher à l'idée même du mouvement. Il vaudrait mieux, ce semble, substituer au terme de progrès celui d'évolution, qui exprime seulement que tel état de la Société était implicitement renfermé dans le précédent et devait en sortir par une loi naturelle. On aurait à cela l'avantage de ne rien préjuger quant à la valeur du changement dont on veut parler.

La Démocratie et la France, p.78, Edmond Scherer.

Why bother?

“I believe that if we’re successful in this election — when we’re successful in this election — that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that... My hope and my expectation is that after the election, now that it turns out the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”

He does not seem to realize that this motivates his defeat as well as it does his re-election.

If Romney is elected, we will see a resolution of the "fiscal cliff"--it'll just all be thrown onto the backs of the poor, the elderly, the working.

If elected, we might very well see pump-priming through the fiscal channel--it'll just all be throwing money at the executive class and the hangers-on and sycophant set. We'll almost certainly see more through the monetary channel, as the Republicans on the Fed will now no longer fear inflation given that the right sort of person is in the White House, revealing once again that they know neither how American government works nor anything about fiscal history in this country in the last 30 years.

And if the CBO projections are accurate, we'll see an eventual recovery--exactly in line with what Romney is already forecasting--that the GOP will take credit for. The fever will break, the sun will shine, and the world can go to hell.

Are you fucking kidding me...

A worser sort of trash...

I am going to excerpt massively, because, well because I'd rather that no one followed the link.

Sally Quinn announces the end of power in Washington - The Washington Post

"It was telling that Vanity Fair had bought more tables at the dinner than most of the Washington news organizations.

On the way home (we skipped the after-parties), I suddenly realized that this grotesque event signaled the end of power as we have known it. That dinner —which seemed to have more celebrities, clients and advertisers than journalists and politicians —was the tipping point.

The grotesqueness was being stuck between Ms. Gingrich and Ms. Kardashian at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Ms. Quinn has helpfully informed us that she was invited to the after-parties (obliquely/ostentatiously [depends on the reader I suppose] displaying her social credentials in passing is a strong point of Ms. Quinn's). She has suggested that she knows power, that the power she knows is the power we know, and she claims that this has passed. We shall see.

The decline of power has been happening for a while. In 1987, I wrote a piece for this magazine called “The Party’s Over.” In it, I chronicled the demise of the Washington hostess. That was 25 years ago, and people were complaining even then that Washington would never be the same.

I like the fact that she "suddenly realized" in 2012 what she had already chronicled in 1987. Frankly, I think that a piece titled "The Party's Over," in which the demise of the Washington hostess is the central narrative, would have been an episode of Murder, She Wrote. I wish it had been.

But power still trumped money in those days. Today, money trumps power. If Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, were having a party today, and politicians or statesmen received a conflicting invitation to a party put together by Sheldon Adelson (Gingrich’s super PAC guy), where do you think people would go? Adelson. No question.

If the late publisher of The Washington Post were having a party today, I suspect the only persons who would choose Adelson's event would be those whose fear of the undead was stronger than their morbid curiosity. While Kardashian and Adelson might not be The Right Sort of People for Ms. Quinn, I would prefer them to anyone so uninterested as to skip the dead hostess' party.

Now, at a party, if you find people staring over your shoulder to see who’s more important in the room, they’re usually looking at someone rich, rather than someone powerful. (Or perhaps they’re staring at themselves in a mirror, as I once observed.)

She could have just observed, rather than noxiously informing us that this is one of her little wits, the pearls that make her such a card in the social circuit. Is this why she is given space in the Post? Because she has made clever little remarks at parties? Has she done anything, at all, ever?

Power in Washington used to be centered on the White House, the Congress, the Cabinet, the diplomatic corps and the journalists. Today, all of those groups depend on money for their very existence. The real power lies with the lobbyists, the money-raisers, the super PACs, the bundlers, the corporations and rich people. The hottest ticket on the planet is not an invitation to the White House but an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos....

Well she has appealed to my class prejudice against the wealthy and in favor of the democratically representative. Let's see where she is going with this.

The Obamas have been roundly criticized for not being part of the Washington social scene. The question is, does it matter? Could Obama win or lose the presidency because he has dissed the Washington community? I suspect the answer is no. It doesn’t matter anymore....

Oh for fuck's sake. "Roundly criticized" might be the only part of this paragraph that bears any resemblance to reality, considering its suggestion of the organizing committee of the Washington social scene going round and each criticizing Obama in turn.

“Good luck and good timing are great, but ultimately, a Washington party rises and falls with its power quotient. This has always been the case.”
Ain’t no mo’....

I don't even know what she means by party anymore. Does she mean political party? Dinner party? "Ain't no mo'...." Is this a saying? Did she see this on The Wire?

There you have it. Money is power. The fundraiser has replaced the Washington dinner party....

Could it be that the Obamas, not knowing Washington, think that’s all there is to the social life here? Who wouldn’t want to stay away? On the other hand, he is the president of the United States and, whether he likes it or not, the leader of social as well as political Washington."

As much as I dislike the dominance of the rentiers and the monied, it is certainly better than the dinner party set. The only think less democratic (in that great old-time democracy meaning of the term) than the fundraiser is the dinner party.

This is The Age of Innocence, without any of Wharton's wit, callous disregard, and self-awareness. While it may have mattered for those who were in its embrace, the passing of this social world is as great a loss as the passing of a kidney stone: sucks to be the one affected, but better for all involved once it's gone.

But let's not pretend for a second that this has really passed away. Rather, Ms. Quinn is showing the contempt of the beta bourgeois for the alpha bourgeois, the disgust of the useless, dreary, and destitute nobility with the social parvenus and climbers. That is, she is showing the least interesting or ennobling manifestation of class envy that is supposedly such an un-American trait: the dreary complaints of an inner-track that they are not the innermost, totally uncoupled with a recognition that there might be tracks even further along the radius.