Closing Some Tabs

Here's a good one:

The biggest problem with the reductive politics of cultural signifiers is that the signifiers are always in flux. For instance, in his quiz, Charles Murray asked, “Have you or your spouse ever bought a pickup truck?” Fifty years ago, ownership of a pickup truck may have indicated a hardscrabble lifestyle far removed from the metropolitan “bubble” — farmers, ranchers, loggers, and so on. This is no longer true. Despite an enormous decline in agricultural jobs (there was a 14 percent decrease in farm jobs alone from 2001 to 2013), the Ford F-150 (the base model of which starts at $27,000) has become the most popular vehicle in America, especially among those with an annual income of more than $200,000. Anyone with roots in the suburbs can testify that many a cul-de-sac is now lined with beefed-up Rams and Silverados used solely to commute to air-conditioned office jobs. What out-of-touch columnists consider bona-fide symbols of working-class authenticity are often just the hallmarks of well-off white suburbanites with bad taste.

Though the typist doesn't know when to stop w/ the both-sider-ism:

This kind of misguided prejudice is also apparent in liberal circles. A few months ago, Keith Olbermann, the unofficial head of the #Resistance, criticized Trump for hosting Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock at the White House, whom he called “trailer park trash.”

Classism aside, Olbermann fell into the same trap as Brooks, Murray, and others — he saw white people with bad fashion sense and assumed they must dwell at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Obviously, all three of Trump’s guests are now multimillionaires, but even pre-fame they were far removed from poverty. Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, Alaska is a suburb of Anchorage; her father was a science teacher and she enrolled in a four-year college immediately after high school. Ted Nugent was raised in the Chicago suburbs; Kid Rock the Detroit suburbs, where he grew up in a home that was recently put on the market for $1.3 million. Palin, Nugent, and Rock are exactly who the statistics show propelled Trump to victory — the comfortable white middle class.

Uh, calling out three phonies pretending to be trailer trash all the way to the bank is not really the same thing as Murray's idiocy & ignorance. "Trailer trash" is more a state of mind (or lack of a mind) than a "class" anyway. It's also very possible that, whatever their backgrounds, devolution may have occurred w/ the three mentioned. Which is probably what happened w/ this buffoon, who brought a thug from his security detail w/ him, 'cause he's a loud-mouthed chickenshit. (Was he afraid Mme. Christie would eat his nachos if he left them at his seat?)

At #Cubs #Brewers game. #ChrisChristie was getting razzed by fans, so he got in the face of one of them. 5:30 on @WISN12News pic.twitter.com/sx8euMgFy2

— Ben Hutchison (@BennyHutch) July 30, 2017