You're pink, you're young, you're middle class
They say it doesn't matter
Fifteen blue shirts and womanly hands
You're climbing up the ladder- The National,
Racing Like a ProWe've heard a lot about the "urban elite" Obama supporters, mostly all negative. Even Obama supporters are scurrying to get out from under it, proclaiming their "working class roots" or noting that they are most definitely NOT an urban elite. I'm going to do the opposite and say, well, yeah, I fit that description, however caricatured it might be. I read the website
Stuff White People Like and laugh: ha ha! It's funny cuz it's true! Indeed, just Friday night I went out to dinner with some friends here in Chicago and ate - gasp! -
arugula!. Not even, y'know, ironically: I like arugula. Maybe I get an exemption because I grew up in an Italian home where arugula was just called "salad" (no tasteless iceberg lettuce darkened our door - ever!). I will usually drink some imported or higher end beer (my personal favorite these days is a German pilsner, not terribly high-end, but certainly imported), but once in awhile I'll have a PBR, or an Old Style, but only ironically! And I wouldn't be caught dead in an Olive Garden (indeed, I'd like to take some credit in starting that whole flap...), but this may have more to do with the Italian-ness than the urban hipster doofusness. Hell, I usually scrunch my nose up at the Italian food in non-chain restaurants (they put WHAT in the risotto?!?), so the Olive Garden schlock never really stood a chance. My work is certainly what Robert Reich would call "symbolic-analytic." I write lectures and lesson plans; I write articles and do research. I read about 500 pages a week, as a habit from graduate school. And I consider
that WORK! Sometimes I order my shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt; my wife likes Crate & Barrel. I'm pretty indifferent to this stuff, but I like to have nice stuff for the kitchen, where we cook up our elite food. I haven't eaten in a fast food restaurant since the 1990's, and probably never will again (although I suppose we'll have to bring the kid to these places for birthday parties and such).
All that said, I don't think "y'all" (note the irony) really know us. Or rather, you do, but you haven't heard it from us. Now, I know what some of you are going to say: YOU don't represent all urban liberal-types! Broad brush! Broad brush! Maybe. But it's more likely that I'm really saying now what many of us think, but don't have the inclination or energy to say. Notice that I didn't say "courage to say." We live in a culture where it doesn't take much courage to say anything (with a few exceptions, like "Mom, Dad, I'm gay."), so the whole "it took a lot of courage to say that" doesn't register with me. So, a series from the urban elite.
Part 1: What's with the Guns, Yo? - We don't get the gun thing. I mean, we get that you're all worked up over it, since you've beaten it into our heads for the 30 years of our existence, but we don't
really get it. OK, so you have a little hobby. You like to shoot at things, like targets and animals. Fine. Who am I to oppose somebody's hobby? It's like people who do web design as a hobby, or collect 1950's advertising posters. Good for you. To each his or her own. But why are you so angry about it? The notion that your thirty seven rifles and handguns are a bulwark against tyrannical government is so fucking absurdly laughable that we can only shake our heads at it. It's silly. Now, most of us grew up either in a cities during the 1980's or in suburbs. In the first case, guns were a real problem, since we saw a lot of people getting robbed and shot. In the second, guns are pretty much a non-entity. So the whole thing is just confusing. Probably the best thing to happen to your cause was the gentrification of cities, believe it or not. Here in Chicago, we have a slight problem lately with gun crimes, but that happens in
those other neighborhoods to
other people's kids, so we can say "Eh, your little hobby is your little hobby, I guess" in a way we couldn't say that in the 1980's. But really, we don't get it. Whenever we see you folks getting all worked up over it, the conversation goes like this:
"What are those people yelling about now?"
"Hmmm. Looks like the gun thing again."
"Ay yay yay with these people and their fucking guns."
"Eh, whatever."
"True."
It's just weird and confusing. We get that the politicians have to run around pretending to be gun-lovers, and they get dressed up in the absurd orange camouflage vests and the silly hats. The whole thing is kinda amusing. Note that the anti-gun people also strike us as amusing. It's just a little hobby, yo. All you folks need to have a German pilsner and calm down.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Why We Eat Such Good Food (if you were an overeducated urban elite, you'd recognize this as a play on Nietzsche's "Why I Write Such Good Books").
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