Here in the last-remaining classless society, it's interesting how the
language of "class" is used. After a doctor's appointment, I was driving
through the congested streets of Los Angeles, listening to US National
Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation." Juan Williams, the host, was
interviewing Rui Tiexerra (sp?) about his new book that argues that the
white working class is crucial to US electoral politics (being 55% of the
voters), with another pollster from the Pew Foundation participating.
Anyway, it's not the validity of the polling results or the analysis that
concerns me. Rather, it was the way in which they slid from talking about
the "working class" to the talking about the much more amorphously defined
"middle class" without noticing that they'd made the transition!
(It reminds me of when Harry Braverman reports that polls indicate that
most people consider themselves middle class -- and most people consider
themselves working class, too.)
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
