Sunday NY Times piece on British Snobbery, for all you little plebs and gits

[Ideologue]

Your judge was some kind of fucking retard.  Namely, the kind they let into USC.

[CountDeMoney]

You could always tell which doctors at Hopkins went to Harvard.  Mainly because they had no problem telling you.

Or, more obnoxiously, they'd wear their MGH scrubs around, like gang colors.  So fuck Harvard in the ass. 

Best rout we ever had in rugby, though.  Poured in on those fuckers until the final whistle.  Pompous little assholes with their crests on their shirts.



But I suppose you're OK, CM. 

[Ideologue]

CM's giving back to the community.  I guess.  In the sense he helps people like me do more harm to society.

[Valmy]

Dude if you went to Harvard we would never hear the end of it.

[CountDeMoney]

Dude if you went to Harvard we would never hear the end of it.

[Capetan Mihali]

In the sense he helps people like me do more harm to society.

Yeah, a solid six month bid in the Spartanburg County Jail back in '02 would've straightened you right out.

[Admiral Yi]

One Charlotte judge insisted on calling me "Harvard" to my face in open court while I was practicing as an intern for a summer.  That was excruciating.

When I first got there and we had an intro chat at the bench, he told several anecdotes about his law school days that differed a lot in content, but each having the theme that the U of S.C. Law School (where he went) was always known as the Harvard of the South; or rather, that Harvard was the USC of the North, aha.

I had an idea for a Tshirt.  "Harvard: the Harvard of the Whole World."

[CountDeMoney]

In the sense he helps people like me do more harm to society.

Yeah, a solid six month bid in the Spartanburg County Jail back in '02 would've straightened you right out.

Put some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in his commissary account, his dance card would've been full real quick.

[Razgovory]

Alright I concede the field to the Americans

Your media and your discourse is full of stuff that elsewhere would is classified as being about class, and your social organization has fairly discernible social classes. However, you are absolutely right that class-war stuff gets little traction.

IMO, it's not because those bits that get classified as being about class elsewhere do not exist, but because you like to call them something else and look at them in other frameworks.

Which I guess is fair enough.

It does lead to some oddities in the US.  Poor rural whites will vote for the interests of the wealthy because they don't like any social program that will help urban blacks.  Often the poor rural whites are actually poorer then the urban blacks, but they'd cut their own nose off before they'd help a "gangbanger".  The issue of race is at the heart of the US.  It permeates almost everything we do.  I don't think we'll ever get over it.  It's not just white and black but nativitist and immigrant.  The Irish were despised for a long time as were the Italians, though they have mostly been accepted and Hispanics have taken their place.  Anti-catholic sentiment has decreased but has been replaced by Islmaophobia.  In fact the arguments made against Catholics mirror the ones made about Muslims today.  Disloyal, Radical, and fundamentally incompatible with American democracy.

[11B4V]

garbage. Speak for yourself poor rural white boy.

[Martinus]

Yeah, it's my perception as well - while America definitely has social classes, it has a distinct lack of class-wide solidarity, so to speak (at least compared to many European nations). It seems to be much more about race - as Raz says, the white poor and the black poor are on the same boat, but they do not seem to think they share a common interest.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah maybe from an outsider looking in, but I wouldn't say that most people I know care much about any of those "cultural markers."

Class is a language you can read basically. You can look at someone's car, home, CD collection, TV choices and make a reasonable guess at that person's demographic.

I'm not sure how British people particularly 'care much about' that. It's not knowledge we do much with, it's just something that we're aware of.

It may not be described as class in the US but I can't think of another reason the 'clinging' remark was so controversial, or the Democrats made so much of Romney's car-lifts, or the Republicans hit the jackpot of footage of John Kerry windsurfing to illustrate his flip-flopping.

I'd say these terms refer more to subcultures, race and the like rather then economic standing.

But in Britain class extends way beyond economic standing. It is about subculture. You can be very poor and still be solidly upper class or upper-middle, similarly you can be very rich and still very proud of the fact you're working class. In fact both are pretty common.

And while there is some contempt for poverty in the US it doesn't go both ways.  The poor don't despise the rich in the same way you see in Britain.

Do you have any examples of this in Britain? Because I'm not sure what you mean.

What are the British cultural implications of Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry?  I just bought a bottle ($8.00) on a whim and am not sure what to do with it, or whose ranks I'll join once I start drinking it... 

You're an elderly woman.

I was in the supermarket yesterday getting some shopping and there was an old lady in front of me doing her weekly shop: some microwave meals, some frozen goods and three bottles of gin

[Martinus]

The communists tried to destroy classes in Poland but the attitude Sheilbh describes used to be very common and is reemerging again.

My grandmother used to tell me that before the war, her own mother could easily distinguish class in a poor Masovian village they lived in - noone had any money whatsoever, but the households that had a piano and the women going out to do gardening in white gloves (that they kept washing religiously despite it being quite futile) were considered upper class, unlike the rest - despite this (and a collection of old books) being pretty much the only difference.

[Gups]

What are the British cultural implications of Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry?  I just bought a bottle ($8.00) on a whim and am not sure what to do with it, or whose ranks I'll join once I start drinking it... 

You're an elderly woman.

With terrible taste in sherry.

[Martinus]

If I buy wine, coffee and canned food (but not clothes) at M&S, am I working class or middle class?