Curious Hair wrote:
I don't know how long it's been the case, but Dan's dad is a big fucking deal at Sidley Austin. It seems a little more modest now, but late '70s Deerfield was probably a place where you could live a life without mowing your own lawn. My dad and his sisters grew up in Northbrook about ten years earlier and none of them know how to cook food, so maybe there's something to that sort of entitled incompetence.
well, IIRC the south/west side of chicago was pretty jewish (i.e. you can see a lot of old synagogues in the lockwood neighborhood).... so when white flight happened a lot of the indigenous urban jewish population spread out to suburbs like deerfield, skokie, and i think wilmette's the other big one? but yeah skokie especially and then deerfield were the two big targets.... and idk if it was necessarily importing a mass of minorities that caused the white/jewish (cuz basically if you're jewish you can have it any way you want with that =) flight, but IIRC as the suburbs were starting en masse in the mid 50s and then proven to be a burgeoning success in the 60s/70s, that's where a lot of pretty/well-to-do people packed up their cars and went to get a piece of the american dream.
IIRC, deerfield never really had that kind of a "barrington" or "lake forest" aura/air of regal vibes, like you know growing up if you knew somebody from barrington (or more specifically south barrington) you knew they were rich, so when you went to their house and they had a ~4-5 car garage with a benz, a bimmer, a lexus, and the viper under wraps it was like "aha...... (TAKE ON MEEEEEE!!!!! =)" and like i'm saying, deerfield never quite struck me as a place where merely being associated with the name meant that you were upper-6-figs to 7/+ figures.... it just meant that you/r family preferred to get the fuck out of the city while the getting was good.
i grew up in elk grove, aka the middle middle class suburb du jour. and in elk grove everyone (save those trailer park people) technically could have the full lawn service brigade out once a week if you wanted, but by and large there was a lot of that "pick yourself by your own bootstraps" mentality that led to people brandishing their toro lawnmowers because if you're willing and able why not?! so in the BeerStain case, methinks it speaks to some sort of an inference you could make about the environment he grew up in where it was like "we don't have to cut grass, 'the help' will do that" = go figure the guy would go on to be a dukie and end up being sandwiched between the middle class and the real GOOD. MONIED. PEOPLE. cuz you figure dan's gotta at least be loho money ($300k) and high end is.... what, 500-750k? he's FOTS for god's sake, but it's not like we're talking to [whatever family he got on the cross for in relation to their trials and tribs in the lower dish of the UC) or the trumps or something like that..... but dan's in a position of relative broadcasting power where he knows where his bread is buttered and PROTIP it's not the demand side, it's the supply side. the job creators. the "it getters". the movers and shakers. the ones who built it and literally/figuratively left it for the peasantry to come. </doubleentendre>
so yeah, i mean, i always kind of assumed that dan grew up "just like me" in that he was middle-to-upper middle class but had a bit of that "DIY" sensibility that would = you mow your own damn grass because you're 12 and that's what able-bodied/minded 12 year olds do.... but now knowing that dan was always on the cusp of "the good life" aka "the real world, neo" --- yeah, his whole FOTSian crusade to give a voice to that battered 1% minority who has to deal with so much prejudice and hate because they're successful..... well it makes all the more sense to me. dan grew up on the virge of seeing how the chosen few live (</doubleentendre> >=) and thus had the sensibilities of those people, cuz man, there's nothing that tickles me more than a $75-150k/year person espousing the koch brothers talking points and having a mindset like they're in the "we built it" club and looking down at everyone to 500% earn their own way with no sort of help "because [i/we] didn't need it and [you/they] shouldn't either.
total fucking wannabes.... these people idolize the rich and powerful (and there's nothing wrong with that, btw) and act like they're a part of "the club" when reality you know the GOOD. (OLD) MONIED. PEOPLE. would laugh at them unmercifully behind their back for thinking they have what it takes to really be a part of the club. quoteth/paraphraseth george carlin: "it's an exclusive club.... and you're not in it"
but hey, espouse those pro-supply-side/big-money talking points and vote red and blah blah blah and you can get taht psychosomatic boost that comes with an honorary membership in the "we built it" club and no doubt your soul will be soothed by the timeless inner-peace that comes with knowing that "at least [you're] not one of those welfare [enwurds*]" because as i've said for years and years..... in so many ways i see african americans as the quintessential "example class", especially since the "reagan revolution" (which was a revolution against what exactly?) where the status quo was shifted from demand > supply to supply > demand and the social contract was changed from the new/square deal to "you should be thankful for any job we're willing to give you because if you don't want it there's 500 other people who are dying to take it. middle class lifestyle? we don't owe you shit; pick yourself up by your bootstraps!
AHEM. yeah since that paradigm/social-contract shift, i always thought african americans were the "example class" so the dwindling/increasingly-less-and-less-wealthy middle class could always say "....well at least i'm not them [afro-americans]" and yeah, now it's all talking points about welfare queens and people using food stamps to pay for hawaiian vacations BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU MAN..... if given a choice of working 40hrs/week for $100k/year or getting welfare/food-stamps with no work whatsoever, obviously people are going to pick the latter because fuck work I WANT MY OBAMAPHONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and yeah, of course, it's preferable to have millions of people broke and starving and cellphoneless and otherwise destitute because hey, the police/state will always be there to take care of these desperate people who only have to walk one mile to the nearest strip mall to carjack the well/ish-to-do white family going shopping at ulta 3, right?
</rantzilla> my apologies everyone, especially biggie who always looms in my head whenever i hit character 141/+ because as i've been told i'm a pretty good poster but still nobody wants to read my shit =D
_________________
Curious Hair wrote:
Les Grobstein's huge hog is proof that God has a sense of humor, isn't it?
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I don't know if that was just DB being an elitist, or if he suddenly realized he was stereotyping and that was his way of backtracking.
