Tag Archives: Charles Murray

Do you live in a bubble? Yeah, me too!

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You’ve probably seen some version of the NPR bubble quiz.  It was published in March, 2016, but has been making the rounds on Facebook again.

It’s prefaced like this:

There exists a new upper class that’s completely disconnected from the average white American and American culture at large, argues Charles Murray, a libertarian political scientist and author.

Of course, if it’s based on Charles Murray’s work, it gets an automatic 5-star bullshit rating, but I took it for fun, and learned that I’m pretty bubblified:  my father was a lawyer; I’ve never owned a pickup truck; and I can’t identify military insignia.  I’m saved from total hermetically sealed oblivion by the fact that I have had friends who are evangelical Christians, have purchased Avon products,* and am pretty sure Tim would have gone fishing in the past five years if it weren’t so inaccessible.

Why is it, though, that we only think of educated middle-class liberals as living in a bubble?  And those in Murray’s white suburban Christian bubble as defining “American culture”?

Want to see if you are part of “American culture” as millions of people outside the exurbs of the south and midwest experience it?  Take the official ThoughtSnax Bubble Quiz!

Do you have any close friends or family members who rely on a wheelchair to get around (full time; not just at the airport)?**

Have you ever been unable to shop, dine out, or patronize an entertainment venue because of architectural barriers?

Have you ever been unable to enjoy a movie, play, concert, or sporting event because of communications barriers?

Do you consider people with significant disabilities who do ordinary things like work, shop, or dine out with friends to be “inspirational”?

Do you regularly interact professionally with professionals of other races or national origins?

Do you have any friends who are gay or lesbian?  Trans?  That you know of?

Do you know what “trans” means?

Have you ever been mis-gendered or dead-named?  Do you know what this means?

Have you ever read a book, article, or poem by any of the following?

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Dan Savage
  • Laura Hershey
  • Viet Thanh Nguyen
  • Stephen Kuusisto
  • N.K. Jemisin
  • Junot Diaz
  • Marjane Satrapi
  • Philip Pullman
  • Jhumpa Lahiri

Have you or anyone close to you ever feared for their life, health, or safety at the hands of the police?

Have you or anyone close to you ever feared for their life, health, or safety if pending Republican “health” “care” legislation were to pass?

Do you know any Jews?

Do you know any Jews as personal friends, not just colleagues or professionals?

Do you know who any of these people are?

  • Fred Korematsu
  • Maysoon Zayid
  • Stella Young
  • Audre Lorde
  • Justin Dart
  • Sarah McBride
  • Bill Lann Lee
  • I. King Jordan
  • Bree Newsome

Have you ever had anyone attempt to proselytize you or convert you to their religion?

Do you have an education that you’re proud of?

Have you ever experienced discrimination on the basis of your race, sexual orientation, gender/identity/expression, disability, or national origin?

Has anyone ever assumed you were:

  • the nanny?
  • the help?
  • the aide?
  • unable to speak for yourself?
  • not married to your actual spouse because you’re the same gender?
  • not married to your actual spouse because one of you has a disability?
  • a different religion, nationality, or gender because you don’t look like they assume people of your religion, nationality, or gender should look?

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a “bless your heart!”

Are you sick and tired of non-disabled, straight, cis, white, Christian conservatives acting all superior because you answered “yes” to many of these questions?

UPDATE (from my astute and perceptive sister-in-law, Terri Robertson):

Have you ever been subjected to harassment because of your gender?

Have you had your reproductive or sexual health choices questioned?

Do you dress based on fear?

Can you walk by yourself in a parking garage without fear? Can you walk anywhere by yourself without fear?

UPDATE II (from my astute and perceptive step-sister-in-law*** Annie McQuilken):

Have you ever had your parenting skills questioned in public because your kid didn’t look or behave “typically”?

******

*The quiz did not require me to have used these products.

**You knew that would be first, right?

*** My parents did not supply me with any sisters, but luckily we have an extensive blended family that provided a few.

Health Care Elites

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I love a good Cultural Elitism Contest as much as the next guy, but after poking fun of white people in green golf pants calling other people elite, I’d like to get serious and talk about Elitism with Real World Consequences, for example, Health Care Elitism.  As in, do you even know anyone on Medicaid?  Charles Murray:   I’m looking at you.

Murray recently had a column in the Washington Post asserting that there is a New Elite taking over America.  The Tea Party is warning us about this, and they’re right.  Seriously — all of what I just wrote is in his article; I’m not satirizing it.  Now put aside the general hilarity of a billionaire-funded astroturf movement warning us about any other elites than the one that took over their movement.  And the specific hilarity of the man who believes that white people are a genetic elite warning us about other elites.  The whole thing is just wrong.  As in incorrect.  It’s a bunch of lazy-ass cultural stereotypes repackaged as opinion commentary.

For example, Murray seems to think it’s elitist to identify Jimmie Johnson as an NFL coach rather than a NASCAR racer.  Because the NFL is only watched in the salons of the Upper West Side.  Or that it’s more elitist to go mountain biking than RVing, when the latter costs several hundred times more than the former.

Murray used these and other cultural stereotypes to announce that “[t]he members of the New Elite may love America, but, increasingly, they are not of it.”

As one commenter noted:

Time and again, this essay describes as “mainstream” or “quintessentially American” things that the vast majority of Americans don’t do: living in a small town (80% of Americans don’t), reading Harlequin romances (85% don’t), watching The Price Is Right or Oprah (more than 90% don’t), belonging to Rotary or Kiwanis (99+% belong to neither.) It isn’t just “elites” who don’t do these things; the average person doesn’t do them. (Nor follow NASCAR.) They’re not even majority behaviors among the groups where they’re more prevalent: the rural-and-small-town, the poorly educated, the old. So Murray’s quarrel is actually with the REAL mainstream America, is it not?

In fact, the elites who are trying to take over the country — including the ones who just poured hundreds of millions into the last election — are the ones with no real experience relevant to many of their fellow Americans. The don’t know about, don’t care about, and largely disdain the experience of being African-American or gay, of risking everything to come to this country to find work and raise a family (can there BE a more quintessential American experience?), or of struggling with employment, health care, and other family crises that require a government safety net.

Herewith a set of questions to match Murray’s.  Test to see if you are a Health Care Elitist.

  • Do you know what DME is?
  • Have you ever had to choose between paying a doctor or paying for some other household essential?
  • Have you ever made a career choice based on the availability of health insurance?
  • Are you on Medicaid?
  • Do you know anyone on Medicaid?
  • Have you ever had to forgo paid employment to ensure that you don’t lose the benefits you need to function in the world?
  • Have you ever had to forgo marriage and shack up with your sweetie because your combined incomes would kick you both off benefits?
  • Have you ever had to hold a fundraiser to cover a loved one’s health care costs?
  • Have you ever gone to the emergency room with an illness that could have been addressed by a family doctor because you don’t have a family doctor because you can’t afford a family doctor?
  • Have you ever had to fight with an insurance company to get medical treatment you need?
  • Have you ever read the very common headlines about state budget cuts knowing that would directly affect your ability to get out of bed in the morning?  Perhaps to survive?

I would argue that if you don’t have any of these experiences or know anyone who does, you are too distant from the experience of Real America to be permitted to opine on health care policy.

Finally, just for laughs, my Murray Elitism Quotient revealed.  I’ll let you decide if I’m fit to try to take over America:

Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right?” Yes but only because I read People magazine every time I have to fly somewhere.

Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? No.  I’d prefer to kill brain cells with alcohol.

Can you hold forth animatedly about mountain biking or skiing?  Mountain biking sounds dangerous and exhausting.  Love to ski — gravity does most of the work.  I generally prefer my sports spectator.

Does the acronym MMA mean nothing to you? Yeah – it’s that show where buff men in shiny underpants grapple with each other.  Tim claims it’s a sport.

Have you ever read a “Left Behind” novel or Harlequin romance? No – but only because my browsing is limited to the “Not Crap” section of the bookstore.

Would you be caught dead in an RV?   Tim and I talk all the time about seeing the country in an RV… if they made one that was accessible.

Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship?  No, but not because I’m elitist, because I hate being around other people.