“You had a library in your house? That’s so bourgeois and snobbish of your family.”
“You honestly think so? You know, if this was a TV room we were talking about no one would bat a lash at its mention.”
“No one here is creating a fuss.”
“No, hear me out. It is completely acceptable to spend thousands of dollars every four or five years to have brand new state of the art televisions and hundreds more on speakers and cables, and DVD players, and God-knows-what-else, et cetera, et cetera. And then add on top of that a thousand dollars a year for the satellite hookup and TIVO subscription, and movies at $20 a pop…and all that extravagance is completely non-elitist, non-snobbish, kosher middle class values but when my family decides to spend an equivalent, or perhaps even lesser sum of money on properly and adequately storing our books all of a sudden it's snobbish. That is downright classist when you say that. Now I’m not accusing you of being malicious, but subconsciously all this disaffected middle class propaganda has definitely infected you, turned you against us.”
“Wait, you think there is some sort of middle-class war on the rich?”
“Not against the rich per se, but against upper-class intellectualism. It’s these same people that turned the words elite and elitism into pejoratives in the first half of this last century. And do you ever watch TV? Remember Frasier? The whole premise was let’s have viewers laugh at these two upstanding brothers because they are well educated and have modicum of refinement. Or on Law & Order, it is always some rich old-moneyed type who is involved in some heinous crime. It is all right there.”
“Wait, I thought your family didn’t have a TV room?”
“No - of course we have a TV room, but that's immaterial here.”
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