That is so classist (classless)

“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.”

Thoughts on Brooklyn

There is something very organic and comforting about old Brooklyn. I can work north down my avenue and find boutique shops and Zagat rated restaurants, but there is something missing. Everything is too transitory. South, that is the direction I want. People at the diner know each other’s names. “Joey A died yesterday.” “I heard.” “His poor mother.” “She never did nothin’ to no one.” It is almost perverse, I feel, to sit at that counter and absorb their lives. This is their congregation, their lives intersecting; their stories concatenate and entwined, knit in one grand cloth that covers the blocks and guards their souls. Walking home I see the candles lit for Joey A, struggling in the wind, outside his poor mothers stoop. I want to stay here long enough so I too can feel their pain, can say things like “But what can you do?” and have it mean something. I see the condo buildings rising down Forth and hate them now. This is not their neighborhood, they will not cry and bleed here, and they will not sit at that counter and listen.

Statement of Purpose: (DRAFT)

I want to put together something that attempts to capture the zeitgeist of this generation. The technology, the digital voyeurism, the guilt, the nihilism, the private life and the shit that fills it, the rejection of the American dream: we do not want to produce more, to have more, but rather want only to loll around and love and be loved more. We dare to be ironic but are too apathetic to realize that we already are. We are a sham generation. We will be shorter, fatter, dumber, and poorer than those who came before, and will achieve this through increased hours, heightened use of technology, increased efficiency, and all the culminations of modern health and science. We pushed into office a president of change, and seemingly did it with ever giving a thought to what that meant. We no longer have the bible, but believe rather in the infallible invisible hand. The market it supreme. Hail the market. We just need to fix the market. The market did not fail us, we failed the market. This is the now and this where I want to intercede.