Curiously Middling

Just a note. Political candidates find it permissible to be pro middle class, laudable to bewail the shrinkage of that class, and Okay (indeed obligatory) to say nothing about any other class. Here I am naively persuaded that those who wish to serve “the people” ought not to slice-and-dice them into classes and only pick the middle. Those below the poverty line—they numbered 43.6 million in 2010—are by definition below the sacred middle. Have pollsters discovered and told our candidates that the over-whelming majority considers itself middle-class, views the poor as under-human, and the upper class as its own next stop on the Progress Shuttle? Maybe. I must recalibrate my visor. Every soldier is a hero. All firemen are heroes too. To create a job you have to be a millionaire. All businesses are small business. All citizens are middle class. All journalists are trembling in their eagerness to defend the public’s right to know. To know what? That they are middle class. And by that great achievement, magically entitled to—well, to be flattered.