Values:
–Eliot Spitzer grew up on Park Avenue, I gather, the son of a real estate guy. Maybe we’re in a recession, but he could drop $5000 on regular assignations, allegedly.
–William Kristol’s column yesterday included the statement, "the bad housing and job market reports at the end of last week were politically chilling."
Politically chilling? What about plain old chilling? Kristol’s comment is revealing. The truth is that the recession is chiefly concerning to him as a political development. And that makes sense. He’s rich. Allan Bloom once said that his
relationship with Bill Kristol’s father Irving got “easier” once Bloom,
like Kristol, had wealth (as Jacob Heilbrunn reported in They Knew They Were Right).
On a journalistic note, it would be helpful if one or two columnists at the Times regarded the recession as personally concerning. It would give the Times rapport with a large body of the public at a time when the gap between rich and poor is yawning.
And on a socioreligious note, yes, I am nostalgic for Sholom Aleichem, I.B. Singer, and Michael Gold, a time when my people’s actual living values were closer to the American average.
