Shadows and Images

Charles Murray thinks there’s a new elite, out of touch with “ordinary Americans”. Claire Berlinski makes it a quiz. Other elitists say it’s worth spreading. I concur. So – how much of a new elitist am I?

1. Can you talk about “Mad Men?” At length (Elitist)
2. Can you talk about the “The Sopranos?” Not even kinda (Regular)
3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right?” Yeah, apparently (I checked if I was right.) (Regular)
4. Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? No. (Elitist)
5. Can you hold forth animatedly about yoga? Not really, but I can get really into how it’s co-opting a spiritual tradition that it has completely divorced itself from in the U.S. (We’ll call that “Elitist”)
6. How about pilates? No idea. (Regular)
7. How about skiing? I’ve been, once, but no. (Regular)
8. Mountain biking? I’ve never actually biked on a mountain (Regular)
9. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? No. (Elitist)
10. Does the acronym MMA mean nothing to you? I know what MMA is. (Regular)
11. Can you talk about books endlessly? Yes, but not necessarily informedly (Elitist)
12. Have you ever read a “Left Behind” novel? No, but I’m not an evangelical Christian, so it doesn’t really appeal. Seems like an unfair metric (Elitist)
13. How about a Harlequin romance? Does more male-targeted smut count? I think it should (Regular)
14. Do you take interesting vacations? Yes. (Elitist)
15. Do you know a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada? I don’t even know a great backpacking spot locally. (Regular)
16. What about an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor? I don’t know any great B&Bs. I know great places for brunch, though. (Regular)
17. Would you be caught dead in an RV? I loved RV trips. It’s getting harder to rent them, though. (Elitist)
18. Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship? I‘m going on a cruise and have been on a cruise, and haven’t paid for either (Regular)
19. Have you ever heard of of Branson, Mo? I know of it – is there particular significance? (Regular)
20. Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club? No (Elitist)
21. How about the Rotary Club? No, though my scout troop was sponsored by a chapter. (Elitist)
22. Have you lived for at least a year in a small town (not counting college)? I lived for a couple years as a pseudo-townie-cum-grad student in my college town. I think it counts. (Regular)
23. Have you lived for a year in an urban neighborhood in which most of your neighbors did not have college degrees? Doubt it. (Elitist)
24. Have you spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (not including grad school)? No. (Elitist)
25. Do you have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian? Yes. Why do Christians get a pass on elitism – “Left Behind” and now this. (Regular)
26. Have you ever visited a factory floor? I feel like I have, but the fact that I can’t tell you which means “no”. (Elitist)
27. Have you worked on one? No. (Elitist)

By this metric, my elitist yin and my regular joe yang are carefully balanced, leaning a bare minimum towards elite.

In seriousness, it’s fun to poke fun and banal and vacuous social analysis (for instance, Murray’s article ignores the definitional question of “mainstream America”) but seriously, the description the above quiz is based on is like a parody. I know many people who should in theory be members of this reviled “elite”, but I’m guessing I don’t know more than one person who would break a 75% on the above quiz, and they would all break different ways. We’re all connected some way. Creating the elitist strawman and then pointing at him screaming “AHH! It exists!” doesn’t actually tell us the truth about anything.

Warning: This post is just thinly attempt to casually drop the fact that I lucked into winning a tournament this weekend.

In Rounders, Matt Damon’s character quotes Confessions of a Winning Poker Player: “Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.” This weekend, I had an interesting object lesson on this very point. Because the wife was in Vegas for Blogworld 2010, I joined her for a weekend in Vegas, but likewise because she was at the conference and I wasn’t, I got to spend a lot of time entertaining myself. For me, in Vegas, that means poker. Really quick, the bragging: I managed to finagle first place in a 38-person $50 buy-in tournament Saturday, which allowed me to increase my meager bankroll. On the other hand, though I ended the weekend up, I also put down $300 just on my own this weekend that I never saw again.

The funny thing is, on Sunday, I couldn’t remember any of the hands that I thought I played well, or that I even lucked out and got. I still remembered two major hands, though. In one, though I don’t remember the details, I managed to get bested on pocket aces by somebody hitting their straight on the river. The other one I remember much more clearly – maybe it was so ridiculous that I was in it at all. I was sitting at a 1-2 No-limit Hold’em table, and started the hand with K-2 (unsuited). Because I was trying to make something happen, and I was still feeling a bit flush from the tournament the day before, I raised pre-flop, figuring that if I made my hand, I didn’t want anybody else hanging out and hitting an even more marginal hand to beat me. I had two callers. The flop comes: 7-2-2. Somehow, I had stayed in with nonsense and flopped a set. I check to the next player, he bets, the next guy folds, and I call. The turn is a rag — 10, I think. Now, if you’ve never played me in poker, you should know that at the table, I sometime cultivate a certain reputation for making… odd bluffs. This was the time to make that pay off. I went all-in. It was a paltry $50 or so, compared to the mass of chips ($300+) the other guy had, but in a cash game, you can’t help feeling each of those dollars as money you’re losing. Of course, this time, I was pretty sure I had it — to beat me, the other guy had to have stayed in with an incredibly weak hand pre-flop, or be sitting on a pair of 7s, or less likely, 10s. Still, my heart was beating pretty fast when he called me quickly and flipped open his cards. With a sigh of relief, I saw that he had hit his 7 on the flop and his face-card kicker wasn’t even worth worrying about. Of course, you all know what happened next. As he sat, surprised I had played that nonsense, and worse, beaten him with it, the dealer turned up the fifth card. Goddamn 7.

I can’t remember a single hand I won in a weekend of, on the whole, winning poker, but that hand is going to stick with me for the next couple months.