![]() Class Matters $15.00 I'm not terribly sympathetic to some of the people covered in these articles. I read them when they were in the New York Times, and I wasn't surprised by the content. Angela Whitaker, for instance is a familiar story; high school dropout, drugs and depression, lots of kids by different men, horrible housing project in Chicago, and had she been white, she might've commited suicide. But then here's the twist; she turned her life around, gave up screwing around, got a GED, went to nursing school, got an associate's degree, a great job, and married a great guy. She still struggles with money (even $80k per year is stretched thin with five kids) and struggles to keep her kids safe (her oldest two were pulled by the streets) but her life is a hundred times better than it was years earlier. Here's why my sympathies run short; Mrs Whitaker made the same mistake too many women make. They don't use birth control, and don't think about the future. if you put off having children until you're 26, you can save yourself from a lot of grief. Going to school, getting an education, and having a career are incredibly hard when you have children to raise. It's even harder when the father is not around. Life is full of choices, and if you make bad ones, you get left behind. ![]() Class: A Guide Through the American Status System $13.95 Dianne Hunter's Review This 1983 sociological study of status markers in America, written with the sensibility of an 18th-century satirist, is observant as to appearances, occasionally hilarious, and irritatingly snide. Paul Fussell, a middle-class academic and historian, systematically differentiates 6 classes of USA residents according to their drinks, degrees of body fat, reading habits, physiognomy, clothes, comportment, vocabulary, sports, living rooms, driveways, lawn furniture, and cars. This slightly tedious and relentlessly invidious account refers throughout to members of the working class as "proles." Fussell thinks everybody in the USA suffers from status anxiety. He admires bohemians, who he thinks are aristocrats without money. ![]() The Class (Entre Les Murs) $28.96 I thought this film was great in French, but when I showed it to my students in the U.S., I was very disappointed with both the dubbing and subtitling work. This film merits better. ![]() A Touch of Class $19.98 This money shows the reality of having a mistress and not the glamorized version we see these days. this movie will keep you laughing throughout the whole movie |
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