You mean the piece on NPR this morning? It couldn't have been more condescending and insulting if she used an electric insult machine on National Condescend to Fans Day.

To be fair, there are VAST numbers of tone-deaf singers in Fenway Park any given night, and she was sitting next to one of them.

I didn't think she was insulting the tone-deaf singers, but rather the whole tradition of singing Sweet Caroline.

I didn't hear that right, did I?

You did. And he used to be a cabinet secretary.

Yeah, I've been getting to know what a chav is since I got here. At home they're knackers. Or skangers. Or scobes. We have a lot of words.

That is a great article bon, and the second time I've ever heard the word chav used. The first time was yesterday, in this little piece in the Globe and Mail:

"There was something utterly compelling about the revelation this week that [British] teachers can predict from a child's first name just how ghastly he is likely to turn out in the classroom," writes Melanie McDonagh in The Independent on Sunday. "On the Times Educational Supplement Internet site, one teacher wrote, 'I went through my new class list and mentally circled the ones I thought would be most difficult. I reckon I have a 75 per cent hit rate.' In the lengthy discussion that followed, it turned out that the names that 'inspired the most dread' included anything with a hyphen (Bobby-Jo), weirdly spelled variants of common names (Hollee and Kloe) and chav [underclass] favourites Chantelle, Britney, Courtney, Kylie, Chase, Tyler, Wayne ('a terror') and, worst of all, Paige," the newspaper said.

You did. And he used to be a cabinet secretary.

Nice.

I am assured that both Yankees fans and Mets fans are tone-deaf in equal measure to fans in Boston; but neither of these teams have obsessive catalogues of behaviors and shibboleths.

I would in fact argue that Boston is the only place in which that kind of anthropological condescension can be fairly performed, since Boston reveres its own sensibility as traditional, obscure, superstitious, somewhat strange. The only joke of the piece was that Orlean didn't seem to get how much Boston's quaintness is intentional.

If I had known about those leather pants before the auction ended, I'd have bid on them for the sake of the essay alone.

Also, at work, I listen to an American radio station and during the news, I half caught a story about some guy who said on a TV/radio interview that if you aborted all the black babies then the crime rate in America would drop.

I didn't hear that right, did I?

Sort of.

Dude, it's ORLEAN. I new as soon as I heard her name what the tone would be. Isn't that just what she does?

At home they're knackers. Or skangers. Or scobes. We have a lot of words.

And those are some good words.