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.

I'm also about to get into a full-on flame-war with that bitch who posted the stuff I quoted here yesterday, about New Orleans being an embarassment to the state.

Dude. If you need, I got your back.

New York-based totebag carrying liberals.

look. me.

HI!

Point being that NPR reporting can fall into this sort of cultural condescension, wittingly or not. And being it was the Red Sox, the NEW YORK-BASED part is the important thing here.

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.

I can say the same thing about Tulsa, only swap the whaling for oil, the New York rivalry with Oklahoma City, and Red Sox traditions with Sooner traditions. And steep in a mixture of Charismatic, Evangelical, and Fundamentalist Christianity, then top it with some televangelists.

Boston thinks it's the Hub, but Tulsa has this moral superiority about itself. And then there's the Center of the Universe here in Seattle....

The only joke of the piece was that Orlean didn't seem to get how much Boston's quaintness is intentional.

Or maybe she did and just had the tongue too firmly in cheek.

I almost feel like writing the ombudsman about it.