The Controversial Survey

I got this from pixielust:
( Ooh, controversial! )

By the way, you know one thing I don't know that I'll ever understand? LJ users removing other people from their friends lists with no explanation. It's happened to me a few times, and I'm probably oversensitive about it. But I'm terrified of rejection, and that's part of why I usually won't add anyone to MY friends list unless they add me first, or we've had some prior back-and-forth commenting. If you have a problem with someone, why can't you just TELL them? And if it's a matter of not wanting people you don't really know to see certain posts (which I can totally understand), isn't that why custom groups were invented?

Meet the Elite

In Terry Pratchett's The Truth, one of the characters said something about how a member of the nobility who's out of work would probably be set up with some token job, because "toffs don't like to see other toffs starve." (I don't remember the exact phrasing, and I don't have the book handy, but I'm pretty sure it was pretty similar to that.) I was thinking about this in regards to the recent government bailouts. As much as the richest people in the country compete with each other, there seems to be some unspoken (or possibly even spoken; I can't say I hang around with too many CEO's and know what they're talking about) camaraderie between them. No one is planning to bail out the beggars I always see on the streets of Philadelphia (hey, that's a Bruce Springsteen song!), but if wealthy people are in a situation that might result in their NOT being wealthy anymore, someone will come to their aid. These days, it typically involves corporations rather than individuals, but, well, who's making most of the profits from the corporations?

Of course, I don't know that this applies to every American with a lot of money, but more to the elite. But then, "elite" apparently means something different now, right? It no longer indicates the people who have most of the money and power, and look down on those who don't. Instead, it means...well, I'm not sure. Sometimes it sounds like it means "educated," but that can't be, because politicians and media figures who refer to others as "elite" are often quite proud of their own Ivy League educations. So, when Republicans refer to someone like Obama as "elite," what is it they actually MEAN?