Via Sociological Images, a chart from Montclair State sociologist Jay Livingston of Lexis/Nexis broadcast media uses of the C word over the last month. He concludes: “Class seems to have disappeared from public discourse, except for the Republicans’ insistence that to mention inequality at all is to engage in “class warfare.”* The only class we hear about, whether from politicians or the media, is the middle class.”
We would only add that we wonder how the chart might have looked if variations of the term “one percent” had been included.
That said, the Myth America is that we’re all just one stroke away from the upper class, and it’s a myth relentlessly empowered by those same broadcast media.
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