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Class: A Guide Through the American Status System Paperback – Illustrated, October 1, 1992
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Based on careful research and told with grace and wit, Paul Fessell shows how everything people within American society do, say, and own reflects their social status. Detailing the lifestyles of each class, from the way they dress and where they live to their education and hobbies, Class is sure to entertain, enlighten, and occasionally enrage readers as they identify their own place in society and see how the other half lives.
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateOctober 1, 1992
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.52 x 8.44 inches
- ISBN-109780671792251
- ISBN-13978-0671792251
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Editorial Reviews
Review
The Washington Post Move over, William Buckley. Stand back, Gore Vidal. And run for cover, Uncle Sam: Paul Fussell, the nation's newest world-class curmudgeon, is taking aim at The American Experiment.
Wilfrid Sheed The Atlantic A fine prickly pear of a book....Anyone who reads it will automatically move up a class.
Alison Lurie The New York Times Book Review A shrewd and entertaining commentary on American mores today. Frighteningly acute.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Touchy Subject
Although most Americans sense that they live within an extremely complicated system of social classes and suspect that much of what is thought and done here is prompted by considerations of status, the subject has remained murky. And always touchy. You can outrage people today simply by mentioning social class, very much the way, sipping tea among the aspidistras a century ago, you could silence a party by adverting too openly to sex. When, recently, asked what I am writing, I have answered, "A book about social class in America," people tend first to straighten their ties and sneak a glance at their cuffs to see how far fraying has advanced there. Then, a few minutes later, they silently get up and walk away. It is not just that I am feared as a class spy. It is as if I had said, "I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals." Since I have been writing this book I have experienced many times the awful truth of R. H. Tawney's perception, in his book Equality (1931): "The word 'class' is fraught with unpleasing associations, so that to linger upon it is apt to be interpreted as the symptom of a perverted mind and a jaundiced spirit."
Especially in America, where the idea of class is notably embarrassing. In his book Inequality in an Age of Decline (1980), the sociologist Paul Blumberg goes so far as to call it "America's forbidden thought." Indeed, people often blow their tops if the subject is even broached. One woman, asked by a couple of interviewers if she thought there were social classes in this country, answered: "It's the dirtiest thing I've ever heard of!" And a man, asked the same question, got so angry that he blurted out, "Social class should be exterminated!"
Actually, you reveal a great deal about your social class by the amount of annoyance or fury you feel when the subject is brought up. A tendency to get very anxious suggests that you are middle-class and nervous about slipping down a rung or two. On the other hand, upper-class people love the topic to come up: the more attention paid to the matter the better off they seem to be. Proletarians generally don't mind discussions of the subject because they know they can do little to alter their class identity. Thus the whole class matter is likely to seem like a joke to them -- the upper classes fatuous in their empty aristocratic pretentiousness, the middles loathsome in their anxious gentility. It is the middle class that is highly class-sensitive, and sometimes class-scared to death. A representative of that class left his mark on a library copy of Russell Lynes's The Tastemakers (1954). Next to a passage patronizing the insecure decorating taste of the middle class and satirically contrasting its artistic behavior to that of some more sophisticated classes, this offended reader scrawled, in large capitals, "BULL SHIT!" A hopelessly middle-class man (not a woman, surely?) if I ever saw one.
If you reveal your class by your outrage at the very topic, you reveal it also by the way you define the thing that's outraging you. At the bottom, people tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. In the middle, people grant that money has something to do with it, but think education and the kind of work you do almost equally important. Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education. One woman interviewed by Studs Terkel for Division Street: America (1967) clearly revealed her class as middle both by her uneasiness about the subject's being introduced and by her instinctive recourse to occupation as the essential class criterion. "We have right on this street almost every class," she said. "But I shouldn't say class," she went on, "because we don't live in a nation of classes." Then, the occupational criterion: "But we have janitors living on the street, we have doctors, we have businessmen, CPAs."
Being told that there are no social classes in the place where the interviewee lives is an old experience for sociologists. "'We don't have classes in our town' almost invariably is the first remark recorded by the investigator," reports Leonard Reissman, author of Class in American Life (1959). "Once that has been uttered and is out of the way, the class divisions in the town can be recorded with what seems to be an amazing degree of agreement among the good citizens of the community." The novelist John O'Hara made a whole career out of probing into this touchy subject, to which he was astonishingly sensitive. While still a boy, he was noticing that in the Pennsylvania town where he grew up, "older people do not treat others as equals."
Class distinctions in America are so complicated and subtle that foreign visitors often miss the nuances and sometimes even the existence of a class structure. So powerful is "the fable of equality," as Frances Trollope called it when she toured America in 1832, so embarrassed is the government to confront the subject -- in the thousands of measurements pouring from its bureaus, social class is not officially recognized -- that it's easy for visitors not to notice the way the class system works. A case in point is the experience of Walter Allen, the British novelist and literary critic. Before he came over here to teach at a college in the 1950s, he imagined that "class scarcely existed in America, except, perhaps, as divisions between ethnic groups or successive waves of immigrants." But living awhile in Grand Rapids opened his eyes: there he learned of the snob power of New England and the pliability of the locals to the long-wielded moral and cultural authority of old families.
Some Americans viewed with satisfaction the failure of the 1970s TV series Beacon Hill, a drama of high society modeled on the British Upstairs, Downstairs, comforting themselves with the belief that this venture came to grief because there is no class system here to sustain interest in it. But they were mistaken. Beacon Hill failed to engage American viewers because it focused on perhaps the least interesting place in the indigenous class structure, the quasi-aristocratic upper class. Such a dramatization might have done better if it had dealt with places where everyone recognizes interesting class collisions occur -- the place where the upper-middle class meets the middle and resists its attempted incursions upward, or where the middle class does the same to the classes just below it.
If foreigners often fall for the official propaganda of social equality, the locals tend to know what's what, even if they feel some uneasiness talking about it. When the acute black from the South asserts of an ambitious friend that "Joe can't class with the big folks," we feel in the presence of someone who's attended to actuality. Like the carpenter who says: "I hate to say there are classes, but it's just that people are more comfortable with people of like backgrounds." His grouping of people by "like backgrounds," scientifically uncertain as it may be, is nearly as good a way as any to specify what it is that distinguishes one class from another. If you feel no need to explicate your allusions or in any way explain what you mean, you are probably talking with someone in your class. And that's true whether you're discussing the Rams and the Forty-Niners, RVs, the House (i.e., Christ Church, Oxford), Mama Leone's, the Big Board, "the Vineyard," "Baja," or the Porcellian.
In this book I am going to deal with some of the visible and audible signs of social class, but I will be sticking largely with those that reflect choice. That means that I will not be considering matters of race, or, except now and then, religion or politics. Race is visible, but it is not chosen. Religion and politics, while usually chosen, don't show, except for the occasional front-yard shrine or car bumper sticker. When you look at a person you don't see "Roman Catholic" or "liberal": you see "hand-painted necktie" or "crappy polyester shirt"; you hear parameters or in regards to. In attempting to make sense of indicators like these, I have been guided by perception and feel rather than by any method that could be deemed "scientific," believing with Arthur Marwick, author of Class: Image and Reality (1980), that "class...is too serious a subject to leave to the social scientists."
It should be a serious subject in America especially, because here we lack a convenient system of inherited titles, ranks, and honors, and each generation has to define the hierarchies all over again. The society changes faster than any other on earth, and the American, almost uniquely, can be puzzled about where, in the society, he stands. The things that conferred class in the 1930s -- white linen golf knickers, chrome cocktail shakers, vests with white piping -- are, to put it mildly, unlikely to do so today. Belonging to a rapidly changing rather than a traditional society, Americans find Knowing Where You Stand harder than do most Europeans. And a yet more pressing matter, Making It, assumes crucial importance here. "How'm I doin'?" Mayor Koch of New York used to bellow, and most of his audience sensed that he was, appropriately, asking the representative American question.
It seems no accident that, as the British philosopher Anthony Quinton says, "The book of etiquette in its modern form...is largely an American product, the great names being Emily Post...and Amy Vanderbilt." The reason is that the United States is preeminently the venue of newcomers, with a special need to place themselves advantageously and to get on briskly. "Some newcomers," says Quinton, "are geographical, that is, immigrants; others are economic, the newly rich; others again chronological, the young." All are faced with the problem inseparable from the operations of a mass society, earning respect. The comic Rodney Dangerfield, complaining that he don't get none, belongs to the same national species as that studied by John Adams, who says, as early as 1805: "The rewards...in this life are esteem and admiration of others -- the punishments are neglect and contempt....The desire of the esteem of others is as real a want of nature as hunger -- and the neglect and contempt of the world as severe a pain as the gout or stone...." About the same time the Irish poet Thomas Moore, sensing the special predicament Americans were inviting with their egalitarian Constitution, described the citizens of Washington, D.C., as creatures
Born to be slaves, and struggling to be lords.
Thirty years later, in Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville put his finger precisely on the special problem of class aspiration here. "Nowhere," he wrote, "do citizens appear so insignificant as in a democratic nation." Nowhere, consequently, is there more strenuous effort to achieve -- earn would probably not be the right word -- significance. And still later in the nineteenth century, Walt Whitman, in Democratic Vistas (1871), perceived that in the United States, where the form of government promotes a condition (or at least an illusion) of uniformity among the citizens, one of the unique anxieties is going to be the constant struggle for individual self-respect based upon social approval. That is, where everybody is somebody, nobody is anybody. In a recent Louis Harris poll, "respect from others" is what 76 percent of respondents said they wanted most. Addressing prospective purchasers of a coffee table, an ad writer recently spread before them this most enticing American vision: "Create a rich, warm, sensual allusion to your own good taste that will demand respect and consideration in every setting you care to imagine."
The special hazards attending the class situation in America, where movement appears so fluid and where the prizes seem available to anyone who's lucky, are disappointment, and, following close on that, envy. Because the myth conveys the impression that you can readily earn your way upward, disillusion and bitterness are particularly strong when you find yourself trapped in a class system you've been half persuaded isn't important. When in early middle life some people discover that certain limits have been placed on their capacity to ascend socially by such apparent irrelevancies as heredity, early environment, and the social class of their immediate forebears, they go into something like despair, which, if generally secret, is no less destructive.
De Tocqueville perceived the psychic dangers. "In democratic times," he granted, "enjoyments are more intense than in the ages of aristocracy, and the number of those who partake in them is vastly larger." But, he added, in egalitarian atmospheres "man's hopes and desires are oftener blasted, the soul is more stricken and perturbed, and care itself more keen."
And after blasted hopes, envy. The force of sheer class envy behind vile and even criminal behavior in this country, the result in part of disillusion over the official myth of classlessness, should never be underestimated. The person who, parking his attractive car in a large city, has returned to find his windows smashed and his radio aerial snapped off will understand what I mean. Speaking in West Virginia in 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy used language that leaves little doubt about what he was really getting at -- not so much "Communism" as the envied upper-middle and upper classes. "It has not been the less fortunate or members of minority groups who have been selling this nation out," he said, "but rather those who have had all the benefits..., the finest homes, the finest college education...." Pushed far enough, class envy issues in revenge egalitarianism, which the humorist Roger Price, in The Great Roob Revolution (1970), distinguishes from "democracy" thus: "Democracy demands that all of its citizens begin the race even. Egalitarianism insists that they all finish even." Then we get the situation satirized in L. P. Hartley's novel Facial Justice (1960), about "the prejudice against good looks" in a future society somewhat like ours. There, inequalities of appearance are redressed by government plastic surgeons, but the scalpel isn't used to make everyone beautiful -- it's used to make everyone plain.
Despite our public embrace of political and judicial equality, in individual perception and understanding -- much of which we refrain from publicizing -- we arrange things vertically and insist on crucial differences in value. Regardless of what we say about equality, I think everyone at some point comes to feel like the Oscar Wilde who said, "The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality." It's as if in our heart of hearts we don't want agglomerations but distinctions. Analysis and separation we find interesting, synthesis boring.
Although it is disinclined to designate a hierarchy of social classes, the federal government seems to admit that if in law we are all equal, in virtually all other ways we are not. Thus the eighteen grades into which it divides its civil-service employees, from grade 1 at the bottom (messenger, etc.) up through 2 (mail clerk), 5 (secretary), 9 (chemist), to 14 (legal administrator), and finally 16, 17, and 18 (high-level administrators). In the construction business there's a social hierarchy of jobs, with "dirt work," or mere excavation, at the bottom; the making of sewers, roads, and tunnels in the middle; and work on buildings (the taller, the higher) at the top. Those who sell "executive desks" and related office furniture know that they and their clients agree on a rigid "class" hierarchy. Desks made of oak are at the bottom, and those of walnut are next. Then, moving up, mahogany is, if you like, "upper-middle class," until we arrive, finally, at the apex: teak. In the army, at ladies' social/functions, pouring the coffee is the prerogative of the senior officer's wife because, as the ladies all know, coffee outranks tea.
There seems no place where hierarchical status-orderings aren't discoverable. Take musical instruments. In a symphony orchestra the customary ranking of sections recognizes the difficulty and degree of subtlety of various kinds of instruments: strings are on top, woodwinds just below, then brass, and, at the bottom, percussion. On the difficulty scale, the accordion is near the bottom, violin near the top. Another way of assigning something like "social class" to instruments is to consider the prestige of the group in which the instrument is customarily played. As the composer Edward T. Cone says, "If you play a violin, you can play in a string quartet or symphony orchestra, but not in a jazz band and certainly not in a marching band. Among woodwinds, therefore, flute, and oboe, which are primarily symphonic instruments, are 'better' than the clarinet, which can be symphonic, jazz, or band. Among brasses, the French horn ranks highest because it hasn't customarily been used in jazz. Among percussionists, tympani is high for the same reason." And (except for the bassoon) the lower the notes an instrument is designed to produce, in general the lower its class, bass instruments being generally easier to play. Thus a sousaphone is lower than a trumpet, a bass viol lower than a viola, etc. If you hear "My boy's taking lessons on the trombone," your smile will be a little harder to control than if you hear "My boy's taking lessons on the flute." On the other hand, to hear "My boy's taking lessons on the viola da gamba" is to receive a powerful signal of class, the kind attaching to antiquarianism and museum, gallery, or "educational" work. Guitars (except when played in "classical" -- that is, archaic -- style) are low by nature, and that is why they were so often employed as tools of intentional class degradation by young people in the 1960s and '70s. The guitar was the perfect instrument for the purpose of signaling these young people's flight from the upper-middle and middle classes, associated as it is with Gypsies, cowhands, and other personnel without inherited or often even earned money and without fixed residence.
The former Socialist and editor of the Partisan Review William Barrett, looking back thirty years, concludes that "the Classless Society looks more and more like a Utopian illusion. The socialist countries develop a class structure of their own," although there, he points out, the classes are very largely based on bureaucratic toadying. "Since we are bound...to have classes in any case, why not have them in the more organic, heterogeneous and variegated fashion" indigenous to the West? And since we have them, why not know as much as we can about them? The subject may be touchy, but it need not be murky forever.
Copyright © 1983 by Paul Fussell
Product details
- ASIN : 0671792253
- Publisher : Touchstone; Reissue edition (October 1, 1992)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780671792251
- ISBN-13 : 978-0671792251
- Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.52 x 8.44 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #15,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #14 in Poverty
- #15 in General Anthropology
- #29 in Sociology of Class
- Customer Reviews:
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U P D A T E S: 2nd JUNE, 2011
I..........There is an English edition of this book. It is called "Caste Marks", and has the same text as "Class", but no illustrations, except on the book jacket. I have also written a review for it on Amazon.
II.........PLEASE NOTE: I liked this book SO much that I wrote my VERY FIRST Amazon Review For it!
.
.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
.
Other tomes (tombs?) may be more scholarly. Still others may
be more recent, ("Class" by Paul Fussell was first published in 1983.) But the fact is, I have never before come across a book SO easily read, so obviously joyously written, with SO much useful detail! (Ahah! I finally know how to achieve the "rich
look" in dressing: LAYER your clothes: a dress is never as good as a jacket dress, a jacket dress never as good as a suit with blouse, and scarf tastefully adorning the neck!)
In this book, Mr. Paul Fussell lets loose a "fussilage"
of wit and truths, (sometimes painful truths), yet written in so
breezy and easily-read style that even the painful parts are a pleasure, (or almost a pleasure), to read... (Does Mr. Fussell pronounce his name "FUSS-EL" of "FYuse-ELL", I wonder? Knowing this would surely given an indication of his own class....and/or
class pretentions!)
Although this book is not meant for scholars, it has much useful sociological information. (This means Mr. Fussell hhas done all the work for the reader!) His style is breezy, informative, with tongue definitely in cheek -- although he speaks of facts. I suppose what separates this book from a scholarly work is that it has many of Mr. Fussell's OPINIONS in it -- but, with his irrefutable logic and many examples backing him up, one cannot help but agree with 99% of what is said.
It even has illustrations - PICTURES! The twenty whimsical (yet dead-on!) drawings by Martim de Avillez enter into the spirit of Mr. Fussell's writing so well! They are realistic -- but witty, with the expressions on the people depicted telling all! (I shudder -- with total delight -- at the thought that this wonderful book could perhaps, be made into a movie someday, (soon, please!) If so -- I beg the producers to allow Mr. Fussel free reign to write, and/or approve the screenplay. It would be complete sacrilege if any movie made of this book did not convey the dead seriousness and light touch with which Mr. Fussell writes -- and Mr. de Avillez draws!
In sum, this book is witty, it's light, it's easy to read, but conveys a lot of information. The info is as true today as it was when this book was written -- and is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in American social mores -- (and or social climbing in the American system.
Four things only disappoint me here. 1) The book is too short...I want to know more! 2) There is no index. 3) There is no bibliography. (However, many essential books ARE named in the text) And 4) -- Perhaps most eggregious of all -- the paper, (at least in the paperback edition), is of the type which has too much sulfite, and will probably crumble into dust far before the social system it so delightfully summarizes changes. This is too bad -- and totally unfair to this wonderful book. Maybe this is the publisher's little joke about the paperback edition -- it is, of course, cheaper than the hardback -- thus more available to the masses...a "prole"
edition, as Mr. Fussell would describe it -- despite it's nice large print and good binding.
I surely hope that the Hardback edition has better paper! Anyway, I have decided to buy the hardback and see! I will then solve both my holiday gift problem -- and, hopefully,
my lingering sibling rivalry with my sister, (which must, sadly, be the longest-running sibling rivalry in history --though we both do try very hard to end it) -- by presenting my totally non-status seeking sister with the paperback edition. In fact -- she hates anything to do with status-seeking. But it's time she knew the truth! After all -- with its light touch and heavy doses of wit -- this is the only book on the subject which she probably would ever even consider reading. (I shall present it to her on her next visit in the next few months -- so I shall see if she actually reads it or not.) For, two people working to improve the family's status have to be better than one! I can only hope that this book will bring her to her senses, and that she will finally become as much of a happy status-seeker as I am. Who knows -- she might indeed achieve a higher status in life. I hope then that she will not forget who gave her this
"magic" book! Far more realistic than the "Harry Potter" books, yet with the promise of truly changing one's life as much as a letter from "Hogwarts" would, I believe this is the perfect holiday present -- or birthday present -- or UNbirthday present -- for anyone you know who wants -- or should want -- a better life.
Even yourself!
ADDENDUM: I couldn't help myself. When my sister called this
week, I HAD to tell her about this wonderful book, even before
her visit. Bracing myself for yet more criticism of my
class-consciousness, and her saying "that's not important",
as she usually does when I mention things like this -- I
instead heard, "I read that book! And I loved it!" This
from a person who has sung Joan Baez songs since she was
17, was a vegetarian for a year, never colours her hair,
and hates all formal gowns! But the truth will out,
it seems. This book has tons of truths in it, and even my
sister -- who never wanted a "Sweet Sixteen" party...much
less a formal debut, (which I have always pined for), just
had to see the truth here. My sister, (and I too) do not
have much money.... But you don't overcome your problems
unless you know what you're up against. The ephemeral
"equality" of the U.S. is, in the end, as real as
the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. It's
a pleasant myth. Maybe the Founding Fathers did dream of
a land of complete equality.....but human nature, and the
dream of a better life for one's self, have a way of
turning ideals on their ear. "CLASS" is a classic, in
that it gets to reality in an eminently readable fashion.
Now, at last, it seems my little sister is smart enough to
acknowledge this. Perhaps she has finally grown up, after
all!
Probably most valuable are the insights Fussell has inre cultural/class signifiers. These are little things that, frankly, I never really thought about until Fussell pointed them out. For example, the uber-rich...I mean, the REALLY rich people...tend to be hidden from the world and actually kind of, well, I hate to say naïve but certainly not *of* the world. They don't really think about things the way middle- or upper middle class thinks of them. The upper middle class will say things like "I drove my Jaguar to the store" where the uber-rich will be more apt to say "I drove the car to the store" even though the "car" may well be a $250k Mercedes. Or where the middle class home may have a lot of bookshelves filled with books, the uber-rich really isn't as likely to have such a thing.
And so on. Once you get this insight, you begin to see it all over the place and actually become more conscious of it. Those stickers on the backs of cars saying one's child is an honor student? Those similar stickers with the names of colleges where the driver's kids attend? Pure middle class. Starbucks? Middle/upper but not consciously so.
It's important though to avoid ascribing value judgements to this sort of thing. Indeed, Fussell presents his insights in a very neutral, very matter of fact way. Nowhere does he suggest that one group is better or worse than the other. They are just different.
Frankly, I found this book helpful on a number of levels. For instance, a business owner can use these insights to help target product marketing. Managers may get some interesting context into which to place employee actions. It's a very good book, well written and approachable.
Fussell succeeds at highlighting some of the peculiar quirks and habits of Americans of all classes, and although I found some to be a bit stereotyped, much of it rang painfully true. According to Fussell, the middle class is the most anxious about class. They tend to feel the need to affirm their superiority over the proles, and at the same time, are constantly trying to be more like the upper class. In contrast, the proles and the upper class both tend to accept their respective roles and thus are more inclined to be indifferent to what others think. The middle class also tends to shy away from anything potentially controversial or offensive, like ideology, so desperate are they not to jeopardize their fragile status. The upper class on the other hand, simply has no need for ideology or any type of idea that might intrude on their comfortable lives. Fussell comically points out that the upper class aren't bad people to hang around with as long as you don't expect to hear anything intelligent or original. Upper class people, along with some middle, tend to view anything British as superior and worthy of emulation. Proles tend to like bowling, polyester clothing (preferably with writing on it), and Super Bowl parties. Religious fundamentalism is also a sure sign of proledom. It should also go without saying that money does not equal class, and thus many seemingly upper class people, like film stars, are simply lower class people with a lot of money.
Apparently such seemingly innocuous statements like "have a nice day" are betrayers of low class, and have been known to cause some embarrassment to those among the uppers. They seem to be unsure how to respond to such prolish figures of speech. Never compliment an upper class person on their home furnishings, as it goes without saying that they have nice things and calling attention to it suggests impudence. Fussell can't resist making digs at Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, both of whom he pegs as hopelessly middle (or worse) class, posing as uppers. In fact, it is the middle class whom Fussell seems to have the most disdain for, as he sees them as essentially lower class people pretending to be upper class.
If you read all but the last chapter, you would swear that Fussell is an arrogant, contemptuous, elitist who thrives off of belittling others. In fact he does come across as quite obnoxious and overdramatic at times, but it turns out that this is, after all, a call for individualism and non-conformity. I was pleasantly surprised when Fussell ultimately rebuked all classes and urges us to do the same. He invites us to join the "X category" where the members make their own rules and find their own way through "a strenuous effort of discovery in which curiosity and originality are indispensable." So, there is surely something in here to offend just about everyone, but if you can take it, I guarantee that you will come out the other side with a better understanding of American society and your place in it. 4 stars.












