bathroom reading and class in America (with footnotes)

Gawker today reported on the Reader's Digest 100th anniversary party that was peopled with twentysomethings and celebs -- people who wouldn't be caught wiping their asses with a Reader's Digest, despite the frequency with which the magazine ends up in bathrooms.

Growing up, I thought Reader's Digest must be a pretty intelligent, adult magazine. Sure, there were items in "That's Outrageous!" that didn't seem that outrageous -- "Public university spends tax dollars on a rape crisis center!" -- but my parents read it, and we didn't really have any other periodicals in the house.

Then, in high school, someone loaned me Paul Fussell's Class : A Guide Through the American Status System, in which I learned that Reader's Digest was tacky and lowbrow, and that, according to the quiz in back, I was -- not lower-middle class, but -- a "high prole."

Thank you, Paul, thank you, Reader's Digest, and thank you, American class system.

Incidentally, the mantra of the modern day liberal university* is something like "We are opposed to racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia, which all intersect, and when one of us is oppressed, we are all oppressed."

Except that no one ever seems to talk about class except as an add-on to discussing the more popular racism, sexism, and homophobia. The academy loves its Rigoberta Menchu (and any indigenous cultures on which they can project their own values), but actual American poor people are apparently too distasteful to discuss. Bisexuals who attend Ivy League universities can be oppressed, but people who shop at Wal-Mart apparently can't be.

*I once tried to be a women's studies major at Dartmouth, then went back to the more satisfyingly logical rigor of the philosophy department. Hey, guess what? Turns out that linear thinking doesn't oppress women! Or anyone. Except dumb people.