Comment of the Day: “Severe Class Privileged Honkyism”

My post yesterday on a Manhattan mother who sued her four-year old’s preschool for ruining her academic future, had little, if anything to do with the deep racial divisions in this country. Or did it?

Nathan put a link to the article on Facebook and received a few responses from his friends. Now, I don’t know how well he knows these folks, so I don’t mean to be rude, but the thread of responses had almost nothing to do with my post, and a whole lot to do with the lawsuit where a woman sued McDonald’s for spilling her coffee in a drive-thru. This evolved into a discussion over the merits of her suit, the ways it was used as a rallying cry for tort reform, and then this, which even at 8:30am I think is going to easily qualify as Comment of the day:

I think the US is way too lawyer-crazy, and one of the things I find most refreshing about Mexico is the freedom – especially in building places – that its ethic of tragic sensibility and self-responsibility affords. However I think the coffee plaintiff had a beef: when you buy a cup of coffee – at a drive through – it’s reasonable to assume you can prop it in your crotch and if you spill it you won’t get third-degree burns through your pants. The toddler-mom case however reveals severe class privileged honkyism.

Moral of the story: don’t drop the coffee.

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About Theodore

Theodore Ross is an editor of Harper’s Magazine. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Saveur, Tin House, the Mississippi Review, and (of course), the Vietnam News. He grew up in New York City by way of Gulfport, MS, and as a teen played the evil Nazi, Toht, in Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. He lives with his son, J.P. in Brooklyn, and is currently working on a book about Crypto-Jews.

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