Megan McArdleVerified account

The 20% are well aware that there are working class hangouts they feel funny going into, even though they can read the menu just fine.

It's not about whether you can tell what's in the sandwich. It's about whether you're familiar with the ingredients ...

... and more broadly, whether the place feels like it's "for" people like you. If it feels like people like you don't eat there ...

... there's often a baseline discomfort that can manifest in many ways: anxiety, reverse snobbery, anger at the person who took you.

It surprised the hell out of me when it happened, because here I was thinking I was providing a nice treat they couldn't get at home ...

... and there they were, gamely trying to be nice about something they were silently hating. Lesson learned after a few repeat tries:

Class and life experience often matter more than you know, even when you think you know people pretty well.

So I look at the folks making fun of Brooks and think "how many of you have taken a genuine working class person to lunch?"

Some, I'm sure! And plenty of working class people like strange new foods. Humanity is diverse.

But Brooks Effect definitely exists, because I've seen it. So apparently, has @aodespair, who put a similar scene in Season One of the Wire.

It's very hard to describe without sounding like an elitist jerk, because on our side, you're like "What's the big deal?"

But for some people it is a big deal, not because there's something wrong with them, but because that happens to be how they grew up.

If you took me to a restaurant that served mostly sheep's eyeball and that Sicilian maggot cheese, I'd be looking pretty terrified.

So who's being the elitist jerk here? David Brooks or the people who think that everyone, deep down, wants to do all the stuff they like?

He could have saved himself a ton of ridicule with 1 paragraph explaining he's not stereotyping people who didn't go to college.

He's not writing for the web. He has a strict word limit.

In fact, I wonder if some of the rage at Brooks isn't the expectations of a generation raised on web writing.

You write for the web, it's easy to sit there with a critic on your shoulder and think "I'll just explain more and add this caveat".

So when they see someone writing for print, they assume that if the caveat's not there, it's because the writer didn't think of it ...