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Mark Greif examines class structure in "The Hipster in the Mirror," in a recent New York Times' essay. Anything that reasonably examines class is important. We are a nation of 300 million, all claiming to be "middle-class." Obviously, if everyone were middle-class, no one would be. Class, the root of "classification," implies division by definition. As others have pointed out, the notion of universal middle-class-dom indicates values and desires. Ironically, no one agrees on what values are middle-class.

Class in America:

Back in the 1960s "middle class" was a dirty word. The Republicans had to create a new term so that those who aspired to middle-class values wouldn't have to hide their faces in shame: "The Silent Majority."

By the 1980s, that had changed. Reagan had led the charge in re-invigorating the middle class. Before his first term was up, very nearly everyone claimed to be middle class. That is, you were either a member of the middle class or you aspired to be.

You do remember the 1980s, right? That was the era known for its selfishness, as opposed to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, which were known as eras of selflessness, periods of time when folks worked and sacrificed for the greater good of family, community and country. (The 1970s were a period of time, like the 1920s, when American culture was in an upheaval and probably will be referred to as a "lost generation.")

Before the 1980s, you could tell a person's class by how he talked and dressed, much the same way you could in other countries, by how much education he had and whether he had inherited wealth or needed to work for a living, by what kind of job he did, blue collar or white. Did a person get his hands dirty, or were his hands callous free?

Education and a changing work environment has changed most of that. Class today is mostly a matter of aspirations and income. Everyone claims to be a member of the middle class now, even when we don't fit into any known definition of it.

The great irony, of course, is that to believe that one is middle class is to assume other classes exist.

Eduordo Porter reflects on what it means to be middle class in America in today's New York Times. He attempts to break it down according to income, a definition that worked in the past as a short hand method. But during the past several decades labor and education have been taken out of the equation, along with birth.

Question: If we're all middle class, does that make us communists?

The Dude explains it all: "I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It's pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future." — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 2004. (Don't ask.)

Count Down:

The Washington Post reports today that the latest polls show Sen. Obama leading in states whose electoral votes total nearly 300, which, if correct, would place him easily into the White House. Currently, it appears that he leads in all the states that John Kerry won in 2004, which would give him 252 electoral votes, while 270 are needed to win, and he is leading in the polling in a number of other states that Bush won during that election.

The election, of course, is not a baseball season, with a team slowly accruing victories over a period of months. There is only one game, and it takes place on Tuesday.

Have you seen the lines forming for early voting? Makes you wonder if anyone will show up on Tuesday.

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Maureen Dowd reveals Paul "Wolfie" Wolfowitz's girl friend's new salary in her column today: $193,590. That turns out to be a couple of bucks more than Condi Rice is earning. Wolfie wants to know what all the fuss is about. Evidently this sort of behavior is commonplace in the Bush administration. The commander-in-chief likes to surround himself with a motherly wall of adoring ladies, whose abilities, as it turns out, bear proof of the Peter Principal in all things but protecting their bouncing baby boy from the harsh truth of reality.

Joris Evers at ZDNet recently wrote about the theft of two laptop computers from the Chicago Public Schools, containing the Social Security numbers of some 40,000 employees. Seems the laptops were taken out of the administrative offices and, while the thief has not yet been apprehended, he was captured on surveillance video. The big question has to be why were all those Social Security numbers being warehoused on laptops in the first place?

Was it really that long ago or that much of a problem when it was illegal to use Social Security numbers for anything other than what they were intended for?

Now we know why the Bush administration wants to take a middle road on the illegal alien issue: They put out a help wanted sign for the position of War Czar and nobody applied for the job. At least five former generals turned the position down. Evidently there are some things that even former generals refuse to do. According to The Washington Post, retired Marine Gen. Jack Sheehan said, “The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going.” Funny, the rest of us seem to know where they are going, and it involves a handbag.

So was Don Imus making fun of the girls' basketball team or was he ineptly making fun of people who make fun of girls' basketball teams? Since I've never listened to his radio show and only caught about 30 seconds of the simulcast on TV once, I have no idea where this guy is coming from. But Robert Wright has a good take on the situation in his New York Times column today, pointing out that Ann Coulter consistently gets a free pass on such behavior as she uses racist slurs to describe Arabs and Muslims. As Wright points out, Coulter doesn't have a radio show to broadcast her hate speech, but TV networks of all sorts continue to invite and, one supposes, to pay her to appear on their shows. Perhaps CNN and Fox will start to invite Imus to share the redneck buffoon point of view in the name of equal time.

In baseball parks around the country tomorrow, people will be celebrating the day, sixty years ago, that Jackie Robinson stepped across the white lines and broke the color barrier in major league baseball.

In those days, just following the war and the Great Depression, the National League was made up of eight teams, each with twenty-four players. That's 192 jobs at the major league level. On that day, only 191 white men had jobs, one less than in the previous year.

It took players and fans some time to get used to seeing teams made up of mixed racial players. Today, most of us recognize Jackie Robinson for the courage and grace he displayed and we happily celebrate our diversity. In those days, white men saw this adventure as another step to keep them down, forcing them once more to compete with a larger pool in the workplace. The story of race in this country, to a greater extent than most of us like to admit, is a story of class. Race has always been used thus. If you can play one group of folks against the other, you can control them both. They'll be so busy hating one another that they'll never look up to see who is really benefiting from the divide that the average Joe has helped to build and maintain.