snoburbia, the blog

herd immunity

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A few years back, I enrolled my daughter in a Waldorf preschool, where the kids played with only wooden, silk and woolen toys. Everyone was really into eating raw foods, sewing, and visualizing whirled peas.

Then, one day, when I was picking up my daughter, I found out that fully one-third of the families did not vaccinate their children! As I had a young infant at the time, we immediately dropped out of the school, incredulous.

Turns out, vaccine refusal may be a habit for some in the overclass in the U.S. and Australia.

This, from actress Amanda Peet:

I live in a very rarefied enclave... and it's hard to imagine that your child would be struck by a rare disease when you live in that world. But I got involved [in promoting vaccination] because it scared me when I learned how many parents were withholding vaccines from their children.
- Self, December 2009

Snoburbs to everyone else: You people go ahead and inject your infants. Our herd is protected.

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what would alex trebek do?

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In snoburbia, we have a personal relationship with...  Alex Trebek. He is our god.

I went to the Washington area Jeopardy tryouts, along with every other geek from the snoburbs. After they saw people for only half an hour, the show's producers had enough to fill all their slots. They sent the rest of us home, unfulfilled, untested. (In snoburbia, we love tests.)

Go ahead, just ask me the capitol of Bolivia. (This got me my first job when I graduated from college.) No? What are La Paz - and, and! Sucre? It has two capitols.

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waiting for the world to change

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This weekend I went to the John Mayer concert in D.C. (yeah, I know, but I was there for Michael Franti). We took Metro home after the concert. The Metro platform for the red line train was absolutely packed, but only on one side - the one going toward the snoburbs. The one toward Northeast D.C. and Silver Spring? Not so much...

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snow way i'm shoveling my sidewalk

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I heard tales of generosity and camaraderie in Washington, D.C. during the recent blizzard, which dumped a record 30-40 inches of snow in two massive, consecutive storms - nicknamed Snowmaggedon and Snowpocalypse. Neighbors helped neighbors dig out. But from overclass Georgetown, this diss:

Sometimes I see a home where the owner has managed to shovel a bunch of right angles between the front door and the SUV parked in the driveway. From outer space, a pattern like this must look like a crop circle - a primitive language shouting,"Who cares about you?"

Cathy Alter, in The Atlantic

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wheaton plaza

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Most people in snoburbia do not shop at the beautifully remodeled Wheaton mall.

Even with its schmancy new name: Westfield Shoppingtown Wheaton (formerly Wheaton Plaza). Even with its Macy's, Hollister, American Eagle, PacSun, DSW, and other snoburb-friendly fare. When people think of the Wheaton mall, they imagine this:

I go to Wheaton Plaza all the time and have never seen a scene like that one, although I did once see a woman of questionable repute by the Target* store entrance at closing time.  Wheaton Plaza is ten minutes away, has great stores, and has a better selection of sale merchandise than Montgomery Mall (Bethesda) or Tyson's Corner (McLean), the malls of choice for Montgomery County snoburban teens.

This is what Wheaton Plaza actually looks like:

And this is the original Wheaton Plaza, before it was enclosed in the 1970s:

* People from the snoburbs will go to the Target (only), then immediately scurry to their SUVs or hybrids.

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if you try to build it, they will come

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Have you ever tried to build or change something in snoburbia? Don't.

Last week, I called the Montgomery County Council offices to find out about the Kensington Sector Plan meeting the following evening. "Wow - I've never had so many calls about one of these meetings," said the woman. I laughed.

People in the snoburbs are nothing if not politically active. We host fundraisers for politicians in our homes, and personally know our congressmen and state legislators. We organize neighborhood protests and letter-writing campaigns.

Woe betide anyone who tries to sneak something past an overclass neighborhood. A local church thought it would put a big, ugly cell phone tower on its property. Wrong.

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Not from snoburbia:

On the Diane Rehm Show, the head of the "Tea Party" said that at their recent convention, he asked for a show of hands: How many people had never been involved in politics before? About 98 percent of the hands in the room went up.
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1. beating whitman, 2. my college apps

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The Washington, D.C. area was hit this week with a record-breaking snowfall of 30 inches. This has brought out the best in neighbors all over the region, as we help each other dig out. But, in snoburbia, everything is competitive. Everything.

On my local snoburb's listserv, several high school boys have offered to shovel driveways. But one student (let's call him "Shovel Kid") offered to donate all his snow-shoveling money to a charity, LLS. How nice, I thought. Then a few hours later, this appeared on the listserv:

Let me beat the drums for [Shovel Kid] and Walter Johnson High School. The school has held the Maryland regional LLS fundraising title for the last four years, and ... it ranked 14th last year in national school fundraising.... WJHS is under the gun this year because [of]... Walt Whitman HS, which can be expected to go all-out to win.

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how will it play in peoria?

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Gossip site Gawker earlier this week repeated a National Enquirer story saying Anderson Cooper was adopting a Haitian baby, thereby outing him and his alleged partner. (Cooper tweeted in response that, "while the plight of children in Haiti has touched us all, stories about me adopting a baby are completely false.")

Apparently, Gawker's overclass, snoburban editors think that the whole of middle America would swoon and need smelling salts if ordinary people discovered New York's proprietary, insider news:

Now it's not just going to be the New York media types and the gays who are hip to the story, but the Enquirer's very middle-American, straight, and older readership — the same people who watch him on CNN.

Because only the New York media elite and Chelsea hipsters have gaydar - or read online.

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navel-gazing in snoburbia: pew report

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There is a lot of excitement in overclass media circles about the recent Pew report that more women now earn more than their husbands. It's all over the web, on DoubleX, on NPR, in The Washington Post, and in The New York Times. I was wondering - why the media frisson over this report? After all, it's still only 22 percent of American women who out-earn their husbands, which is underwhelming (though an improvement over 1970's measly four percent.) And women overall still earn only 71 percent of what men earn.

Then I looked more closely at who has benefited the most from income gains: It is in the highest income and education levels that married couples have made the most hay from women's higher earnings, while the unwashed marrieds' earnings have declined. Ohhh! So we're talking about ourselves. We are endlessly fascinating.

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