snoburbia, the blog

one man's trash

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From Freecycle - Bethesda:

Wanted: A small tv for our au pair      

Offer: Peg Perego Pliko stroller                                                       

From Freecycle - Silver Spring:

Offer: "Deadheads for Obama" pin

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helicopter down

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At the parent meeting for my son's new elite soccer team*, a gasp went up in the room when the coach announced, sheepishly: "Coaching staff requests that parents do not attend training sessions (practices). The boys need to learn to self-advocate."

What? What?! 

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* I thought he was already on an elite team. Wrong. Turns out there are ever more elite teams. This is so snoburban helicopter parents can gleefully conquer the next level.

but $250,000 is middle class

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I have been following the middle class tax cut extension debate. This is where people who make $250,000 a year call themselves middle class. Those middle class households are in snoburbia, where all the politicians and media commentators live.

The Census Bureau would call them something else: rich. The median family income is $50,223. Only 1.9 percent of American households earn $250,000 or more. This may come as something of a shock to people living in the snoburbs.

When your neighborhood norm is that people send their kids to $30,000-a-year private schools and then $50,000-a-year private colleges, you just might feel entitled to tax relief if you make only $250,000 - or [gulp] under. 

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the politics of nice

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It is the fall political season, and politicians are everywhere, bumping into each other at parades and block parties. They are tired after months of campaigning, and now their claws are starting to come out. 

Ire and accusation may work in some neighborhoods - but not in overclass snoburbia. If someone is perceived as "not nice," he is out. In snoburbia, it is more important to be nice than to be right. 

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