Word: wellborn
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what does she want to see achieved under health-care reform? In a word: affordability. With her tailored suits and her refined manner, Snowe gives off a sort of wellborn Northeast Establishment vibe. But her background is solidly working class. She was orphaned at 9 when her father, a Greek immigrant and cook, died of a heart attack a year after her mother succumbed to cancer. What drives her as much as anything else is the perspective that comes from representing a small, relatively poor state where the principal effect of well-intentioned, piecemeal efforts at health reform has been...
...true currency of snobbery today is celebrity, which is probably the greatest American art form. Proximity to the famous, not the wellborn, is the way we raise our own stock. While Epstein's definition of snobbery is conventional--the exaggerated respect for status--his critique of it is uniquely moral: "The snob's error," he says, "is to put good taste before a good heart." Epstein's distinction is that he writes with both...