The Peculiar Power of the Chattering Class

...The term came into general use only in the 1980's. The first citation for "chattering classes" in the Oxford English Dictionary Online is from The Times of London in 1984. It refers to the "liberal intelligentsia, alias the chattering classes. ..."

No one has ever had much good to say about them, noted Stephen Perrault, the director of defining for the Merriam-Webster dictionary. "Chattering is like prattling," he said, "and it has the same connotations of idleness, of useless talk, that the noun 'chatter' does." The implication, Mr. Perrault said, is that "these people don't amount to much — they like to hear themselves talk.

...Many people in government "secretly belong to the chattering class," he said. "When there's a change of personnel in the White House, no one talks about it more than the people working in the White House."...

The influence of these and other chatterers "comes from the fact that it has means of amplification," said Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, a magazine in which many chatterers would give an arm or a leg to be mentioned.

That amplification comes from access to a media outlet, Mr. Carter said, giving a single voice "much greater influence" than it would otherwise have....

"The chattering classes were just as yippity yahoo in the Clinton years — 'Clinton should do this, Clinton should do that,' " she said. "Where the chattering classes get dangerous is when something becomes an article of faith among the CCCW. Then it becomes static and immutable and absolutely detached from reality."

The Peculiar Power of the Chattering Class, Anne E. Kornblut, New York Times, April 2, 2006


Hand in Hand, Over the Precipice


FOR years, thoughtful people yearned for labor and management in the United States to work in concert rather than at loggerheads. If only workers and auto companies could row in unison, the thinking went, Detroit might at last be able to compete against the Japanese.

As it turns out, workers and managers in the American auto industry have been rowing in unison, albeit directly toward the cataract. Giving new meaning to the term "labor-management cooperation," union leaders and General Motors executives joined forces years ago. However unwittingly, they have been working hand in glove ever since to wreck the place. Bringing G.M. to its knees is a big job, after all, and neither side could have done it alone. Only by working together not to rock the boat has it been possible to steer such a dominant player aground, deprive future generations of jobs and profits and send entire cities into extended decline. It's enough to make you wonder if we might have been better off with more old-fashioned labor strife.

...Fifty years ago, unions represented nearly 35 percent of the private-sector work force. Today the proportion is under 8 percent. Labor leaders have surely also noticed that many of the most heavily unionized sectors of the economy — automobiles, airlines, newspapers and public schools, to name just a few — are those having perhaps the most difficulty adapting to life in the 21st century.

Can this be a coincidence, or is there something about the cumulative effect of union agreements that, over time, promotes a creeping — and potentially deadly — ossification? It's not noticeable at first: when unions organize entire industries, no one company is at a competitive disadvantage....

Hand in Hand, Over the Precipice, Daniel Akst, New York Times, April 2, 2006