Why do very different political candidates say the same things over and over? Things like "middle class," "coastal elites" and "middle America?" What do those things even mean? That's what this episode is all about.
Also...some civics and history trivia that's VERY much on-topic. Sort of.
Transcript
Middle Class, Totally Relatable & Elite! (The Election Jargon Trivia Edition)
Christina Phillips: Are we ready?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, but what are we doing here?
Christina Phillips: So I've gathered you all here on this Friday afternoon at the end of the DNC, because it is time to talk about election jargon, election catchphrases. I'm Christina Phillips.
Rebecca Lavoie: I'm Rebecca Lavoie
Nick Capodice: I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Christina Phillips: This is Civics 101. And it is the election jargon edition of Civics 101 trivia. So [00:00:30] as I said, the DNC just ended. Rnc was earlier this summer. We're in the final couple of months of the election, which means that on the national and local level, you cannot escape politicians talking to you about you and at you. So today I have prepared a game of trivia about all the stuff the candidates say on the campaign trail. It's going to be a blend of critique, analysis and pettiness, and hopefully it will be fun. So [00:01:00] way back at the beginning of this year, we asked our audience to send us some of the most overused verbiage they hear politicians say on the campaign trail. And each round of this trivia is based on some of the most common themes we heard from listeners. I will read a couple of listener emails. They're vague, broad, and they shift depending on who is saying them. So I tried to pick things that both Republicans and Democrats say all the time, but we're kind of going to look at how it depends on who's interpretation it is or [00:01:30] who they're trying to appeal to. Does that sound good?
Rebecca Lavoie: Context matters, is what you're saying.
Christina Phillips: Context? Yes, perhaps. All right.
Christina Phillips: Before we start, I'm going to spoil a little bit so I can get your reactions. We're going to be talking about phrases like middle class, middle America elites. If you had to explain to somebody Why so many politicians, [00:02:00] despite the fact that they are trying to distinguish themselves from their rivals, use the same phrases over and over again. Why do you think that is? Why do they do this?
Hannah McCarthy: I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I often think about, in our own world how to do things slightly differently, right? Like the different kinds of messaging we could use. I have this feeling that the answer is, why would we do something different if this is the way we've always done it before.
Rebecca Lavoie: Or if it works.
Hannah McCarthy: Or if it works? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like [00:02:30] we find that these terms test. Well, we're not going to mess with that. Because what if when we mess with that it screws everything up?
Nick Capodice: I think it's about repetition and getting little things lodged in people's minds. When I hear these phrases over and over again, like middle class or the liberal media, you know, stuff like that, if you hear it enough, you associate one side or the other or one candidate or the other with something, because repetition is the greatest way to get something stuck in your head. I was also wondering last night why? Why candidates always. Oh my [00:03:00] God, like the last ten years, they're like, it just won't work. And we're not doing it again. Like we're not going back. Somebody do it. Well, 40 years ago. Yeah, that's what we do.
Rebecca Lavoie: They did.
Nick Capodice: You know who did it? Who did it?
Archive: Read my lips. No new taxes.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah, I guess I guess it's been going on forever. Forever? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick Capodice: I mean, Roosevelt probably did it. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Are [00:03:30] you ready to start?
Nick Capodice: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so our first category is called mid because I'm trying to be cool with, you know I'm feeling the the age of my demographic which is millennials. So okay so we're talking about two distinct phrases that suggest they're speaking to two different populations, but they actually overlap quite a bit. When you think about where and how candidates, [00:04:00] especially presidential candidates, campaign in our current election system, aka the Electoral College, the phrases I am talking about are middle class and Middle America. Okay. When you hear middle class as a phrase that politicians use over and over again, like, what do you think of?
Hannah McCarthy: Nonexistent. Sorry.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah.
Christina Phillips: I love it, I love it. Yeah.
Rebecca Lavoie: Rebecca, I think of everybody who is not rich. They call everybody middle class who's not rich like everybody.
Christina Phillips: Mhm.
Nick Capodice: My [00:04:30] sister and I were talking about this last night. She was like were we middle class or were we poor. We were trying to decide and we couldn't figure it out. So I feel like it's an income number. Right. It's like somewhere between.
Rebecca Lavoie: But there is like some data I think that shows that a lot of people think that they're middle class when they're not. Right. Like, everybody believes that they're middle class. Even people who are below the poverty line believe they're middle class. Even people who are upper middle class sometimes believe that they're middle class, like middle class is a category that, like almost everybody puts themselves into, right?
Christina Phillips: Yes, that is correct. And I think that was more true [00:05:00] pre 2008. There have been studies that have shown that many, many people more than actually qualifies as what we would call middle income, identify as middle income. It is true that it seems like this is where people would like to put themselves and often categorize themselves. I actually tried to find some data on what counts as, quote, middle class. The income brackets was the closest I could get, and this is from the Pew Research Center. So the Pew Research Center defines this middle income [00:05:30] household as those with an income that is two thirds to double that of the median household income after incomes have been adjusted for household size, which is a very weird it's a weird definition. Basically, it's saying that there is a range of income that counts as middle income, and then the other two categories are lower income and An upper income. So the middle income household range in 2018, which was the most recent data I could find, was 48,000 [00:06:00] to $145,000 per household per year. And approximately over the last couple of decades, that is the biggest group. So there will be, you know, at least 50% sometimes all the way up to 65, 70% of people fall into that range. The important distinction is that that range is getting smaller. So that lower income group, which is below that 48,000, and that [00:06:30] upper income group, those two groups are getting bigger. And the amount of wealth in that upper income group is much higher. So that's really the big change. But we are talking about technically the biggest demographic of incomes in America. What about middle America stands out to you?
Nick Capodice: Well, middle America. You know, I actually have no idea. I grew up in I was born in the Midwest. I grew up in New England, but I was born in the Midwest. [00:07:00] It's like, is the Midwest, middle America? Non-coastal non-coastal.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, that that's what I think. But it also seems a little silly, a little funny to think that, like, the middle of the country is middle America, but is that literally what we mean?
Rebecca Lavoie: Doesn't it also mean like a regular folks? I mean, there's a non-elite non-coastal. What it evokes for me, like manufacturing jobs, farming, Rust belt, religious values, like slightly more like salt of the earth. [00:07:30] Like there's a there's a like an evocation of imagery that you see, the B-roll that I see when I hear the word middle America, like in a commercial. It's all that stuff.
Archive: It's morning again in America today. More men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history, with interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980. Nearly 2000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, I think what's interesting is, [00:08:00] like both the vice presidential candidates are trying to capture that in a very like, I think, interesting way. Like J.D. Vance grew up in the Ohio, Kentucky region. He wrote a book, you know, the Hillbilly Elegy, about, you know, this group of white Americans that was seen as ignored, you know, by liberals.
Archive: I grew up in Middletown, Ohio. A small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands [00:08:30] and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts. But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling class in Washington. When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.
Christina Phillips: Tim Walz is, if you listen to any of the speeches like he's the football coach. He's from Nebraska, governor [00:09:00] of Minnesota. And Tim Walz is very much defining himself as homegrown, relatable guy.
Archive: Now, I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale. But I'll tell you what. Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of [00:09:30] each other. That that family down the road, they may not think like you do. They may not pray like you do. They may not love like you do. But they're your neighbors and you look out for them and they look out for you.
Christina Phillips: I think in terms of this election, what stands out to me is that like three of the most important states in the election right now are Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. [00:10:00] And I feel like a lot of this middle America conversation comes up around these states that are very, very important for the Electoral College, that kind of thing. Now, I have some questions, and I tried to find a definition of like, what is the most quintessential [00:10:30] middle class middle America? Like what politicians seem to think is the most relatable demographic group. And I found a study called Middletown, USA. Are you familiar with this?
Rebecca Lavoie: No. Okay. I love it. Okay.
Christina Phillips: So this this is a study that was carried out by this cultural anthropologist power couple, Robert and Helen Lynd, in the 20th century, and it examined the people, behavior, and economic conditions of a real city in the United States that they chose because it was, quote, as [00:11:00] representative as possible of contemporary American life. Now contemporary American life being the 1920s 30s 40s. When this study was really active, they called the city Middletown in the study. It is an actual city, and we're going to talk about that. They released their first results in 1925. Follow up results were in 1929. There were also results in the 1930s. And the takeaway was nothing really changes because there wasn't a huge difference in demographics, income level [00:11:30] behavior of people in this city in Middletown, USA.
Rebecca Lavoie: Despite the Great depression.
Christina Phillips: Yes.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow, wait, really?
Hannah McCarthy: There wasn't a shift in in income.
Christina Phillips: There wasn't a significant shift in lifestyle interests and not really an income, employment or what kind of employment you had.
Rebecca Lavoie: That rings true to me, actually. Perception. Not reality. Right? Yes.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah. So the idea that like, nothing really changes. Okay. So there is a huge caveat to this study, which is when they were trying to decide [00:12:00] which city to choose, the lens intentionally picked a city that was nearly racially homogenous, that is mostly white, and they focused only on the change of that white population over time. So all of the results of this study are based on the white population. And in my notes, I literally wrote, well, maybe this isn't the average town then, but, you know, I digress.
Hannah McCarthy: Well, you said that they were trying to pick the city most representative of contemporary American life, and they picked one. That's a far cry [00:12:30] from representative of contemporary American life.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah. And even in the 1920s, like, there's no excuse for it.
Nick Capodice: Well, this study came out like shortly after we banned pretty much all immigration to the United States like, this was a time when we were practicing eugenics in the United States before Hitler did it a little bit later. Like, this is this is a this is a bad dark period in American history.
Christina Phillips: So this first question is, what is the city? [00:13:00] What I'm going to do is I'm going to read some facts about this city. And when you have a guess, shout it out. Okay. Okay. All right. Number one, this is not a state capital. The name of the state the city is in starts with I.
Rebecca Lavoie: Chicago.
Christina Phillips: No. Uh.
Christina Phillips: Um, the capital of this state that the city is in has the name of the state in it.
Rebecca Lavoie: And it was.
Nick Capodice: Stated in Indiana.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. Yes. Is it South Bend?
Christina Phillips: No.
Rebecca Lavoie: Ah. [00:13:30]
Christina Phillips: The city gained the nickname Little Chicago during the prohibition era because it was a hideout for organized crime bosses.
Nick Capodice: Oh, I know this.
Nick Capodice: I was born so close to there. Is it Gary, Indiana? No, not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York or Rome. Okay. I'm still thinking.
Christina Phillips: The city was the location of an encounter with a UFO in a Steven Spielberg movie.
Nick Capodice: It’s got to be Close Encounters…
Nick Capodice: Is it Muncie?
Christina Phillips: It's Muncie.
Christina Phillips: And Muncie. A Muncie gal. Can you beat.
Nick Capodice: That? Have you ever seen. Have you guys ever seen, uh, The Hudsucker Proxy, the Coen brothers film?
Rebecca Lavoie: No.
Christina Phillips: But I do know a lot of films and television shows that are trying to approximate this, like, middle America. Vibe chose Muncie in part because it was like the Middletown study made Muncie. It put it on the map, kind of as like if you're looking for like the corn fed American town, right? Muncie [00:14:30] is it. So the two other facts I have is Bob Ross filmed the Joy of painting in the local PBS studio there, and the city Pawnee in the show. Parks and Recreation was inspired by this city. Wow. So we're talking about Muncie Indiana.
Nick Capodice: Go Eagles. So Eagles is their team.
Christina Phillips: Okay so Nick that's one for you. Okay. So this next set of questions are going to be about the results of the Middletown study from 1925. This is going to be Price is Right style. So I'll get a guess from each of you. The closest without going over wins. Oh. All right. All right. [00:15:00] This study organized people into two classes working class and business class. Working class built things and did manual labor. The business class was defined as people who worked with people, business owners, lawyers, physicians, clergymen, teachers. It also there was a definition that they had to get additional education or training, which I don't love that because like, I'm pretty sure that people who do manual labor also need to get additional training, but they've defined it that way. So the first question is, what percentage of the population in [00:15:30] Middletown of this study were considered working class?
Hannah McCarthy: I'm going to say 38%.
Christina Phillips: Okay. Nick, do you have a guess?
Nick Capodice: All right. Working class I'm going to say 67.
Rebecca Lavoie: Mhm. I was going to be much closer to that too. I'm going to say go one less. I'm going to make it tight. You ready. 74.
Christina Phillips: Whoa. It's 70.
Christina Phillips: You just went over 70%.
Hannah McCarthy: I mean I should because what does it take to run a city? People who make the city, right? Yeah, [00:16:00] yeah yeah, yeah.
Christina Phillips: So that one is one point for Nick. Okay. The next question, what percentage of the working class. So 70% of the community surveyed was not part of a union.
Nick Capodice: So this is the 1920s. Yeah. So it's after I'm just I'm just thinking out loud. It's after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Unions are starting to get big. What percentage is not in a union or isn't a union is.
Christina Phillips: Not in a union.
Nick Capodice: I'm going to say 20%. [00:16:30]
Christina Phillips: All right, Rebecca, do you have a guess?
Rebecca Lavoie: I'm going to say 45%.
Speaker9: Okay. Hannah.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Uh, Nick, you said 20%. I said 20. We're not in a union. We're not in a union. 50%.
Christina Phillips: 100%.
Nick Capodice: Oh, none of them were in a union.
Christina Phillips: Unions have been driven entirely out of Muncie at the time of the study, which I think is funny, that they're like, this is representative of America, right? And I think you had the highest number, right?
Hannah McCarthy: 50. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: So you get that one.
Nick Capodice: Well done. Yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: For [00:17:00] your one point.
Christina Phillips: What percentage of the population studied lived in a nuclear family. So this is defined as two parents and some children.
Rebecca Lavoie: I'm going to say 85%. Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm going to say 80%.
Christina Phillips: Okay. Wow. Nick.
Nick Capodice: Also, who's not a nuclear family? I'm thinking like grandparents. You know who you know, the kids have moved out or, you know, single men and women. Uh, but Muncie, you said 85.
Rebecca Lavoie: I said 85. You said.
Nick Capodice: 80. [00:17:30] I'm going for broke. I'm going 90%.
Christina Phillips: It's 86. So Rebecca was basically right. Rebecca there. Yeah. Okay, so a couple of other facts about Muncie at this time. The elite class, which was a subgroup of the business class that held government positions, it was entirely Republican.
Rebecca Lavoie: Did airlines like, just steal this terminology for their seating, like straight from the study?
Nick Capodice: Oh my goodness.
Rebecca Lavoie: It's incredible.
Hannah McCarthy: I was thinking the same thing.
Rebecca Lavoie: It's like their point system just came right from this.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah. [00:18:00]
Christina Phillips: So that is Middletown, USA, aka Muncie, Indiana. Wow. Nick, you have two points. Hannah. You have one point. Rebecca. You have one point. Okay, off we go. This [00:18:30] next set of questions is called the Goodfella, and it is about how candidates have attempted to appeal to voters by making themselves seem more relatable. And in doing so, I think they're pretty revealing, intentionally or not, about what they actually think is relatable. Um, to quote the character Henry Hill in Goodfellas, who ran with the Lucchese crime family right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with [00:19:00] marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody. Okay, so this is actually based on an email from a listener named Haley. So here's what Haley says. I am so tired of candidates referring to the price of gas and eggs specifically.
Nick Capodice: What's interesting, I started carrying in my pocket a little laminated sheet of the price of crude oil around the world, and then the price of gas mirrored over that. And it's exactly the same thing. So, you know, why aren't we getting mad at the president of, you know, Uganda anywhere in the world? Yeah.
Christina Phillips: I [00:19:30] think it's interesting that presidents love to talk about the price of gas as a campaign like stump thing. When your episode is demonstrated, they do not control the price of gas.
Nick Capodice: But they have nothing whatsoever to do with the price of gas.
Christina Phillips: But they know that we think they do.
Archive: More Americans are working, more have health insurance, incomes are rising, poverty is falling, and gas is $2 a gallon.
Archive: I didn't even I. [00:20:00]Thank you for reminding me. Thanks, Obama.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to read you excerpts from some speeches from people who were eventually elected president. So these are all former presidents and the first person to guess who the president is wins. Okay. So here is the first speech excerpt where I grew up, the town motto was the sky's the limit. And we believed it. There was a restless energy, a basic conviction that with hard work, [00:20:30] anybody could succeed. And everybody deserved a chance. There were dry wells and sandstorms to keep you humble, lifelong friends to take your side, and churches to remind us that every soul is equal in value and equal in need.
Hannah McCarthy: George H.W. Bush.
Christina Phillips: It's not. This president attended Yale and Harvard.
Rebecca Lavoie: George W Bush. Yes it is.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh come on. Technically, they're talking about the same place.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, this [00:21:00] is true. This is true. Yeah. So this is him accepting his presidential nomination at the RNC in 2000. And yeah, as we've said, he's he's the son of a former president. I mean, come on. And also, he attended Phillips Andover in Massachusetts. He went to Yale. He went to Harvard. He started his own oil business in Texas. I don't know, those wells.
Hannah McCarthy: Didn't run dry that. Much.
Christina Phillips: Okay. So that is George Bush trying to appeal to the Americans. All right. The next one. I used to milk cows by hand. I used to plow with a [00:21:30] four horse team instead of a tractor. I used to sow wheat with a drill that had only 12 hoes on it, and I used to cut wheat with a binder that cut eight feet wide. So this is a Democratic president who was born in the 19th century. This president also served as vice president. And this president was one of the architects of NATO.
Nick Capodice: Truman.
Christina Phillips: Yes.
Christina Phillips: Truman was one of the least wealthy presidents in history. So, you know, relating to people in [00:22:00] that way, I think he probably could do it better than a lot of other presidents. But one thing I thought was interesting was that Congress increased the presidential salary while he was in office from 75,000 to 100,000, and also gave the president $50,000 in tax free money. And these inflation calculators that we always see are never accurate, but it's about a salary of $1.2 million today. Do you know the current salary of our president right now?
Rebecca Lavoie: Isn't it 250 thousand or [00:22:30] 75?
Christina Phillips: $400,000 oh.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh wow. Wow.
Rebecca Lavoie: Big inflation.
Christina Phillips: He is one of those presidents that gained a lot from being a president. Like he walked away from it in a really good position. So here's the next speech. If you can stretch your imaginations back this far. My own college days happen to fall during the Great Depression. I had to work my way through college. As a matter of fact, I had one of the best jobs I've ever had while I was doing [00:23:00] that washing dishes in the girls dormitory. But seriously, those were days when announcements telling people not to leave home looking for work because there was none were made on the radio. Well, when I got my diploma, unemployment was around 25%. Yet here we are, just a half century later, and we Americans are enjoying a standard of living Undreamt of when I was your age.
Nick Capodice: Who would make.
Nick Capodice: A little funny joke about the, you know, washing dishes in a place surrounded by ladies. I'm gonna guess Jimmy Carter. It's not Jimmy. [00:23:30]
Rebecca Lavoie: No. Darn it! It was too. He was too young. Too young? Yeah. Yeah. Because he was actually born after Kennedy. Okay.
Christina Phillips: So here's a hint. Worked as a sports broadcaster. This president also served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Rebecca Lavoie: Ronald Reagan. Reagan. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Rebecca. You snuck it in there. This was from remarks to students and faculty at Purdue in Indiana in 1987. It was also something he told the story about at a student Q&A in Kansas in 1983. A student Q&A at a high school in Illinois in 1984, and at a fundraiser in Eureka [00:24:00] College in 1986. So, like Kate accused Lizzie of being an out for repeater on the iconic Disney Channel show Lizzie McGuire. I accuse Ronald Reagan of being a speech repeater, which is actually something a lot of candidates do all the time.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. Well, I think it's funny.
Nick Capodice: Like, there's a lot of great videos of Reagan telling America Russia jokes on YouTube, which he had a really good joke delivery.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. He was an.
Nick Capodice: Actor. Nobody tells. Yeah, but nobody tells jokes anymore. And he would just tell funny political jokes. I just missed that.
Archive: The story was an American and a Russian arguing about their two countries. And the Americans [00:24:30] said, look, in my country, I can walk into the Oval Office. I can pound the president's desk and say, Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country. And the Russian said, I can do that. The American said, you can. He says, yes, I can go into the Kremlin, to the general secretary's office, pound his desk and say, Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country.
Christina Phillips: So the score right now is Rebecca has three, Nick has three, and Hannah [00:25:00] has one. Yep.
Rebecca Lavoie: All right. Next two days everybody. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: This category is called again America great make. Which is just make America Great Again in alphabetical order.
Christina Phillips: I will be here all night.
Christina Phillips: This is not for points. But which president? Before Trump made that slogan famous? [00:25:30]
Nick Capodice: This is the Gipper. Ronald Reagan, right?
Christina Phillips: Yes, yes. This was in his Republican nomination acceptance speech in 1980. It was also used by Bill Clinton in speeches in 1992, and of course, Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 and now 2024 presidential election.
Archive: We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make [00:26:00] America great again. Thank you. Ohio.
Archive: Thank you. Thank you.
Christina Phillips: A lot of listeners asked us to talk about this. So I've got a category that's basically about what does Trump think is the greatest time in America when he says Make America great again. When is he talking about? We actually have an answer from an interview he gave in 2022 to the New York Times. Does anyone have a guess.
Hannah McCarthy: When he thought the greatest [00:26:30] era in America was, yeah, like just after World War two?
Nick Capodice: Yeah. The 50s.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So he said that it was after World War II was one that was the first period and.
Rebecca Lavoie: Then the 80s, not.
Christina Phillips: The 80s. He said the turn of the 20th century, which Trump said was when, quote, the machine of entrepreneurship was built.
Hannah McCarthy: The entrance into the 20th century.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, yeah.
Hannah McCarthy: Like the Gilded Age.
Hannah McCarthy: The Gilded Age. So, like the height of poverty in cities, you mean? Yeah. You know, it was really bad [00:27:00] for a lot of people.
Nick Capodice: Black lung. Yeah, that was a tough time. Children falling into mills.
Hannah McCarthy: I should say. Height of poverty and height of wealth. Right. Yes, exactly. It was. This was like the same era that Jacob Riis published all of his photographs of what was actually happening while people were throwing balls and like.
Rebecca Lavoie: An age of great disparity.
Hannah McCarthy: Yes, yes. Great disparity.
Nick Capodice: Children throwing stick balls in how the other half lives and rich people throwing balls on Park Avenue.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah, it was like the pre-setting for Annie, right? Like, that's how I like to think.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, yeah.
Nick Capodice: That's good. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so I have [00:27:30] a question for each of you about this turn of the century. So this era that President Trump thinks was one of the greatest. So, Hanna, first question for you in 1900, this titan of the oil industry and the namesake of an oyster dish with breadcrumbs and spinach controlled more than 90% of the nation's oil refineries. Who is it?
Hannah McCarthy: This is not my wheelhouse.
Christina Phillips: Oyster dish with breadcrumbs.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, I don't eat shellfish. Oh, God.
Rebecca Lavoie: Okay.
Hannah McCarthy: I might be an East coaster, but. Okay. Yeah, [00:28:00] I know, sorry, guys.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, my God.
Nick Capodice: It's a it's a person who's mentioned in one of the greatest songs ever written, sung by Taco Bell and Fred Astaire. Puttin on the Ritz. Also in Young Frankenstein.
Hannah McCarthy: Rockefeller. Yeah. Yes. It's Rockefeller. Oh, okay.
Christina Phillips: Let me give you that.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay. Thank you.
Christina Phillips: Um, Nick, next question for you. This board game allows you to, quote, gossip with other passengers, receive telegrams and collect all five pieces of your personal property to advance from the second class to the first class section of the ship. But watch out, you might get put back in third class or worse [00:28:30] yet, never make it to your lifeboat in time.
Nick Capodice: Oh my gosh. So there is a board game called Titanic. There is. Oh my gosh, when was it made?
Christina Phillips: It was made in 1998 by an uncredited designer. It says it uses the similar system to escape from Colditz. I don't know if you know what that means.
Nick Capodice: I do know escape from Colditz.
Christina Phillips: So you must collect necessary items to make it to a lifeboat before the Titanic sinks. There's also a game that was created in 2022 called deckchairs on the Titanic, where you compete [00:29:00] to earn tips from happy customers whilst the ship sinks. Which, ooh, dark.
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, yeah.
Nick Capodice: That's a game I would play.
Rebecca Lavoie: Have you seen a Kamala Harris tip that she gave a child for speaking in public? The tip is, if you have a fear of public speaking, think of yourself as being somebody on the Titanic who knows that it's sinking and you are the only person who has that information, and you must convey it because you have the knowledge. So when you're talking to people, even if you're afraid, remember there's something that you know that they don't that you have to tell them. [00:29:30]
Archive: Are you going to worry about how you look.
Archive: And how you sound? No, no, because the thing that's most important is that everyone knows what you know, because.
Archive: They need to know what you know. You see what I'm saying?
Rebecca Lavoie: So I like that a lot. Decent tip. I mean.
Hannah McCarthy: Ideally, you're not like, screaming it. No, I was going to.
Christina Phillips: Say I don't think that I would be a good public speaker if I saw that iceberg.
Nick Capodice: Congratulations on your commencement. Oh, Jesus.
Nick Capodice: I took the road less traveled [00:30:00] by.
Hannah McCarthy: Made all the difference.
Rebecca Lavoie: It was inside myself all along.
Christina Phillips: Okay, Rebecca. This question is for you. At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, which showcased marvelous inventions such as the zipper, the Ferris wheel, and Cracker Jacks, it was also the location of a three story mortar hotel for a serial killer [00:30:30] who confessed to killing 27 people. What's the name of the serial killer?
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, it was the basis of the book devil in the White City.
Nick Capodice: Ah, the last name Rebecca of the serial killer is shared by someone called the greatest fictional detective in the world.
Christina Phillips: Mhm.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, is it Holmes? I don't know.
Christina Phillips: H.H. Holmes.
Christina Phillips: And by the way, he's from New Hampshire originally. Great. Wonderful. Find out in the devil in the White City. You will not hear about him for like the first like five chapters. Just get ready. You're going to read a lot about the elevator.
Hannah McCarthy: Teased. It's been teased that girls are disappearing and young men are disappearing. [00:31:00] And so I know something's about to happen.
Christina Phillips: That book is really about the World's Fair and about architecture, which is why I love it. Okay, so the score is four. Rebecca. Four. Nick two. Hannah. All right. By the way, a 2016 New York Times study asked Americans what they thought the greatest era of America was, and they chose before 9/11. That was the era that was chosen.
Rebecca Lavoie: All of that time.
Christina Phillips: Before 9/11. And now we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk about elites. [00:31:30] We're back.
Christina Phillips: This is Civics 101. We are doing civics trivia, all about the words that politicians say during a campaign cycle. Right now we're going to move on to something we hear all the [00:32:00] time, and we have an email from a listener about this. And that is the term elites. Elites, the umbrella term. Okay. So here is an email from Josie. Hi Civics 101 team, I saw your most recent emails that you're looking for campaign trail tropes. So I asked my family for suggestions and this is what we came up with. Coastal elites, blah blah blah economy from the bottom up and the middle out. The American people. Extremism. Grassroots. Woke parent [00:32:30] rights. Thanks so much for making Civics 101. All the episodes are really interesting, and it's useful to be able to listen to old episodes about court cases or important documents that I need to know for my AP government class. Josie 15 years Arlington, mass. Thank you so.
Hannah McCarthy: Much. Thank you Josie. Thank you.
Christina Phillips: Yes, I if it's okay with you, Josie would like to take Coastal Elites and broaden it out to just elites, if that's all right, because I think coastal elites are part of that. But elites as a term is interesting because it's been used by [00:33:00] different politicians from different parties over time. We've got, of course, the coastal elites. We've also got the Washington elites, the corporate elites, and then just generally accusations of elitism. The key here is that elite is used as a criticism, which is interesting from a language perspective, because if you think of describing like an athlete or a product as elite, it's a good thing. The elite five blade shaving tool. But when somebody is called elite, it's a bad thing.
Hannah McCarthy: To my understanding. So I grew up just south of Boston. [00:33:30] I went to high school in Boston. I went to college in Vermont in a school that's just like kids sitting around talking about philosophy and dancing.
Rebecca Lavoie: It's elite.
Hannah McCarthy: Right? It's elite. And then. And then I got a second degree in New York City and like. And yet at the same time, like, my car broke down two days ago, and like, I don't have enough money to fix it, right?
Hannah McCarthy: So it's been broken down since I've known you.
Hannah McCarthy: I've been driving a rickety old Honda Civic. Is being an elite an ideological [00:34:00] thing? Is it presumed that given these experiences in life, I feel certain ways about the world? Yes. Because it's like my bank account is not elite.
Rebecca Lavoie: What I hear when I hear this word, and I remember it sort of coming into fashion, Is. I mean, in my lifetime, when I remember coming to fashion, it sort of presumes people who think they're smarter than you. Christina, I'm pointing at you like you're the avatar for, like, the audience for whom this is intended. Right. Like, I am the politician. And the elites believe that they know what's best for [00:34:30] you. But you are not like that. You are regular. Like you are just a person who may or may not go to college. And that's okay. You are just a person who may or may not have read this or done that or you know. And it's like, and that's okay, because we're just regular folk. We're not the elite. But that's what evokes for me.
Nick Capodice: For me, it's interesting, just in the last 20 years or so of hearing the term sort of bandied about, it's that it's usually people who are exceptionally wealthy.
Rebecca Lavoie: And who went to Ivy League schools.
Nick Capodice: Who went to Ivy [00:35:00] League schools because their father did and because their father did. You know, and these accusations of elitism are always sort of anti-intellectual. It's felt to me, as opposed to don't pay attention to the fact that I am literally one of the richest Americans in the country. It always kind of smacked funny to me.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, it's interesting, like as you each have reacted to it, it's sort of like building on this like thesis of elite that I found from a book that was written that was sort of building on this definition of elite that I found that is seen as maybe a seminal definition from [00:35:30] a book called The Power Elite by an American sociologist called C.wright Mills. He wrote this book in 1965, and he wrote it specifically to critique a certain group of people who held a lot of power and wealth. So, Hannah, to your point, like, am I considered part of the elite? To some people, yes. I lived on the coast. I got multiple degrees. And then also the way that politicians talk about elites, even if they are one to the American people to kind of say, like, you shouldn't trust these people because they're not like you. But [00:36:00] then also the people who are using this phrase elite are often part of one elite category, and they're speaking about other people in this elite category. They're using a term that sort of describes themselves.
Rebecca Lavoie: It cuts both ways, right? Because Elizabeth Warren uses it about corporate America. She's a Harvard professor, right? She can be called an elite by the people who look at the intellectual class as elites. And she's using the term to describe, you know, the business minds who think that they know what's best for you [00:36:30] and need to be like anti-monopolist or whatever. So it's very interesting.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. So I'm going to read a quote from Mills when he defines this group. He said the most impersonal problems of the largest and most important institutions are fuzed with the sentiments and worries of small, closed, intimate groups. In such circles, adolescent boys and girls are exposed to the table conversations of decision makers and thus have bred into them the informal skills and pretensions of [00:37:00] decision makers. Without conscious effort, they absorb the aspiration to be, if not the conviction that they are the ones who decide. And he said that there are certain categories that the elites are. They run big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment and most importantly, they do not see themselves as elites. Wow. So [00:37:30] I have a very dumb trivia about things that have been called elite and things that politicians have done that have been considered elite. Okay. So I'm going to go around you each will get a question. So Hannah, you first you have to identify this elite object or behavior. Okay. Okay. This peppery tasting green has its origins in the Mediterranean. When I googled the recipe using [00:38:00] this ingredient, the first result was from the New York Times cooking website with over a thousand reviews. It's blanc salad with parmesan arugula. Yes, this is arugula. Now, do you remember which politician was called elite for eating arugula?
Hannah McCarthy: I remember that quote unquote insult, but I don't I don't remember...
Nick Capodice: Were they called arugula munching, Chardonnay sipping? Is it like Al Gore?
Christina Phillips: It's actually a politician who, like, talked about arugula in a speech and [00:38:30] everybody jumped on it. Former President Obama, he once said on the campaign trail, anyone gone into Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula and the culture lost it. It was called arugula gate.
Rebecca Lavoie: To be fair, a lot of people don't go to Whole Foods to check out the price of anything because, yeah.
Nick Capodice: There goes our Whole Foods sponsor.
Christina Phillips: Yeah. Sorry. He was trying to appeal to this idea of expensive food prices that maybe the president can or cannot control, and he just failed.
Rebecca Lavoie: Perhaps Whole Foods is not the best example. [00:39:00]
Nick Capodice: Okay. He was the president. Couldn't he have lowered the price of arugula?
Speaker9: Just kidding. Getting it.
Hannah McCarthy: Also, the president's not going shopping. That's the other thing that's hilarious about that.
Rebecca Lavoie: They don't carry money.
Christina Phillips: So Nick, this question is for you. Identify the elite object or behavior. This thing was first used on a ten pack of Wrigley's chewing gum in 1974. [00:39:30] It can be used by an employee to speed up transactions, or by people like me, who want to avoid those same employees because they are afraid of being judged in the grocery store line.
Nick Capodice: I think it's the barcode that you scan the UPC code?
Christina Phillips: Yes the grocery store scanner.
Nick Capodice: Did you know that in Norway the boats have UPC codes on the side?
Christina Phillips: That's really smart.
Nick Capodice: So that when you go out you can skandinavian.
Christina Phillips: Oh no, oh no, I fell for your joke.
Hannah McCarthy: Poor Christina. Wow. That's a really good idea. [00:40:00]
Christina Phillips: Okay, so do we know which president was accused of not knowing what a grocery store scanner was or how to use one, and that that was elitist?
Nick Capodice: I have a guess on this. I remember because I was in debate club in eighth grade, and we were fighting about whether or not a president should know how to scan something in. I think it might have been George H.W. Bush. Yeah, it is.
Christina Phillips: So to be fair, he was not actually grocery shopping when this happened. He was at a grocery store [00:40:30] convention in Florida, and he just seemed really impressed by the scanner. And so one New York Times headline was Bush Encounters the Supermarket comma amazed.
Christina Phillips: All right.
Christina Phillips: Rebecca, this is for you. Most often used by mechanics, soccer player Lionel Messi also had one in his apartment building so he could step right out of his car and straight into his living room.
Rebecca Lavoie: Is this a car lift? [00:41:00] Like a jack? Yeah, it's.
Christina Phillips: A car elevator.
Hannah McCarthy: Wow. Yeah.
Christina Phillips: So which presidential candidate was accused of being elitist because he wanted to install one in his house?
Rebecca Lavoie: Mitt Romney?
Christina Phillips: Yes. Good job.
Rebecca Lavoie: Thank you. Thank you very much. I am a student. I am a student of Mitt Romney and Mitt Romney's entire thing, because I worked in the newsroom at NPR during that campaign. I remember all the stories that we get to publish on our website about the wealth, because Mitt Romney also has a huge compound [00:41:30] on Lake Winnipesaukee here in New Hampshire. There's a lot there's a lot of there there.
Christina Phillips: The one that I found, for example, was his beach house in La Jolla in San Diego. He wanted to install a car elevator. So one good headline from this was, what is a car elevator? And why does Mitt need one. From the Atlantic.
Christina Phillips: So there we go. Okay. Um, Rebecca, you have five points. Nick, you have five points. Hannah. You have three points. Okay. I think maybe Hannah. This this will be your category, but I might be wrong.
Hannah McCarthy: We'll see.
Christina Phillips: Okay, [00:42:00] so this last and final category, also about elites, is called the Undead Elites. In 2004, the Republican PAC club for growth took out an attack ad against Democrat Howard Dean, who was the former Governor of Vermont and a candidate in the 2004 presidential primary. And the ad accuses Dean of doing a bunch of things that are elitist, like it stands out in history as like one of the most interesting attack ads, I think. And so I'm going to go around and I'm going to ask [00:42:30] you each if this so-called elitism describes Howard Dean or the most famous and important millennial coastal vampire, Edward Cullen, famously played by Robert Pattinson in the greatest saga.
Hannah McCarthy: Yes.
Nick Capodice: Nice knowing you guys.
Christina Phillips: So that's this coastal vampire played by Robert Pattinson. The greatest saga of our generation, the Twilight Saga. When I tested this trivia with my boyfriend, he was like, you have to say who Edward Cullen is because people might not know. And I was like, I just made you watch all of the Twilight movies. [00:43:00] And he was like, but people might not know. So there you go. That's what we're talking about. Hannah? Yes. Is this an elitist trait of Howard Dean or of Edward Cullen, coastal vampire? Reading the New York Times.
Hannah McCarthy: I'm gonna say Edward Cullen.
Rebecca Lavoie: No, it's Howard Dean, right? He got accused of reading the New York Times.
Christina Phillips: He got accused of reading the New York Times.
Hannah McCarthy: He got accused of reading.
Christina Phillips: In this ad. This ad basically [00:43:30] says, like, Howard Dean You, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, elitist.
Christina Phillips: Ad, to my knowledge, and my deep reading and watching of all the Twilight things. I've never seen him read. He never references the New York Times.
Hannah McCarthy: Okay, okay.
Christina Phillips: Fair enough. Nick, is this an elitist trait of Howard Dean according to this attack ad, or is it a trait of cold and sparkly? Edward Cullen vegetarian.
Nick Capodice: Vegetarian. Now, is doctor Dean a vegetarian? Well, the vampire is not vegetarian if they drink blood. So I'm going to go with doctor Dane. No.
Nick Capodice: How [00:44:00] could a carnivorous undead creature who drinks the blood from living.
Rebecca Lavoie: To prevent himself from drinking the blood of living victims.
Christina Phillips: He only drinks animal blood Nick.
Nick Capodice: Oh, I didn't know that. He's like the Bunnicula of real people.
Christina Phillips: He calls himself a vegetarian. He says we're vegetarians.
Nick Capodice: Okay.
Christina Phillips: Because they only drink animal blood.
Christina Phillips: Well, none for you.
Nick Capodice: Just what you see on the side of the tin, I guess.
Christina Phillips: All right. Rebecca. Elitist Howard Dean or erudite Edward Cullen? Body [00:44:30] piercings.
Rebecca Lavoie: I was really hoping you were going to say something else. Um, Howard Dean.
Speaker9: It is Howard Dean.
Rebecca Lavoie: Earring right?
Christina Phillips: Um, okay, so here's the thing. I had to do a cursed Google image search for Howard Dean piercing, because I was trying to figure out none of his photos show a piercing of any kind. I was, like, zooming in on his ears to see if there were piercings in his lobes, but I could not find a single image where he had an ear piercing. But in this ad they claim that he has a body piercing. [00:45:00]
Rebecca Lavoie: Mhm.
Christina Phillips: So if you've seen it I tell you I'm just like zoom, zoom zoom in on pictures. I'm like I can't see a piercing. So I'm assuming he has one or they just are accusing him of having body piercings.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. Maybe that's what that scream was about. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: We're going to Oregon and Michigan.
Christina Phillips: Uh, Hannah?
Hannah McCarthy: Yes.
Christina Phillips: Redemption.
Hannah McCarthy: I hope so.
Christina Phillips: Is this an elitist trait of Howard Dean or of Edward Cullen? Vegetarian vampire latte drinking?
Hannah McCarthy: I'm gonna say Howard Dean.
Christina Phillips: It is Howard Dean. [00:45:30]
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah, that one's too easy. I don't think vampires can consume food. It makes them sick, right?
Christina Phillips: Yeah, I mean, they they say it just tastes like dirt or ash or something.
Nick Capodice: Somebody especially like lactose, right?
Speaker9: Especially lactose.
Hannah McCarthy: Especially that.
Speaker9: Nick.
Christina Phillips: Howard Dean or Edward Cullen piano playing.
Nick Capodice: Oh, boy. Uh, well, I don't think I can't really see Howard Dean tickling the ivories, you know, because he would have made a song out of it if he had. If he had, I'm going to say Edward Cullen, the vampire. [00:46:00]
Christina Phillips: You are.
Christina Phillips: Correct. Nice job.
Nick Capodice: Well, they call me a Twilight expert, and that's why.
Christina Phillips: Okay. Rebecca.
Speaker9: Volvo driver Edward.
Christina Phillips: Cullen. Okay. This is actually a trick question. It's both. But I'm going to give you the point.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, Edward Cullen is famously a Volvo driver. And he's like, has that R type Volvo. And he's like super into it. And it made me think that like the author maybe had like just gotten a Volvo and she was super into it because like there's a lot of description of that car in those books - a lot.
Hannah McCarthy: There is a lot of car talk.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yes.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. [00:46:30]
Christina Phillips: Big Volvo was really in on the Twilight Saga.
Hannah McCarthy: That was the only time I was like, this is so boring.
Christina Phillips: Yeah, I do when I - when I showed Ben all the Twilight movies, he was like, is that a Volvo? When he, like, does his, like famous turn to, like rescue her from the men because he read his.
Rebecca Lavoie: Volvo R type station wagon?
Christina Phillips: It's like it's a real sporty car, guys.
Rebecca Lavoie: So specific, so specific.
Christina Phillips: Okay, so here's the [00:47:00] full quote of this ad. Howard Dean should take his tax hiking, government expanding, latte drinking, sushi eating, Volvo driving, New York Times reading, body piercing, Hollywood loving left wing beep show back to Vermont, where it belongs. The beep is not a swear, but it's a pejorative word that I don't want to say.
Rebecca Lavoie: Oh, okay.
Christina Phillips: So we've reached the end of our trivia. Final score, Hannah. [00:47:30] Four points. Yeah, Nick. Six points. Rebecca seven points.
Nick Capodice: Oh, well done.
Rebecca Lavoie: Rebecca. I don't think I've ever won one of these. This is so exciting.
Nick Capodice: You did very well.
Nick Capodice: This is fantastic. What was your favorite part of you being so smart today?
Rebecca Lavoie: Edward Cullen driving a Volvo.
Rebecca Lavoie: I was like, oh, I was, I was I had my fingers crossed.
Speaker9: Yeah. Yeah.
Rebecca Lavoie: I was like, please, oh please oh please.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh. If you had said multiple degrees, that would have been a good one too. That's right.
Hannah McCarthy: Oh [00:48:00] yeah.
Christina Phillips: That's actually. Yeah, that is a good one.
Christina Phillips: Multiple high school degrees.
Christina Phillips: I can't believe. I can't believe they never go beyond high school in those movies.
Nick Capodice: Oh, can I tell a funny Howard Dean story? Please do. We started. Hannah and I started as co-hosts. Like, what, six years ago or something like that. And one of your first interviews, you were like, well, I'm doing one in presidential campaigns. It was Howard Dean's campaign. His campaign manager. And you were like, should I ask him about The Scream? And I was like, yeah. And then you asked the guy and he was like, do you think I'm not ready to talk about the scream?
Hannah McCarthy: Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: I'm talking about the scream [00:48:30] until I'm dead. I used to watch You're the Man Now dog videos of, like, heavy metal mash ups of that of The scream. Yeah. Yeah. I miss those days.
Rebecca Lavoie: Yeah. I like the goat mash up. You know the Taylor Swift goat one?
Hannah McCarthy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: Trouble when you walked in?
Christina Phillips: Yeah.
Rebecca Lavoie: I will say, I cannot believe that the most gratifying thing for me to learn today is that we have not one, not two, but three Twilight experts working on this team. [00:49:00]
Speaker9: Sorry, Nick. That's all right. I mean, at least you can start anytime. Nick.
Rebecca Lavoie: That makes us elites, right?
Speaker9: I mean, we are elites. We are elites.
Christina Phillips: Unfortunately.
Rebecca Lavoie: Thanks so much, Christina.
Speaker9: All right. Thank you. Christina.
Christina Phillips: This episode was produced by me, Christina Phillips, and edited by our executive producer, Rebecca LaVoy. Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound [00:49:30] and Chris Zabriskie Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.