Sympathy or Snobbery

Several years ago, the Solipsist was teaching an expository writing class. We assigned the class to write a personal-experience essay. One girl wrote a sincere, thoroughly non-ironic paean to what was, for her, a magical, romantic evening. The highlight of said romantic evening? An unforgettable dinner at a fancy restaurant. The fancy restaurant? Red Lobster.

How do you respond to that story? Back when we read it, we smiled but also felt kind of sad. It was undeniably sweet and kind of cute, but we couldn't help feeling a little sorry for this girl-this girl who saw Red Lobster as an exquisite boite. To this day, though, we wonder: Were we expressing sympathy or snobbery?

We like to think sympathy. After all, we certainly have no problem with restaurants like Red Lobster. One of our simpler pleasures is pigging out at Outback.

(Digression: Outback is home of the tastiest bread ever! What do they put in it? Crack? EOD)

Just last week, WOS and the Solipsist had a lovely dinner at Applebee's. And don't even get us started on the joy one feels after overindulging on Big Macs! (Yes, that was plural. We admit we have a problem.)

So why was our knee-jerk, perhaps condescending, smirk not an example of snobbery? We think because snobbery entails a belief that one has some kind of special insight into the finer things in life. But while it entails this belief, it does not solely consist of this belief. When one appreciates the finer things in life--when one recognizes that there is more to fine dining than discount lobster--one is cultured, but not snobbish. It is only when one denies the fact that discount lobster can bring sincere joy--and that sincere joy is too rare a commodity to scoff at, no matter what the underlying cause--that one crosses the line into snobbery.

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Cultural Illiteracy Update

Here are the "Top Ten" Yahoo! searches as of this moment:

10. U.S. Women's Open (Golf): Going on now. Plus, the LPGA Commissioner has tendered her resignation, effective after the tournament (not sure why, but we know it's happening).

9: Richie Sambora: Isn't he Mr. Heather Locklear? No idea.

8. World Population Day: We suppose we could guess what that is (everyone goes out and counts each other?). And we could speculate that it IS World Population Day. But that would be disingenuous, so we'll say we don't know.

7. MLB FanFest: Pre-All-Star Game festivities (e.g., Home Run Derby, etc.), and it's almost the All-Star break.

6. UFC 100: Some kind of major Ultimate Fighting tournament. We happen to know it's happening tonight because, for some reason, a cashier asked us if we were going to watch it. WHY he thought the Solipsist was a UFC fan, we have no idea. Perhaps because we were bleeding from several orifices. Long story. Anyway, we're claiming knowledge of this.

5. Cobbler recipes: No idea. The thought of people desperately searching for cobbler recipes is odd. We'd have thought all the Aunt Millie's out there keep their recipes in teeny file boxes, not PDF files.

4. Levi Johnston: The former-future-Palin son-in-law. He's dishing the dirt!

3. Beyonce: Don't know why she's of particular interest today.

2. Free Slurpee Day: It's 7/11, don'tcha know?

1. Erin Andrews. Sounds familiar, but we don't know.

Our score for today: 50%. For the week: 46%

(Image from Red Lobster--well, duh!)