In Chicago you could fake being Cafe Society, or "socially prominent"; in New York you can't. Here you have to be Very Very Rich, sugar baron rich or Very Very Famous. In Chicago self-styled society mavens and mini-Capote walkers lived in SROs and were salesmen in Marshall Fields.

Graydon Carter divides Americans into Wal-Mart people and Blue Blazer people and there is little doubt where he sees himself. He reminds me of the passionately upwardly mobile Paul Fussell from grad study years at Rutgers.