New York Times book critic Dwight Garner did not enjoy the new book about Harper Lee, The Mockingbird Next Door. In justifying that opinion, he takes an odd detour into... fast food criticism? Class commentary? Something like that.

"[O]f course, most elites didn't go to state schools," writes Matt Phillips on Quartz. His subject is the debate over college debt and whether or not it's a big deal—in his estimation, the complaints about heavy individual educational debt demonstrate the narcissism of "a vocal, college-educated group" that "dominates the mediascape."

Your college professors are racist and sexist as all get-out, says science.

I'm a recovering debutante. I wouldn't go as far as saying a belle because I ain't with that frilly froo froo. Or girdles. I have a brain and I use it. I don’t own too many slips, or dresses, or wear much white. I don’t own a lacy parasol except for that one time where I had to accessorize with my lace ribbons for my annual Olan Mills photo.

This week, veteran journalist Nate Thayer posted to his personal blog an email exchange he'd recently had with an editor from the Atlantic. The editor was asking Thayer to take something he'd already written and adapt a shorter version for use on the Atlantic's website, but there was a catch: The editor wanted Thayer to do it for free. "I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years," Thayer wrote, "and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to [for-profit] media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children."

Fashion news: Isabella Blow x Pink Flamingos = "genuinely original." (Also "no child of privilege" = went to Spence.)

Last month, the Guardian compared the popularity of different names across various groups in Britain—journalists against convicts against corporate directors, for instance ("Ian" fits all three). Among the findings was a Venn diagram comparing the names of current Oxford students to the most popular baby names of 1994, around when today's undergraduate cohort was born.

Depressing information for the normal set: a new study from an economist at UC Davis has found that social mobility, while still a cool concept, is not really happening. By following the rare surnames of prosperous Swedes (prosperous Swedes wake up every morning, clad in their flaxen robes, singing "I am a prosperous Sweeeeede!"), Gregory Clark found that the names of elite families in the 18th century still make up more than their correct proportion of premium jobs. According to The Economist:

Rich asshole Mitt Romney released his 2010 tax returns and an estimated return for 2011 this morning. Together they total more than 500 pages, because purposefully structuring your wealth so as to maximally exploit the massive tax loopholes you have lobbied for over the decades is very complicated. The topline: Romney made $45 million in 2010 and 2011, almost exclusively from sitting there and watching his investments belch out money. He paid a tax rate of 13.9%. According the IRS, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid an average tax rate of 16% in 2008. Way to shave off those pennies, Mitt!

As the first week of the #occupywallstreet protest against corporate stuff draws to a close, some classy capitalists have decided to dust off their favorite Nixon-era jargon and hold a champagne-soaked counter-protest of their own. Free laxative-enriched muffins for all "hippies," LOL.

A new survey reveals that U.S. colleges increasingly favor rich students who can pay their way without financial assistance even if they're dumber than poorer kids (unlikely). For you poor kids out there, this is good news: You can stop studying now. It doesn't matter anymore.

Classy American racist Donald Trump is enjoying his post-almost-presidency repose the way any exceedingly wealthy titan of industry would: By trying to peddle cheesy photos of himself and his family to tabloids for $20,000.

Virginia restaurateur Henry Allen Fitzsimmons has hit upon a welfare plan the GOP can get behind: He sought out vulnerable young women who needed help and gave them money for education and childcare. All he asked in return was that they submit to being spanked, by him, on demand.

Real Housewives of New York star LuAnn "Crackerjacks" de Lesseps, an American countess, lives a life of rarefied class and privilege that us gutter dwellers can only dream of. So what is it like for her when she and her lordling children decide to see how the common man lives? Well, it is very frightening! But also enriching. In an interview with Brick Underground, the noblewoman discusses one such experience, riding a New York City subway car.

This student is so absorbed in the game he's listening to on his headphones, that he forgets where he is (a lecture hall) and what he's supposed to be doing (learning).

The police department of Lincoln, Nebraska has a crimestoppers website where they post America's Most Wanted-like videos about local criminals. Today's entry: an uncomfortably anthropological girlfight play-by-play featuring a Mickey Mouse hat, flying hair, and a public bus.

Charles Mudede, a blogger for the The Stranger, the alternative weekly that serves cutesy raintown Seattle, wrote a post today about people who were robbed by a fraud i-banker and were understandably upset about it. And his post is insane?

Canada's women's hockey team took the Olympic Gold yesterday, at which point its members commenced the traditional Canadian victory ritual of getting shit-drunk on a massive slab of ice while wearing jerseys. For some reason, people got upset.

Louis Auchincloss, whose austere novels exposed and defined the cloistered world of white coastal privilege in which he was raised, has died following a stroke.

The ever-thoughtful Andrea Peyser uses her recently acquired New York Post column to accuse New York Times reporter and former Taliban abductee David Rohde of coddling terrorists because he wrote about how they kidnapped, humiliated, and, um, terrorized him.