Familiar—but a little bit of both. It’s a commonplace
that English/British society is classful in a way that
American society is not. That may well be true (I’m not
qualified to judge), but America definitely has its own
class distinctions. I would have trouble, though, putting
them on a “lower, middle, upper-middle, upper”-type scale.
On the other hand, I guess the story struck me mainly as an
example of someone
using irony as a personality
statement,
which can be done without reference to class. Just today
when I was at the store I was idly playing with the idea of
buying a
Hello
Kitty
iPhone cover. (I am a 38-year-old male.)
Edit: I can’t think of an American analog of the garden
gnome (we have them over here, but if they’re as fraught as
they are over the pond it’s gone over my head), but when I
try to think of a home-and-garden decoration that I would
only display for irony (or maybe if a dear friend gave it to
me), I think of a Thomas Kinkade
painting.
I’m American and I thought it was quite funny.
Funny in abstract or funny as in hauntingly familiar? ;)
Familiar—but a little bit of both. It’s a commonplace that English/British society is classful in a way that American society is not. That may well be true (I’m not qualified to judge), but America definitely has its own class distinctions. I would have trouble, though, putting them on a “lower, middle, upper-middle, upper”-type scale.
On the other hand, I guess the story struck me mainly as an example of someone using irony as a personality statement, which can be done without reference to class. Just today when I was at the store I was idly playing with the idea of buying a Hello Kitty iPhone cover. (I am a 38-year-old male.)
Edit: I can’t think of an American analog of the garden gnome (we have them over here, but if they’re as fraught as they are over the pond it’s gone over my head), but when I try to think of a home-and-garden decoration that I would only display for irony (or maybe if a dear friend gave it to me), I think of a Thomas Kinkade painting.