[cross posted at NPR Check]

It kills me how clueless the supposed brightest lights in our nation often are. Yesterday on Morning Edition, Inskeep interviewed Gail Collins about a book (When Everything Changed) she wrote looking at the transformation of American women since 1960. I heard this little exchange and scratched my head.

Inskeep: "I feel like reading this, that you do get a sense of women not necessarily grasping an opportunity, but assuming an economic obligation."

Collins gets around to explaining this as follows:

Today, second person in two days to come to my door trying to sell me something, yesterday a "handy man," this time a builder. The builder said, "We don't have any work." He was driving around with a truckful of workers. He even had his name on the truck door; he'd been working until now. Usually the company works all year.

Nearby, a couple that is really quite old now were having their trees trimmed around their house in the woods. The worker--a licensed arborist--got caught harvesting trees off the back of their land, on town land. I was there and he said to me, "Why does the town care?" He had made a careful stack of the logs.