How do you tell a Democrat from a Republican? It's easy, says Tim Goeglin, deputy chief of staff to Karl Rove: Ask what they want their children to be when they grow up. Republicans, Goeglin told the WaPo, "think of medicine, we think of law, we think of business." And Democrats? Goeglin mocks: "[G]ee, I hope my son grows up to be a great playwright or painter or poet." Seeing as how he based this observation on the dinner party conversation of 12 people, Goeglin's own background clearly isn't scientific. And why is Goeglin strategizing at all? Rove gets his first born, anyway.
Adding to this Brooksian armchair sociology, author (and Republican!) Mark Helprin makes the smug and fraudulent observation that "at one point, a million people reported to the IRS that they were writers. Helprin believes only 50 to 100 people at a time can be successful in that occupation." Did it hurt when he pulled that figure out of his ass?
The nugget of unintentional truth in Helprin's faux statistic is the belief that children should be warned away from creative pursuits because only a small number of them can be "successful" at it. It would take a callous Democrat indeed to hope her child becomes a bitter, lonely unsuccessful writer (Hi, mom!). Along those lines: Only at a Washington dinner party "in Northwest" (as the article says) would you find a group of parents who, when asked about their wishes for their kids, run down a list that included career plan, choice of college, sexual orientation and country club, while "happy" barely cracks the top ten.
