A Sociological Eye

  This is a portrait of Elihu Yale and his intimates being served by an enslaved boy wearing a padlocked collar. I’m showing it to you because I want to talk about Yale Law School, and specifically its graduate JD Vance. A funny thing about Vance's Hillbilly Elegy book: the man believes he had a unique experience, because he felt like an outsider when attending an Ivy League university. He didn't come from a background of wealth and prep schools and world travel. He was at a loss as to how to handle his cutlery when taken out to a fancy restaurant by a potential employer, because the place settings included a salad fork and dinner fork, a soup spoon and teaspoon, a steak knife and a butter knife. And when he went back to his hometown, he found he did not want to brag to strangers about going to Yale. If they were the kind of people who would disrespect him unless he shared that credential, then they weren't people he wanted to bootlick, and if they were ordinary locals...

  When I was growing up, gathering with the Italian-immigrant quadrant of my family meant that every meal began with the same ritual: everyone present wishing the rest of the family "buon appetit'!" May you have a good appetite! May you feel hungry, find this meal delightful and satisfying, and eat well. This is a very common world practice. The French say "bon app é tit;" in Finnish it is h yvää ruokahalua;  and in Korean  맛있게 드세요 .  Why? People wish one another pleasure in a meal as a social gesture of goodwill, just as you'd wish someone a good trip when they are about to travel. It's a gesture of hospitality. And it is also a wish for health, because we must eat well to survive, and traditional societies have always had a dread, not just of famines, but of the failing individual appetite that signifies that someone they care for is ailing. Will someone please remind contemporary American doctors of this fact? Recently, there's been a lot of repor...