You’ve probably seen the Web site called Stuff White People Like, because at this point not having some familiarity with it is a flashing, neon sign signaling your total unhipness. The site’s popularity skyrocketed earlier this year, with readership increasing tenfold in the space of a single month. It’s easy to see why: SWPL is a straight-faced, gentle but unmistakably mocking look at white culture (although it’s clear after just a few minutes on the site that in this case, “white” is more of a cultural mindset than actual skin color). A book by the same name was quickly rushed into print a few months ago, and as this review from The Atlantic explains, there are more layers to the essays than are readily apparent at first. In fact, the review says, it’s impossible to not notice the smug intolerance of the well-educated elite on whom SWPL focuses. For all the attention paid to what white people like, there’s no mistaking what they don’t much like: mainstream, middle-class America.

There has been much media attention paid to the recent economic meltdown, and that’s appropriate because it’s important. But it quickly starts to become white noise, with the result being that many details get ignored. It was alarming, then, that only yesterday did I learn, via this piece, exactly how close the financial system came to doomsday. Reading it left me with the sensation of waking up one morning and learning that during the night a civilization-ending meteor had brushed by Earth so closely that tall buildings swayed in its wake. (Yeah, I know that at such proximity Earth’s gravity would actually cause it to collide, but work with me here.)

You may have tuned into the minor flap that erupted in recent days when it was revealed that U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken had generated the idea for this skit on “Saturday Night Live.” The skit makes fun of John McCain, and Franken is stridently liberal, of course, and that was all it took for it to become an issue. What was lost in the discussion was the fact that the skit was pretty damn funny.

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