1 It's worth your while to read the entire article. And the author is a self-described connoisseur of excellent bourbon and good cigars. What's not to like? I myself haven't gotten as far as the cigars, but I'm well into the bourbon and figure that will make up for it.

2 And I just happened to think that NPR reminds me of the person who insists that "I'm not a racist; I don't have a problem with ni***rs!"

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4 I  go to the Hill Cigar Company once a year to buy my brother cigars for Christmas and buy a couple for myself at that time. The place is full of connoisseurs and I can see how people would get into it. But I wouldn't because it's a very expensive taste. A cigar under ten bucks is for the hoi poloi. Most of the cigar afficionados smoke the twenty to thirty buck kind, and they buy whole boxes of them at a time. It's truly a thing of the wealthy  who are out of touch.

GOOD bourbon is too, although not as much as Scotch Whiskey perhaps. But it's expensive.

Yeah; that backhanded racism thing is about right.

Once when I was working in real estate I had a man come in. He was well dressed, with a pencil-thin mustache and persnicky manner. He had just been hired to teach at a university in an outlying farm community and he wanted to move into St. Louis because "of all the racists in that hillbilly town." He was white and said he wanted to live in a multi-racial, culturally diverse area. So I got outthe list of places we had for rent and circled all the ones that would probably work, as they were near the highway he would have to take (it would be an hour drive each way). Many were in areas that were majority or predominantly black.

His eyes grew wide as saucers "Oh, those are some bad neighborhoods!" and he stumbled out the door with a "I'll call  you."

He didn't really want to live in a multiethnic neighborhood; he wanted to live in a trendy white neighborhood that had a few blacks in it for window dressing, so they could feel like hip were hip and morally superior. Most of the neighborhoods I suggested were ones I would have no problem living in myself and met the other criteria he wanted. But he was unhappy I didn't read the code.

So very liberal of him - and just like this NPR guy.

5 You had him spotted twice. First, with the "all the racists in that hillbilly town" remark, and second with the "oh, those are some really bad neighborhoods" remark. You weren't in a position to point out that he hadn't lived in either of them and really had no way of evaluating them, but it would have been interesting if you had. I wonder where he ended up living and if he was able to tolerate it?

6 Good point Dana. He had no way to know if he wanted to live in either neighborhood.

What galled me was he was teaching at a farm college and held the people who went there in such contempt. These "racist hillbillies" were his students/customers. Why did he take the job if he felt that way?

He probably moved into University City (home of Washington University). That has long been the trendy chic interracial neighborhood.

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7 Guy probably couldn't get a "better" job than the farm college gig. But if he had gone into it with his whole heart, he might well have found that teaching at that "farm college," he'd have learned more than he could teach. Farmers may not know Socrates and Aristotle but they know the weather, the seasons of the year, when to plant and what, and other such wisdom. Spend some time talking to a farmer and you come out of it knowing things you didn't know before. I know; I had cousins who were farmers.