Big house a symbol of an American tragedy

The Boston Globe ^ | 1-28-07 | Beverly Beckham

[BronzePencil]

It sits on top of a hill, overlooking a busy road -- a big, pink stucco house that dwarfs all the houses around it. It is conspicuous consumption at its worst, or at its best, depending on your point of view.

It's not the biggest house around. There are many bigger -- one just a few miles from where I live, not on top of a hill but practically on the offramp of a highway. So many smaller houses have been knocked down to make room for these Goliaths. This is called progress.

I don't understand who lives in these massive homes or who can afford them

[patton]

Is there air on your planet, or do you breathe methane, or something?

[darkangel82]

WTF? "An American tragedy?" No, 9/11 was a tragedy. The idiocy of leftists never fails to astound me.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Not for me, My wife and I have ample room at 1750.

[etlib]

"I don't understand who lives in these massive homes or who can afford them"

Many of the very large houses here in California are family complexes intended for a compete extended family grandparents and great-grandparents down. This is especially the case for large houses which are built in middle class areas. Not so much the case for areas set up for "upper class" mansions.

A family of productive members can afford 3 or 4 bedrooms for each married couple with a large shared kitchen and gathering area much more easily than a house for each.

[Howlin]

We have a lot of stuff.

[johnmark7]

I didn't read much of the article. Just the comments.

I do find it kind of funny that my house, a 50's ranch at 1200 sq ft, was built for people with larger families, while these 2500 - 3000 sq ft McMansions I see going up everywhere are for much smaller families. So much space to have to maintain, heat, chill, and clean. My "little" place was perfect for three.

Think of the money a family could save by living in a 50's house and investing those savings. They could retire very well off. (But maybe they will anyway?)

My only objection is that the new homes are so ugly, boring, uniform, and cheaply built.

My 50's home is ugly and was built as cheaply as possible, too, but some of the standard materials were better then. Some are better now. But I hear nothing but complaints from owners of the new homes about shoddy work.

[longtermmemmory]

could it be that the Boston Globe is trying to push the cookie cutter tiny townhouses that dominate their Real Estate Advertising section?

Could it be that by denegrating the Big Dream house and promoting the crap produced by their developer advertisers, the Boston Globe hopes to sell a few more add pages? Perhaps even give the sales department of their devoloper advertisers a "news article" to point to when they con some consumer in to buy the dreck that passes for new home construction.


This article is about the dinosaur media creating news in order to sell advertising.

It is as insidious as push polling.

[I see my hands]

It wasn't a question I asked. I was quoting the author of the article.

[P.O.E.]

big, pink stucco house

Just goes to show money can't buy you good taste.

[etlib]

It wasn't a question I asked. I was quoting the author of the article.

I know. I was also going to agree with your statement about owners being productive but decided I really didn't have anything significant to add. I probably should have changed this to a response to the original post but didn't think to do so.

[Billthedrill]

I bet she'd find that 70-80% of those castle-on-the-hill denizens are liberals who vote democrat.

Hooboy, did you ever nail that one.

[Cicero]

Yes, although I don't think it's a barn. Apparently it's a basketball court.

[Lancey Howard]

For simpletons like Beverly Beckham and the Boston Globe, the answer is obvious - - big government should confiscate and more fairly redistribute everybody's money.

[RockinRight]

Why doesn't this author ask John Edwards about his house?

[RockinRight]

Last time I looked, NY's school janitors were earning close to $100K!

And still can't afford a starter home.

[Lancey Howard]

I love reading pieces like this in the Globe because the nameless target of their upper-middle-class guilt is probably a Democrat and assuredly a liberal.

Oh no. Nope. The Boston Globe's targets are ALWAYS Republicans.

Normal people would read this silly column and understandably presume that there must be some connection to all the recent stories about John Edwards' decadent mansion in Chapel Hill. But no - - I guarantee you that that connection would NEVER be made by anybody at the Boston Globe.

[longtermmemmory]

I think beverly is writing an article to help push the development products advertised by the developers. She is trying to save her job by writing a story to encourage advertising in the boston globe.

If developers can't sell their home owner association manure then she is out of a job.

[RockinRight]

I think there is a reasonable medium here. A 1200 square foot home might be too small. Doesn't mean you need 3400.

[marsh_of_mists]

I think you're on the right track, but I don't think that that's quite it. Liberals--rich, middle-class, and poor--have an ideal in their head of how the world should be and everyone else must conform to that ideal. In their ideal world, the vast majority of people are pleasant peasants living on little family farms with red barns and picket fences, raising tasty organic foods. This pastoral paradise is periodically broken by sprawling academies where the academic enlightened ones debate esoteric, erudite, rarified things that the peons can't possibly understand, but that's okay because they are well cared for by the benevolent elites. Then there are the big cities, inhabited by these same benevolent elites (which the fantasizing liberal is naturally a member of), who live in gleaming high rises and spend there days partaking in trendy and eclectic "culture" with those in circle. Occasionally, they enjoy observing the simpler lifestyle of the peasantry, which they do by weekending in mansions in the country, where they can visit farmer's markets and main street mom-and-pop stores in between their skiing outings. In this world, there likely is also a proleteriat whose job it is to provide an "authentic urban culture" experience to which the elites can condescend.

We all may have fantasies of our ideal world from time to time. We wish everyone would act the way we want them to act. We wish everyone would live in the kind of houses we want them to. But mature people realize that while it is okay to whimsically fantasize of utopias, it is not okay to try to impose on people in the real world, which liberals constantly try to do, primarily through the governmental mandate, as well as by taking control of our societal instituations and manipulating them to their own agenda.

[RockinRight]

Sounds like it IS about 700 square feet larger in living area, but that sounds about right considering that.