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Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @08:56AM (#11620160)
Are you from the UK, would you call David Beckham (say) Upper Class?

He's as wealthy as they come but pretty clearly working class IMO.

Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by coldtea on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @10:56AM (#11621211)
That's because the British think of class as some BS blue-blooded royal thing.

Beckham is by no means "working class" -- though he might have been born as such.

He is just not royalty and hadn't grown up from families owing castles and being members in the house of lords.

Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @12:47PM (#11622247)
It's not snobbery, no one is looking down [well few are] on Beckham saying "oh he's only working class". Football is a working class game, it's players are primarily working class; that's a great source of pride for many.

I'm (lower) middle class, earn less than a lot of working class people; there are different cultural circles that follow different lines to financial worth. That's how the class system is seen here.

Being royalty wouldn't make him any better, just different, probably make him far worse in many people's eyes but if he were royal he'd be part of the peerage whether he lived in a council flat or a palace.

Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by coldtea on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @01:14PM (#11622485)
>It's not snobbery, no one is looking down [well few are] on Beckham saying "oh he's only working class"

On Beckham no. On working class people but not Beckham-rich, many.

I've had some experience with BBC people.

All the technicians and lower level staff were working class.

All the journalists were public school people (in UK, "public school" actually means: expensive prestigious school).

They didn't seem to have any social connection, didn't even eat all together at the same table at the end of work -- each group had their own table. And I'm not talking famous journalists and tv-stars snubbing mere mortals: it was just actual run of the mill reporters and journalists.

You don't get this behavior in where I come from.

I was also surprised to find out that from Monty Python to Mr. Bean (R.A), and Hugh Laurie, Fry, etc, almost all famous TV comedians (at least up to the 90s) in Britain were public school people -- and all of these were specifically Cambridge and Oxford. Which shows what it took to be on TV back in the day. You don't get that in the US either.

Re:TV’s Dwindling Middle Class by ghaff on Tuesday May 03, 2016 @07:45PM (#11625135)
>Which shows what it took to be on TV back in the day. You don't get that in the US either.

Not to the same degree certainly. But historically, the eastern journalism establishment (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, the network news operations) drew very heavily from the Ivy League and related schools