xBlog: The original visual thinking weblog

“David Brooks, cultural observer and author of Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, proposed an alternative analysis of the American political scene in his New York Times column recently. ‘There are two sorts of people in the information-age elite, spreadsheet people and paragraph people,” wrote Brooks. ‘Spreadsheet people work with numbers, wear loafers and support Republicans. Paragraph people work with prose, don’t shine their shoes as often as they should and back Democrats.’ He went on to point out that ‘C.E.O.’s are classic spreadsheet people,’ five times more likely to donate to Bush than Kerry, and ‘Professors, on the other hand, are classic paragraph people,’ with Kerry donors outnumbering Bush donors eleven to one.”