In the middle of an article about the supposed disappearance of the New York accent, the left-leaning columnist in the Times Sunday Metropolitan section (in which there is no right-leaning columnist) hits us with this:
The film, though, is not intended as a sophisticated lesson in linguistics but instead as a tribute to what New York sounded like when the working class stood as a more central cultural presence. Or rather, when they stood as a presence at all, before the vibe of the city came to be dominated by the world of $15 million apartments on the one hand, and housing projects with yearlong waits for repairs on the other.
Readers hoping they might get a Times article about New York accents without having to endure a geschrei about the supposed decline of the "working class" are left disappointed. Does the Times author think that the people who buy $15 million apartments do not work? There are vast areas of the Bronx, Staten Island, Upper Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn full of people who live in neither housing projects nor $15 million apartments. Some of these people might be "working class," by the definition of the Times reporter, who, concerned as she is about class boundaries, doesn't bother to offer us a definition.