Charles Murray and the Guys at the Poker Table

My friend Mark Barrett writes that some friends invited him to meet them at the casino in Pittsburgh, “and the entire time I’m there I’m thinking about Charles Murray and the state of working class America. Then of course I’m thinking how weird I am for thinking about this.”  (You will probably know that feeling.) And then a few days later he reads a Financial Times  interview with Murray and finds that

He discloses that he sometimes plays poker at a casino in Charles Town, West Virginia, and that he will, in fact, head over there after our lunch has finished. “The ways in which it reinvigorates your confidence in America is really interesting,” Murray says.

“I remember sitting at a table a couple of months ago. And at a poker table there’s lots of camaraderie. And so here I am at a typical table at Charles Town. Big guys with lots of tattoos, sleeveless T-shirts, one of them an accountant, the other looks like he comes from a gang. There was an Iranian-American and Afghan-American. Incredible polyglot mix of people – all speak perfect idiomatic English – and the conversation turned to the fact that my daughter was going to marry an Italian. ‘Well, do you trust him?’ they said. ‘You know, you can’t trust those Italians.’”

Murray guffaws at the recollection. “The thing is, it was such an American conversation,” he says. What would they say if he told them he had just eaten truffles in an Italian restaurant with the Financial Times ? “Oh, I think they would be very amused,” he replies. “The thing is, I would like to take these parents who insist their children go to the best preschools and then Yale, etc, etc, and grab them by the scruff of their necks and take them to the Charles Town poker room and say, ‘These people are really fun and smart, and [your children] are missing all of that.’”

For the editor’s thoughts on Charles Murray’s insights, see The One Percent from the March issue.