American Glossary

Departments

By The Editors

Ate and left no crumbs — How Democrats swept the midterm elections.

Crash out — J.D. Vance blames the Joos for losing.

Data Centers — Not in my town.

Demure — Anything but.

Drugstore Cowboy — Go to Nashville to see ’em.

Infinite Aura — What David Foster Wallace would have today, if he hadn’t killed himself.

Louisiana Miracle — Mebbe they ain’t so dumb.

Ossoff-AOC — The couple everyone is watching.

World Series — Annual reminder that God loves America.

Yankees — Annual reminder of how not to play baseball.

Departments

America by the Numbers

By The Editors

250 — Average Black Friday spending by Caucasian customers, in dollars

350 — Average Black Friday spending by African-American customers, in dollars

250,000 — Number of beers consumed by Milwaukee Brewers fans at the Brewers Championship Rally at Harry Maier Festival Park

20,000 — Average annual loss of income for graduating with a degree in the liberal arts, as measured against the median income of all university degree-holders, in dollars

49,800 — Base pay for a Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force, in dollars

80,166 — Starting base salary for a New York City public grade school teacher with a master’s degree, in dollars

81,800 — Average income of a data center construction worker, …

Departments

Bouquets & Brickbats

By The Editors

Bouquet

To the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, which preserves the history of the legendary Memphis record label through a stunning collection of artifacts that includes a reconstructed Mississippi Delta wooden church from 1906, as well as Isaac Hayes’s peacock-blue, gold-trimmed and gold-plated superfly 1972 Cadillac Eldorado, complete with a white fur-lined interior, a television, and a refrigerator. Trust us, you don’t want to miss a visit to this place, or to the nearby Sun Studios, where rock ‘n’ roll music was born, and where Elvis, Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison all recorded.

Listen, Memphis gets a bad rap as a cesspool of crime, which it is. It is the place where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Rapper Young Dolph was killed in Memphis while standing in line at …