Educated white woman fight! Watch your loafers.

Today, Salon scribe Megan Hustad's new piece, "You Are Not Your Bookcase," argues that "fave lists" — a person's "Heroes" on MySpace or "Favorite Books" on Facebook, for instance — are silly, juvenile forays into bullshit people need to abandon. To make her point, Hustad calls on the succincter, better Virginia Postrel, who says particular segments of society's eagerness to compartmentalize themselves "has turned us into self-handicapping snobs: Since we've taken so much care to craft our own perfect list, we feel more entitled to shrug off anyone whose list doesn't similarly impress." It's right on, but it's also a slap in the face of a New York Times piece smug masturbators from Brooklyn to Manhattan slavered over a month ago.

Remember Rachel Donadio's "It’s Not You, It’s Your Books"? If no, it was this sad, widely read essay about arrogant jerks who break up with people not because they are stupid, but because their books are, and it encapsulated in less than 5,000 words what's wrong with this city (this industry, this country, our friends, etc). Among others, the article contained this irksome wonder:

“I’ve broken up with girls saying, ‘She doesn’t read, we had nothing to talk about,’” said Christian Lorentzen, an editor at Harper’s. Lorentzen recalls giving one girlfriend Nabokov’s “Ada” — since it’s “funny and long and very heterosexual, even though I guess incest is at its core.” The relationship didn’t last, but now, he added, “I think it’s on her Friendster profile as her favorite book.”

Don't fret, it's alright to puke. When you're done, side with Hustad, who spells out what anyone who's lived in a big city and then gone to a real shitkicker bar in the South already knows: "Too clever for 'dumb' books, they never learn that even banal prose can illuminate experience."

We liked the sentiment so much we delved into Hustad's Web site to learn more about her dalliances with mediocrity, at which point we stumbled across this:

She holds a degree in history from the University of Minnesota, [This line is tricky. “University of Minnesota” lacks the wow-factor that some other schools do. On the other hand, it’s more likely to appeal to people in the Midwest--like my family--who also spend money on books at times. ... ]

Seriously, it's alright to puke.