David Brooks’ pop-sociologist attempts to tie yuppie consumption patterns (and the mere idea of the status game) directly to political leanings mean little in the USA, where most of our corporate class keeps a studied public distance from politics. (In private, of course, they shower Republicans with the proceeds from their tax cuts.) Yet Tobias Jones reports in “The New Republic”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060508&s=jones050806 that Italy’s limousine liberal set really can live it up in chic leftist style:

bq. Wearing Tod’s shoes (made by Diego Della Valle, a fierce critic of Berlusconi) suggests you lean left; so does facial hair (Berlusconi famously demanded that his parliamentarians shave off beards) and drinking Illy coffee (coffee magnate Riccardo Illy is the left-wing president of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region).