During Christmas time my dad loves to eat mince pies.

We're now told that much of the media industry has come down with diversity fatigue. Before this malady, the story goes, the American Society of Newspaper Editors was committed to racial diversity.

She swept the peelings off the table onto the floor.

Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know.