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Andrei Zhdanov

Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (Андрей Александрович Жданов; 26 February 1896 – 31 August 1948) was a Soviet politician. He was the Soviet Union's "propagandist-in-chief" after the Second World War, and was responsible for developing the Soviet cultural policy, the Zhdanov Doctrine, which remained in effect until the death of Joseph Stalin. Zhdanov was considered Stalin's most likely successor but died before him.

Zhdanov joined the Bolsheviks in 1915 and quickly rose through the party ranks. A close associate of Stalin, he became a secretary of the Central Committee in 1934, and later that year he was promoted to Leningrad party chief following the assassination of Sergei Kirov. He would go on to play a major role during the Great Purge. In 1939, he was promoted to full membership of the Politburo and as head of the Central Committee's Propaganda Department. Zhdanov's political standing was undermined during the Second World War due to his association with the Soviet–Finnish War and the failed Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Nevertheless, he played a leading role in the Soviet takeover of Estonia and defense of Leningrad.

After the war, Zhdanov was tasked by Stalin with directing cultural policy. His campaign, known as the Zhdanovshchina, was strictly enforced and led to the denouncement of artists including Anna Akhmatova and Dmitri Shostakovich. He also oversaw the creation of the Cominform in 1947. Initially considered the successor-in-waiting to Stalin, Zhdanov suffered from ill health and fell out of favour as a result of the Tito–Stalin split. He died of heart failure in 1948, resulting in a rise in the political fortunes of Georgy Malenkov.

Early life
Zhdanov was born on 26 February 1896 in Mariupol, Mariupol uezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), where his father, Alexander Alekseevich Zhdanov (1860-1909), was a school inspector. His maternal grandfather was the former rector of the Moscow Theological Academy. He studied at the Moscow Commercial Institute. In 1914, he was drafted into the Russian army, graduated from an officers' school and served in the reserves. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1915. In 1917, he was chairman of the Shadrinsk committee of the Bolsheviks. He was a political commissar in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and was elected chairman of the Tver Governorate soviet in 1923. From 1924 to 1934, he was first secretary of the Nizhny Novgorod provincial party committee.

Party secretary
Zhdanov's first major promotion came at the end of the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in February 1934, when he was transferred to Moscow as a secretary of the Central Committee, responsible for ideology. In that capacity, he inserted his protégé, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, as secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers, and gave the opening address to the first Soviet Writers' Congress in August 1934. In his speech, as well as paying tribute to "the guiding genius of our great leader and teacher, Comrade Stalin", he repeated Stalin's famous line that writers are "engineers of human souls". He declared that the only good literature was political:

"Our Soviet literature is not afraid of the charge of being 'tendentious'. Yes, Soviet literature is tendentious, for in an epoch of class struggle there is not and cannot be a literature which is not class literature, not tendentious, allegedly non-political."

Zhdanov's second great promotion followed the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, when he succeeded Kirov as first secretary of the Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) provincial party and was co-opted as a candidate member of the Politburo. Early in 1935, he and the head of the Leningrad NKVD, Leonid Zakovsky, organised the deportation of 11,702 so-called "Leningrad aristocrats", people who had belonged to the nobility or the middle class before the revolution. They also hunted any current or former party members suspected of having supported Leon Trotsky or the former Leningrad party boss, Grigory Zinoviev.

Role in the Great Purge
Zhdanov has been described by J. Arch Getty as a key figure in the Great Purge, who advocated an approach that would make the party a vehicle for political education, ideological agitation and cadre preparation on a mass scale. Zhdanov's encouragement of rank-and-file mobilisation helped create momentum for the Great Terror. Though somewhat less active than Vyacheslav Molotov, Joseph Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich and Kliment Voroshilov, Zhdanov was a major perpetrator of the Great Terror and personally approved 176 documented execution lists. On a holiday with Stalin in August 1936, he co-signed the telegram that brought about the dismissal of the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda, who was accused, among other failings, of having impeded Zhdanov and Leonid Zakovsky in their purge of the Leningrad party organisation. During a Central Committee plenum in March 1937, Zhdanov announced that all provincial party secretaries were to be subject to re-election, a device that was used to remove them. Zhdanov was one of the few provincial party leaders in Russia to remain in post throughout the Great Purge.

In May 1937, he called leaders of the Leningrad party together to tell them that the long-time second secretary of the provincial party, Mikhail Chudov, and the former Mayor of Leningrad, Ivan Kodatsky, had been arrested. When an Old Bolshevik, Dora Lazurkina, went up to him afterwards to vouch for Kodatsky, Zhdanov warned her that such talk "will end badly for you". She was arrested and survived 17 years in the gulag.

After the Great Purge
In September 1938, Zhdanov was appointed head of the reorganised Central Committee Directorate for Propaganda and Agitation, which brought all branches of the news media and arts under centralised party control. He was also Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from July 1938 to June 1947 and from 1938 he was on the military council of the Soviet Navy.

His rise coincided with the fall of Nikolai Yezhov. At the 18th Party Congress, Zhdanov noted that "other means apart from repression" could be used to enforce "state and labour discipline". Zhdanov gave a key speech in which he proposed "to abolish mass Party purges... now that the capitalist elements have been eliminated". He declared that the purges had been co-opted by "hostile elements" to "persecute and ruin honest people".

At the conclusion of the Congress in March 1939, Zhdanov was promoted to full membership of the Politburo. He was still one of four secretaries of the Central Committee—the others being Stalin, Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev, and Georgy Malenkov—but Malenkov was not a member of the Politburo, which meant that Zhdanov had replaced Lazar Kaganovich as Stalin's deputy in the party apparatus and appeared to be his most likely successor.

On 29 June 1939, he had a signed article in Pravda in which he expressed what he called his "personal" view "with which my friends do not agree" that Britain and France did not seriously want a military alliance with the Soviet Union. In retrospect, it was the first public hint of the Soviets signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact three months later.

Wartime
Zhdanov was very publicly associated with the decision to invade Finland in November 1939. In December, he signed the treaty between the Soviets and Finnish puppet government, headed by Otto Wille Kuusinen. As the Leningrad party boss and the official overseeing the navy, he had an interest in increasing the Soviet presence in the Baltic Sea at the expense of Finland, Estonia and Latvia. The final peace treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union was signed by Zhdanov on 12 March 1940.

In June 1940, Zhdanov was sent to Estonia to supervise the establishment of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic and its annexation by the Soviet Union. In the United States House of Representatives' 1953–1954 Kersten Committee investigation Zhdanov was one of the accused charged with the 1940 Soviet aggression and forced incorporation of the Baltic states into the USSR.

The Finnish debacle weakened Zhdanov's political standing. In September 1940 he was removed from direct control of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee, which was taken over by Georgy Aleksandrov, an ally of his rival Malenkov. He was undermined further by the German invasion of the Soviet Union because he had been so publicly associated with the failed pact with Hitler. He was excluded from the State Defense Committee (GOKO), which directed the war effort and was initially controlled by Malenkov and Lavrentiy Beria. According to the historian Anton Antonov-Ovseenko:

"Beria and Malenkov zealously sawed away at the chair holding Andrei Zhdanov, the first in line to succeed Stalin. They laid the groundwork for his transfer to the doomed city of Leningrad. No place was found for Zhdanov, Stalin's favourite, even when the State Defence Committee was revamped."

Along with Georgy Zhukov, Zhdanov took a leading role during the Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War. In August 1941, he created a City Defence Council but was ordered by Stalin to disband it. When the siege was lifted, he was not officially given credit for saving the city.

After the Moscow Armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union was signed on 4 September 1944, Zhdanov directed the Allied Control Commission in Finland to the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947. That meant that he had to spend several months in Helsinki and relinquish his position as head of the Leningrad party organisation, which he had held for nine years, but he was able to leave it in the hands of his ally, Alexey Kuznetsov. In January 1945, when Pravda celebrated the lifting of the Siege of Leningrad, it emphasised that Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov had been dispatched to the city in 1941 and implied that they shared the credit with Zhdanov.

Post-war ascendancy
Zhdanov made a political comeback during 1946, when his main rival, Malenkov, temporarily lost his position as a party secretary. For the next two years, he was delegated by Stalin to direct the Soviet Union's cultural policy and to handle relations with the Eastern European states under or coming under communist control. He formulated what became known as the Zhdanov Doctrine ("The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best"). In December 1946, he launched the attack on Anna Akhmatova and Mikhail Zoshchenko, two writers living in Zhdanov's former Leningrad fiefdom. He described Akhmatova, arguably then the greatest living Russian poet, as "half nun, half whore". Zhdanov was the founding editor-in-chief of the Agitprop journal Kultura i zhizn which he held until 1948.

In 1947, he organised the Cominform, which was designed to coordinate and control the communist parties around the world. At a famous speech at Szklarska Poręba in September 1947, Zhdanov warned his fellow communists that the world was now split into two hostile camps and that the Cominform was needed to oppose the "frank expansionist programme" of the US.

In January 1948, he presided over a three-day conference in the Kremlin, to which more than 70 composers, musicians and music critics, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Aram Khachaturian, and Nikolai Myaskovsky were summoned to be lectured by Zhdanov on why they should avoid "formalism" in music. A persistent story is that Zhdanov played the piano during the conference to demonstrate how music should be written, but years later that story was furiously denied by Shostakovich, who attributed it to "toadies". Zhdanov's cultural policy rested on the Soviets' "critically assimilating the cultural heritage of all nations and all times" to "take what was most inspiring".

Fall from power and later life
In June 1948, Stalin sent Zhdanov to the Cominform meeting in Bucharest. Its purpose was to condemn Yugoslavia, but Zhdanov took a more restrained line than his co-delegate and rival, Georgy Malenkov. That infuriated Stalin, who removed Zhdanov from all his posts and replaced him with Malenkov. Zhdanov was soon transferred to a sanatorium.

Death
Zhdanov died on 31 August 1948 in Moscow of heart failure. It is possible that his death was the result of an intentional misdiagnosis. Zhdanov was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin's Mausoleum and the Moscow Kremlin Wall.

Legacy
Despite his bullying of Akhmatova, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and other cultural figures, and the apparent threat that the founding of Cominform posed to peace, Zhdanov is reckoned by many Soviet scholars to have been a "moderate" within the context of the post-war Stalinist regime. The worst events of Stalin's final years, such as the rift with Yugoslavia, the Leningrad affair, the show trials in Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the anti-Semitic Doctors' plot all occurred after Zhdanov was dead. The Leningrad Affair was a brutal purge of Zhdanov's former allies, notably Kuznetsov and Nikolai Voznesensky. The most notable survivor of that purge was future Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin.

In Khrushchev Remembers, Nikita Khrushchev recalled that Zhdanov was an alcoholic and that during his last days, Stalin would shout at him to stop drinking and insist on him drinking only fruit juice. Stalin had talked of Zhdanov being his successor, but Zhdanov's ill health gave his rivals in the Politburo Lavrentiy Beria, Georgy Malenkov, and Nikita Khrushchev, an opportunity to undermine him. Stalin would later blame Zhdanov's death on Kremlin doctors and "Zionist" conspirators.

Zhdanovshchina
Zhdanovshchina was the emphasis on purified communist ideology developed during the war by Zhdanov. It emerged from his arguments inside the party hierarchy opposing the pragmatist faction of Georgy Malenkov. Malenkov stressed the universal values of science and engineering, and proposed to promote the technological experts to the highest positions in the Soviet administrative elite. Zhdanov's faction said proper ideology trumped science and called for prioritizing political education and ideological purity.

However, the technocrats had proven amazingly successful during the war in terms of engineering, industrial production, and the development of advanced munitions. Zhdanov sought to use the ideological purification of the party as a vehicle to restore the Kremlin's political control over the provinces and the technocrats. He worried that the provincial party bosses and the heads of the economic ministries had achieved too high a degree of autonomy during the war, when the top leadership realized the urgent necessity of maximum mobilization of human and material resources. The highest priority in the post-war era was physical reconstruction after the massive wartime destruction.

The same argument that strengthened the technocrats continued to operate, and the united opposition of Malenkov, the technocrats, the provincial party bosses, and the key ministries doomed Zhdanov's proposals. He therefore pivoted to devote his attention to purification of the arts and culture.

Cultural standards
Originating in 1946 and lasting until the late 1950s, Zhdanov's ideological code, known as the Zhdanov Doctrine or Zhdanovism (zhdanovshchina), defined cultural production in the Soviet Union. Zhdanov intended to create a new philosophy of artistic creation valid for the entire world. His method reduced all of culture to a sort of chart, wherein a given symbol corresponded to a simple moral value.

Zhdanov and his associates further sought to eliminate foreign influence from Soviet art, proclaiming that "incorrect art" was an ideological diversion. This doctrine suggested that the world was split into two opposing camps, namely the "imperialistic", led by the United States; and the "democratic", led by the Soviet Union. The one sentence that came to define his doctrine was "The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best".

This cultural policy became strictly enforced, censoring writers, artists and the intelligentsia, with punishment being applied for failing to conform to what was considered acceptable by Zhdanov's standards. This policy officially ended in 1952, seen as having a negative impact on culture within the Soviet Union. The origins of this policy can be seen before 1946 when critics proposed (wrongly according to Zhdanov) that Russian classics had been influenced by famous foreign writers, but the policy came into effect specifically to target "apolitical, 'bourgeois', individualistic works of the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko and the poet Anna Akhmatova", respectively writing for the literary magazines Zvezda and Leningrad. On 20 February 1948, Zhdanovshchina shifted its focus towards anti-formalism, targeting composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich. That April, many of the persecuted composers were pressed into repenting for displaying formalism in their music in a special congress of the Union of Soviet Composers.

Zhdanov was the most openly cultured of the leadership group and his treatment of artists was mild by Soviet standards of the time. He even wrote a satirical sketch ridiculing the attack on modernism.

Family ties
Zhdanov's son Yuri (1919–2006) married Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva in 1949. She described the Zhdanov household as imbued with "an inveterate spirit of bourgeois acquisitiveness ... There were trunkloads of possessions ... The place was presided over by Zinaida Zhdanova, the widow, and the ultimate embodiment of this mixture of Party bigotry and the complacency of the bourgeois woman." In 1952, Yuri Zhdanov was raised to membership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as head of its Department of Science and Culture, but was sacked very soon after Stalin's death. That marriage ended in divorce in 1952. They had one daughter, Yekaterina.

Honours and awards

 * Two Orders of Lenin (March 15, 1935, February 25, 1946)
 * Order of the Red Banner (March 21, 1940)
 * Order of Suvorov, 1st class (February 21, 1944)
 * Order of Kutuzov, 1st class (July 29, 1944)
 * Order of the Red Banner of Labour (April 4, 1939)
 * Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad"
 * Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
 * Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
 * Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow"

Zhdanov's birthplace, Mariupol, was renamed Zhdanov in his honor at Joseph Stalin's instigation in 1948 and a monument to Zhdanov was built in the central square of the city. The name reverted to Mariupol in 1989 and the monument was dismantled in 1990.

title: Andrei Zhdanov


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Ecosystem diversity

Ecosystem diversity deals with the variations in ecosystems within a geographical location and its overall impact on human existence and the environment.

Ecosystem diversity addresses the combined characteristics of biotic properties (biodiversity) and abiotic properties (geodiversity). It is a variation in the ecosystems found in a region or the variation in ecosystems over the whole planet. Ecological diversity includes the variation in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Ecological diversity can also take into account the variation in the complexity of a biological community, including the number of different niches, the number of and other ecological processes. An example of ecological diversity on a global scale would be the variation in ecosystems, such as deserts, forests, grasslands, wetlands and oceans. Ecological diversity is the largest scale of biodiversity, and within each ecosystem, there is a great deal of both species and genetic diversity.

Impact
Diversity in the ecosystem is significant to human existence for a variety of reasons. Ecosystem diversity boosts the availability of oxygen via the process of photosynthesis amongst plant organisms domiciled in the habitat. Diversity in an aquatic environment helps in the purification of water by plant varieties for use by humans. Diversity increases plant varieties which serves as a good source for medicines and herbs for human use. A lack of diversity in the ecosystem produces an opposite result.

Examples
Some examples of ecosystems that are rich in diversity are:
 * Deserts
 * Forests
 * Large marine ecosystems
 * Marine ecosystems
 * Old-growth forests
 * Rainforests
 * Tundra
 * Coral reefs
 * Marine

Ecosystem diversity as a result of evolutionary pressure
Ecological diversity around the world can be directly linked to the evolutionary and selective pressures that constrain the diversity outcome of the ecosystems within different niches. Tundras, Rainforests, coral reefs and deciduous forests all are formed as a result of evolutionary pressures. Even seemingly small evolutionary interactions can have large impacts on the diversity of the ecosystems throughout the world. One of the best studied cases of this is of the honey bee's interaction with angiosperms on every continent in the world except Antarctica.

In 2010, Robert Brodschneider and Karl Crailsheim conducted a study on the health and nutrition in honey bee colonies. The study focused on overall colony health, adult nutrition, and larva nutrition as a function of the effect of pesticides, monocultures and genetically modified crops to see if the anthropogenically created problems can have an effect pollination levels. The results indicate that human activity does have a role in the destruction of the fitness of the bee colony. The extinction or near extinction of these pollinators would result in many plants that feed humans on a wide scale needing alternative pollination methods. Crop pollinating insects are worth annually $14.6 billion to the US economy and the cost to hand pollinate over insect pollination is estimated to cost $5,715-$7,135 more per hectare. Not only will there be a cost increase but also an decrease in colony fitness, leading to a decrease in genetic diversity, which studies have shown has a direct link to the long-term survival of the honey bee colonies.

According to a study, there are over 50 plants that are dependent on bee pollination, many of these being key staples to feeding the world. Another study conducted states that a lack of plant diversity will lead to a decline in the bee population fitness, and a low bee colony fitness has impacts on the fitness of plant ecosystem diversity. By allowing for bee pollination and working to reduce anthropogenically harmful footprints, bee pollination can increase genetic diversity of flora growth and create a unique ecosystem that is highly diverse and can provide a habitat and niche for many other organisms to thrive. Due to the evolutionary pressures of bees being located on six out of seven continents, there can be no denying the impact of pollinators on the ecosystem diversity. The pollen collected by the bees is harvested and used as an energy source for winter time; this act of collecting pollen from local plants also has a more important effect of facilitating the movement of genes between organisms.

The new evolutionary pressures that are largely anthropogenically catalyzed can potentially cause wide spread collapse of ecosystems. In the north Atlantic sea, a study was conducted that followed the effects of the human interaction on surrounding ocean habitats. They found that there was no habitat or trophic level that in some way was affected negatively by human interaction, and that much of the diversity of life was being stunted as a result.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ecosystem diversity


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Elston Howard

Elston Gene Howard (February 23, 1929 – December 14, 1980) was an American professional baseball player who was a catcher and a left fielder. During a 14-year baseball career, he played in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball from 1948 through 1968, primarily for the New York Yankees. A 12-time All-Star, he also played for the Kansas City Monarchs and the Boston Red Sox. Howard served on the Yankees' coaching staff from 1969 to 1979.

In 1955, he was the first African American player on the Yankees roster, eight years after Jackie Robinson had broken MLB's color barrier in 1947. Howard was named the American League's Most Valuable Player for the 1963 pennant winners after finishing third in the league in slugging average and fifth in home runs, becoming the first black player in AL history to win the honor. He won Gold Glove Awards in 1963 and 1964, in the latter season setting AL records for putouts and total chances in a season. His lifetime fielding percentage of .993 as a catcher was a major league record from 1967 to 1973, and he retired among the AL career leaders in putouts (7th, 6,447) and total chances (9th, 6,977).

Early life
Elston Gene Howard was born on February 23, 1929, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Travis Howard and Emaline Hill, a nurse at a local hospital. When he was six years old, his parents divorced and his mother remarried. Howard was a standout athlete at Vashon High School.

Negro leagues
In 1948, nineteen-year-old Howard turned down college football scholarship offers from Illinois, Michigan, and Michigan State and instead signed to play professional baseball for $500 a month with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League under manager Buck O'Neil. He was an outfielder for three seasons and in 1950 roomed with Ernie Banks.

Minor leagues
The Yankees signed Howard on July 19, 1950, after purchasing his contract along with the contract of Frank Barnes. They were assigned to the Muskegon Clippers, the Yankees' farm team in the Central League. Howard missed the 1951 and 1952 seasons due to his military service in the U.S. Army.

In 1953, Howard played for the Kansas City Blues of the Class AAA American Association. The next year, the Yankees invited Howard to spring training and converted him into a catcher, despite the presence of Yogi Berra as the Yankees' starting catcher.

He played with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the Class AAA International League in 1954, where he led the league in triples, with 16, to go along with 22 home runs, 109 runs batted in and a .330 average, winning the league's MVP award.

The Yankees assigned Bill Dickey to work with Howard in order to develop his catching skills.

1950s
Howard made the Yankees' Major League roster at the start of the 1955 season. On April 14, 1955 (the second game of the season), Howard made his major league debut when he entered the game in the sixth inning as a left fielder. Howard hit a single in his only plate appearance of the day. He became the first black player to play for the Yankees. Howard was known to be very slow afoot. When Howard first came to the Yankees, manager Casey Stengel referred to him as "Eightball". Howard made his first start on April 28, because it was difficult to find room for Howard in the lineup. Berra won his third MVP award in 1955, and Mickey Mantle and Hank Bauer were solid outfield regulars. Stengel used Howard as a backup catcher and occasional outfielder; he competed for playing time with Norm Siebern and Enos Slaughter. He hit .290 with 10 home runs and 43 runs batted in (RBIs) in 97 games played for the season.

In the 1955 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers, Howard hit a home run off Don Newcombe in his first at bat in the second inning of Game 1. The round tripper tied the game at 2-2 and the Yankees went on to win the game, 6–5. Howard's ground ball out to Pee Wee Reese in Game 7 ended the Series; it was the first time in six meetings the Yankees had lost to Brooklyn. In the 1956 World Series against Brooklyn he played only in Game 7, but his solo home run off Newcombe in the fourth inning was one of four Yankee HRs in Johnny Kucks' 9–0 victory. Against the Milwaukee Braves in the 1957 World Series, his three-run homer off Warren Spahn with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 4 tied the score 4-4, though Milwaukee won 7–5 in the 10th inning on a Eddie Mathews’ walk-off home run. As the Yankees again met the Braves in the 1958 World Series, his impact did not become notable until Game 5, when he caught Red Schoendienst's sinking fly ball in the sixth inning and made a throw to catch Bill Bruton off first base for a double play, preserving a 1–0 lead. In Game 6, he threw Andy Pafko out at the plate in the second inning, and singled and scored with two out in the tenth inning for a 4-2 Yankee lead; the run proved decisive, as the Braves came back to score once in the bottom of the frame. In Game 7, his two-out RBI single scored Berra for a 3–2 lead in the eighth inning, with New York going on to a 6–2 win, completing only the second comeback by a team from a 3–1 deficit in a Series. Howard was later given the Babe Ruth Award, presented by the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, as the top player in the Series, although the World Series MVP Award was won by teammate Bob Turley.

By 1959, Howard was often playing at first base in order to remain in the lineup. Despite not finding a regular position yet, he was first selected to the All-Star team in 1957, the first of nine consecutive years through 1965 in which he made the squad; he would appear in six of the games (1960–1964), including both 1961 contests.

1960s
In 1960, Howard took over the majority of Berra's catching duties, although his .245 batting average was his lowest to date. The Yankees met the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series, and Howard's two-run pinch-hit homer off Roy Face in the ninth inning of Game 1 brought the Yankees within two runs, though they lost 6–4. Howard hit .462 in the Series, but did not play in Game 7 after being hit on the hand by a pitch in the second inning of Game 6, and could only watch as the Pirates won the Series, 10–9, on Bill Mazeroski's home run leading off the bottom of the ninth.

In 1961, he raised his average 103 points to a career-best .348 mark on a team that featured Roger Maris's record 61-home run season; Howard also enjoyed his first 20-homer campaign, along with 77 RBI, as the Yankees set a major league record with 240 HRs. He finished tenth in the MVP voting that year, won by Maris. Meeting the Cincinnati Reds in the 1961 Series, he and Bill Skowron had solo home runs in the 2-0 Game 1 victory, and he scored three runs in the final 13–5 win in Game 5. He followed up with a 1962 season in which he batted .279 with a career-best 91 RBI, again hitting over 20 homers, and collecting eight RBI in an August 19 game in Kansas City which the Yankees won, 21–7. Although Howard batted only .143 in the 1962 World Series against the San Francisco Giants, the Yankees won in seven games.

In his 1963 MVP season, he batted .287 with 28 home runs, 85 RBI and a .528 slugging average, also winning his first Gold Glove. The Yankees were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1963 Series, though Howard hit .333 and drove in the only Yankees run of Game 2. He batted .313 (just ten points behind batting champion Tony Oliva) with 84 RBI in 1964, again winning the Gold Glove and placing third in the MVP vote as Berra took over Ralph Houk's post as manager. His totals of 939 putouts and 1,008 total chances broke the AL records of 872 and 963 set by Earl Battey with the 1962 Minnesota Twins; Bill Freehan would top Howard's marks with the 1967 Detroit Tigers. Howard also led the AL in fielding average in 1964 with a .998 mark. Playing in his ninth World Series in ten years against the St. Louis Cardinals, he batted .292, though the Yankees were overcome in seven games; he tied a Series record with three passed balls, including two in the 9-5 Game 1 loss. In 1965, Howard injured his elbow during spring training. He played in four games through April, then had surgery, missing five more weeks.

Howard struggled in 1967. He backed up Jake Gibbs and batted only .198 through the start of August.

Boston Red Sox (1967–1968)
On August 3, 1967, Howard was traded to the Boston Red Sox for Pete Magrini and a player to be named later, Ron Klimkowski. Though he batted only .147 for Boston, he was effective in handling the pitchers; teammate Tony Conigliaro noted, "I don't think I ever saw a pitcher shake off one of his signs. They had too much respect for him." In 1967, Howard also took over Sherm Lollar's major-league record for career fielding average; Freehan moved ahead of him in 1973.

One of Howard's highlights during his time with the Red Sox occurred on August 27, 1967, when the Chicago White Sox were battling the Red Sox for the pennant. With Ken Berry on third base with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning and the Red Sox leading 4–3, Duane Josephson lined out to Jose Tartabull in right field. Not known for having a strong arm, Tartabull's throw sailed high and was caught by a leaping Howard, who blocked the plate with his left foot as he came down, and swipe tagged Berry — ending the game. For Red Sox fans, the play was considered a key event during their "Impossible Dream" season.

Howard had his last postseason highlight in the 1967 World Series against the Cardinals when his bases-loaded single in the ninth inning of Game 5 drove in two runs for a 3–0 lead. The hit was crucial, as former teammate Maris homered in the bottom of the inning for the Cardinals before the Red Sox closed out the 3–1 win. St. Louis, however, won the Series in seven games. It was the sixth losing World Series team Howard played on; he and Pee Wee Reese have the dubious distinction for playing on the most losing World Series teams.

On October 29, 1968, Howard was released by the Red Sox. Over his 14-year career, he batted .274 with 167 home runs, 1,471 hits, 762 RBI, 619 runs, 218 doubles, 50 triples and nine stolen bases in 1,605 games. His .427 slugging average trailed those of only Dickey (.486), Berra (.482) and Mickey Cochrane (.478) among AL catchers. Defensively, he recorded a .993 fielding percentage as a catcher and an overall .992 fielding percentage. Howard also played at left and right field and first base. His 54 total World Series games placed him behind only teammates Berra and Mantle. Howard is also credited with being the first to use the extended index and pinky finger (corna) to indicate that there were two out in the inning, this being more visible to teammates in the outfield than the usual "two" gesture of the index and middle fingers.

New York Yankees (1969–1979)
Howard returned to the Yankees the following year, where he served as first-base coach from 1969 to 1979. He was the first black coach in the American League. The team won the AL pennant in 1976 and the World Series in 1977 and 1978. During a game against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in June 1977, Howard and Yogi Berra were peacemakers during a dugout incident between Yankees player Reggie Jackson and Yankees manager Billy Martin.

After Howard's coaching career ended, he became an administrative assistant with the Yankees; however, that position did not last long due to declining health.

Death
Howard was diagnosed with myocarditis, a rare heart disease that causes rapid heart failure. He was considering a heart transplant, but his condition quickly deteriorated. After staying a week at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, Howard died of the heart ailment at age 51 on December 14, 1980. He was interred at George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, New Jersey.

Red Smith, a columnist for The New York Times, reacted by writing, "The Yankees' organization lost more class on the weekend than George Steinbrenner could buy in 10 years."

Legacy

In Howard's memory, the Yankees wore black armbands on their sleeve during the 1981 season. On July 21, 1984, the Yankees retired Howard's uniform number 32 and dedicated a plaque in his honor for Monument Park at Yankee Stadium. On that day the Yankees also bestowed the same honors to Roger Maris who, unlike Howard, was still living. Howard's plaque describes him as "A man of great gentleness and dignity" and "one of the truly great Yankees."

Howard is credited with inventing the batting "doughnut", a circular lead weight with a rubber shell used by batters in the on-deck circle by placing it around a bat to make it feel heavier, so that it will feel lighter at the plate and easier to swing. Its widespread use caused the discontinuation of the practice of hitters swinging multiple bats at the same time while waiting to hit. Howard helped two New Jersey entrepreneurs, Frank Hamilton and Vince Salvucci, to market the bat weight and lent his name to the product.

In 2020, the baseball field on the former site of Yankee Stadium was renamed in Howard's honor. The field sits directly across the street from the new Stadium.

Howard was portrayed by Bobby Hosea in the 2001 film 61* and in the 2014 Broadway play Bronx Bombers.

His great-nephew is NBA player Josh Hart, who has described him as a role model.

title: Elston Howard


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North Tipperary

North Tipperary (Tiobraid Árann Thuaidh) was a county in Ireland in the province of Munster. It was named after the town of Tipperary (which was in South Tipperary) and consisted of 48% of the land area of the traditional county of Tipperary. North Tipperary County Council was the local authority for the county. In 2011, the population of the county was 70,322.

It was abolished on 1 June 2014, amalgamated with South Tipperary to form County Tipperary, administered by a new Tipperary County Council.

Geography and subdivisions
The county was part of the central plain of Ireland, but the diversified terrain contained several mountain ranges: the Arra Hills, Silvermine Mountains and the Devil's Bit. The county was landlocked. The southern part of the former county is drained by the River Suir; the northern part is drained by tributaries of the River Shannon which widens into Lough Derg. The centre of the county included much of the Golden Vale, a rich pastoral stretch of land in the Suir basin which extends into counties Limerick and Cork.

Its population centres included Nenagh (the county town), Borrisoleigh, Templemore, Thurles, and Roscrea.

Baronies
There were six historic baronies in North Tipperary: Eliogarty, Ikerrin,  Ormond Upper, Ormond Lower, Owney and Arra and Kilnamanagh Upper.

Civil parishes and townlands
Civil parishes in Ireland were delineated after the Down Survey as an intermediate subdivision, with multiple townlands per parish and multiple parishes per barony. The civil parishes had some use in local taxation and were included on the nineteenth century maps of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. For poor law purposes district electoral divisions replaced the civil parishes in the mid-nineteenth century. There were 86 civil parishes in the county.

Local government
The North Riding had existed as a judicial county following the establishment of assize courts in 1838. The administrative county of Tipperary, North Riding was created under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 as the area of the existing judicial county of the North Riding of the county of Tipperary, except for the district electoral divisions of Cappagh, Curraheen and Glengar (which were transferred to the South Riding). It took effect on 1 April 1899.

In 2002, the county's name was changed under the Local Government Act 2001 to North Tipperary, and the council's name to North Tipperary County Council. The council oversaw the county as a local government area. The council comprised 21 representatives, directly elected through the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote (PR-STV).

Under the Regional Authorities established in 1994, North Tipperary was part of the Mid-West Region, a NUTS III region of the European Union, whereas South Tipperary was part of the South-East Region. At a NUTS II level, both counties were in the Southern and Eastern region. A revision to the NUTS regions, after the amalgamation of the counties, brought both under the Mid-West Region.

The council also claimed the title of The Premier County, a title which was usually taken to refer to the undivided territory of both north and south Tipperary. Following the division of the original county, North Tipperary was not granted its own coat of arms.

title: North Tipperary


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Munio of Zamora

Munio of Zamora, O.P., (1237 – 19 February 1300) was a Spanish Dominican friar who became the seventh Master General of the Dominican Order in 1285, and later a bishop.

Spain
No details of Munio's early life are recorded, but he is assumed to have been born in Zamora. What is known of him comes from diverse sources, of varying value, and giving contradictory judgments. It would appear that he had a reputation of being an excellent administrator, when he was appointed as Prior Provincial of his native country in 1281. He was also known as being an ascetic man, practicing perpetual abstinence, though he also came to be known for his leniency towards those under his authority.

One notable difference he had from his predecessors was that he did not have the academic background which they did, never having studied at the great universities of Italy or France, and thus not having a Master's degree. Administration was his sole talent.

Master General
Munio, in his office as Prior Provincial, took part in the General Chapter of the Order, held in Bologna in 1285. When he was nominated as Master of the Order at that gathering, the French contingent of the Chapter objected to him based on his alleged lack of studies appropriate to the office. Nevertheless, the Chapter elected him. The state of the Order as a whole at the time of Munio's election required a man of his gifts. The rapid growth of the Order had often been accomplished with minimal training of its new members. Discipline had become a major concern of Munio's predecessors, who issued frequent appeals to the friars and nuns of the Order to maintain the spirit of the Rule. Men were joining who claimed to have already the gift of preaching, and demanded to do so without any restrictions on the part of the Order.

In his first letter to the Order at large after his election, Munio issues a serious call to the friars and nuns to keep a spirit of poverty more strenuously, as well as an adherence to solitude and silence. He concludes:

"May the zeal of the Order revive in you all! For I tell you with a heart filled with bitterness that, among many of you, this zeal has lost its first vigor."

The Third Order
Shortly after his election as Master, Munio promulgated the Rule of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance of the Blessed Dominic (Regula Fratrum et Sororum Ordinis de Paenitentiae Beati Dominici), which provided a rule of life (lasting into the 21st century) for the "penitent" laymen and women who had been leading lives inspired by the friars, long called the Third Order of St. Dominic. In the opening passages, the Rule lays down these prerequisites: "They must be filled with the utmost jealous, burning zeal, after their own fashion, for the truth of Catholic faith".

The Master of the Order thus offered an opportunity to lay people and secular clergy, who had been independent until then, to adopt a rule of life and to be placed under the jurisdiction of the Dominican Order, by making a promise of obedience to the Master General of the Order. The laity were here being given an ecclesiastical mission and were being placed at the service of the preaching of truth "in accordance with their own life".

With this formal incorporation into the structure of the Dominican Order, the groups of Dominican penitents began to grow and flourish. With their legitimization through their Rule, they were able to withstand the accusations of the Franciscans, who might have felt some competition with their own Third Order.

This was a major development in the life of the Order, and was taken upon his initiative. Thus Munio played a significant role in the history of the Dominican Order. There were consequences, however. Upon the ascension to the Throne of St. Peter, the Franciscan friar, Pope Nicholas IV, took Munio's legislation as a reason to edit the Dominican Rule in its entirety.

Resignation
After Nicholas' election, rumors and stories about Munio's past started to circulate in Rome. Among them were the charges that he had been elected thanks, in large part, to the manipulations and bribery of his patron, King Sancho IV of Castile.

It was further alleged that Munio was also in the background when Sancho had authorized a payment of 30,000 maravedís to Cardinal Ordoño in 1285, just one month after Munio had been elevated to Master General. This was to cover the fact that Munio, dissolute and violent, made an earlier appearance in an affair involving a monastery of Dominican nuns in the small provincial city of his hometown of Zamora, which had occasioned a canonical visitation by the Bishop of Zamora in 1279. The community of Dominican nuns was split into factions, and the Dominican friars were behaving like characters from the Decameron. The resulting depositions survive, to form the basis of a highly readable history by Peter Linehan (1997) that lays open more than just the social history of Dominican friars and nuns in 13th-century Castile. Following Munio, his friends and his enemies, from Zamora to the papal court over a twenty-year period, Linehan shows how events in a Castilian monastery could influence high politics in the medieval Church.

Despite the shaky foundations of the rumors, in 1289 Pope Nicholas chose to believe them, and made a personal appeal to Munio that he resign his office. Munio did not act on this request. Then came the General Chapter of 1290, in which Munio was re-elected, despite the allegations. The capitulars in attendance declared that Munio's reputation for abstinence was so well-founded that the only infractions were of such a nature that it would have involved morsels "without which life was not worth living". Seeing this support, the pope offered Munio the position of Archbishop of Compostella, if he were to resign. Munio's response was that he would remove himself from office, if that was the Holy Father's will. Pope Nicholas demurred from taking such a responsibility.

The pope's indecision did not last long, however, for, the following year (1291), Pope Nicholas, with the support of the Archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Voragine (the author of the Golden Legend), ordered that Munio be removed from his office. Nicholas did so in a papal bull dated April 12, 1291, which he sent to the General Chapter for that year, which was being held in Palencia, Spain. The dismissal was not carried out, as King Sancho attacked the convoy of the papal messengers and seized the bull. Nevertheless, in 1292 the pope dramatically demanded that his command to the Order be implemented.

Bishopric and death
Munio's career was rehabilitated in 1294, when he was appointed Bishop of Palencia, thanks to the interventions of his protector, King Sancho. He had been in Palencia only two years, when, tired and disillusioned, he resigned his office and retired to the international motherhouse of the Order, the Monastery of Santa Sabina in Rome. It was there that he died on 19 February 1300. His body was entombed in the ancient Basilica of Santa Sabina.

title: Munio of Zamora


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Perth-Andover

Perth-Andover is a former village in Victoria County, New Brunswick, Canada. It held village status prior to 2023. It is now part of the village of Southern Victoria.

History
Andover was originally called Little Tobique, the community was given the name Andover, from the town in Hampshire, England. Much of Andover's original land grants were to English soldiers and Loyalist from the American Revolution.

Much of Perth (originally called Larlee) was originally part of the territory of the Tobique First Nation, whose reserve was established in 1801, at the band's request. Due to squatters, the First Nation were forced to surrender a total of 2,539 acres, much in Perth-Andover.

In 1878 the New Brunswick Railway opened its line through the community connecting Fredericton and Edmundston, crossing the river from the east bank at Perth to the west bank at Andover. In 1890 the NBR was leased by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). In 1894 the Tobique Valley Railway constructed a line from a junction with the CPR at Perth to Plaster Rock; it was leased by CPR in 1897.

Until the end of county government in New Brunswick in 1966, Andover was the shire town of Victoria County.

In March 1987 the spring freshet caused several severe ice jams on the Saint John River upstream of the railway bridge in Perth-Andover. On the night of April 1, 1987 an extremely high water level forced residents to evacuate, including a seniors home and the hospital. The morning of April 2, 1987 the Canadian Pacific Railway bridge was demolished by the large ice jam, and many buildings and homes along the river in Perth-Andover were flooded. The destruction of the railway bridge cut off CP Rail's network north of Perth from the railway lines in the southern part of western New Brunswick. This contributed to CP Rail's abandonment of these rural branchlines, which were considered unprofitable by the railway. CP Rail tried to blame NB Power for failing to control water discharges from its hydro-electric dams on the river. By the early 1990s, the railroad had ended railway from the northern end of the Saint John River valley.

In 2009 the Canadian government accepted the Tobique Specific Land Claim of 10,533 acres for negotiation; this relates to the 1892 surrender which the First Nation claims is invalid due to the failure of the government to get approval by Order in Council. Settlement of the claim will result in compensation; existing landowners will not be affected. The governments and the Tobique First Nation have three years to negotiate a settlement.

On March 23, 2012, a high spring freshet coupled with an ice jam caused a rise in water levels surpassing those in the 1987 flood. A mandatory evacuation order was issued. About 500 people were affected.

On 1 January 2023, Perth-Andover amalgamated with the village of Aroostook and parts of two local service districts to form the new village of Southern Victoria. The community's name remains in official use.

Geography
The village is divided by the Saint John River with Perth on the east bank and Andover on the west bank; each was a separate community until municipal amalgamation in 1966. Perth-Andover's population meets the requirements for "town" status under the provincial Municipalities Act; however, it has not applied to change from village designation. It was decided by the council at the time to keep the 'Village ' designation.

Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Perth-Andover had a population of $1,574$ living in $744$ of its $785$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $1,590$. With a land area of 8.96 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

Attractions
Perth-Andover is host to the annual Gathering of the Scots Festival at Veteran's Field on the last weekend in May and the Larlee Creek Hullabaloo in August, held at Baird's Campground. Other major events in the Village are the Tuff Muck Challenge on the last Saturday in July and the Dam Run marathon on the first Saturday in October. Neat Perth Andover, the Tomlinson Lake Hike to Freedom Trail explores New Brunswick's role in the Underground Railroad for African Americans escaping enslavement who crossed the border from the Maple Grove Friends Church near Fort Fairfield, Maine.

Infrastructure
Perth-Andover Electric Light Commission (PAELC) is one of three municipal power utilities left in New Brunswick, and the only one completely independent of NB Power. The residents of the municipality pay the lowest power rates in the province.

Notable people

 * Matt Andersen - Blues musician
 * John B. McNair- 23rd Premier of New Brunswick, 1940 to 1952

title: Perth-Andover


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South Tipperary

South Tipperary (Tiobraid Árann Theas) was a county in Ireland in the province of Munster. It was named after the town of Tipperary and consisted of 52% of the land area of the traditional county of Tipperary. South Tipperary County Council was the local authority for the county. The population of the county was 88,433 according to the 2011 census. It was abolished on 1 June 2014, and amalgamated with North Tipperary to form County Tipperary under a new Tipperary County Council.

Geography and subdivisions
The county was part of the central plain of Ireland, but the diversified terrain contained several mountain ranges, notably the Knockmealdowns and the Galtees. The county was landlocked and drained by the River Suir. The centre of the county included much of the Golden Vale, a rich pastoral stretch of land in the Suir basin which extends into counties Limerick and Cork.

The county town was Clonmel; other important urban centres included Carrick-on-Suir, Cashel, Cahir and Tipperary. The county's motto was Vallis Aurea Siurensis (The Golden Vale of the Suir).

Baronies
There were six historic baronies in South Tipperary: Clanwilliam, Iffa and Offa East, Iffa and Offa West, Kilnamanagh Lower, Middle Third and Slievardagh.

Civil parishes and townlands
Civil parishes in Ireland were delineated after the Down Survey as an intermediate subdivision, with multiple townlands per parish and multiple parishes per barony. The civil parishes had some use in local taxation and were included on the nineteenth century maps of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. For poor law purposes, district electoral divisions replaced civil parishes in the mid-nineteenth century. There were 123 civil parishes in the county.

Local government
The South Riding of Tipperary had been a judicial county following the establishment of assize courts in 1838.

The administrative county of Tipperary, South Riding was created under the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 as the area of the existing judicial county of the South Riding of the county of Tipperary, with the addition of the district electoral divisions previously in the North Riding of Cappagh, Curraheen and Glengar, and the portions of the town of Carrick-on-Suir and the borough of Clonmel previously in County Waterford. It took effect on 1 April 1899.

In 2002, under the Local Government Act 2001, the county's name was changed to South Tipperary, and the council's name to South Tipperary County Council. The council oversaw the county as a local government area. The council was composed of 26 representatives, directly elected through the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote (PR-STV).

South Tipperary was part of the South-East Region, a NUTS III region of the European Union, whereas North Tipperary was part of the Mid-West Region. At a NUTS II level, both counties were in the Southern and Eastern region. A revision to the NUTS regions, after the amalgamation of the counties, brought both under the Mid-West Region.

Irish language
There were native speakers of Irish in South Tipperary until the middle of the 20th century. Recordings of their dialect, made before the last native speakers died, have been made available through a project of the Royal Irish Academy Library.

title: South Tipperary


text:
User:RobertMichel~enwiki

To know more about me and Wikipedia, please visit de:Benutzer:RobertMichel, or please give me your questions and feedback on User talk:RobertMichel.

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title: User:RobertMichel~enwiki


text:
Michael Imperioli

Michael Imperioli (born March 26, 1966) is an American actor. He is best known for the role of Christopher Moltisanti in the HBO crime drama The Sopranos (1999–2007), which earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2004.

In the early part of his career, he played the role of Spider in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990). He went on to play many supporting roles in films such as Jungle Fever (1991), Bad Boys (1995), The Basketball Diaries (1995), Shark Tale (2004), The Lovely Bones (2009), and One Night in Miami (2020). Imperioli co-wrote the screenplay for Summer of Sam (1999) with Spike Lee, and wrote five episodes of The Sopranos. He made his directorial feature film debut with The Hungry Ghosts (2008), which he also wrote.

For his role as Dominic Di Grasso in the second season of HBO Max series The White Lotus (2022) he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. On stage, he made his Broadway debut in the revival of the Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People (2024).

Early life and education
His father was a bus driver and amateur actor, and mother was a department store worker and amateur actress. His ancestors immigrated to New York City from Lazio and Sicily in Italy.

At age 11, Imperioli and his family moved to Brewster, New York, and in high school he began watching Broadway plays. After graduating from Brewster High School in 1983, Imperioli planned on studying pre-med at the State University of New York at Albany. The night before he was set to begin college, he confided in his parents that he sought to be an actor. At age 17, Imperioli then moved to Manhattan's East Village, where he enrolled at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute to study acting. While there, he met John Ventimiglia, who later portrayed Artie Bucco on The Sopranos, and the two became roommates.

In the early 1990s, Imperioli performed as lead vocalist of the New Jersey-based jangle pop band Wild Carnation, departing to focus on his acting career prior to the release of their debut recordings in 1993.

Career
Imperioli has been nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and five Emmy Awards for his work as Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos. He won one Emmy for the fifth season of The Sopranos in 2004.

In addition to his role on The Sopranos, Imperioli has appeared in a number of films, including Goodfellas, Jungle Fever, Bad Boys, Malcolm X, The Basketball Diaries, Clockers, Dead Presidents, Girl 6, My Baby's Daddy, Lean on Me, I Shot Andy Warhol, Last Man Standing, Shark Tale, High Roller: The Stu Ungar Story, and Summer of Sam, which he also co-wrote and co-produced. He also wrote five episodes for The Sopranos.

Imperioli served as artistic director of Studio Dante, an Off-Broadway theater he formed with his wife. He is an active member of The Jazz Foundation of America and co-hosted their May 2009 annual benefit concert, "A Great Night in Harlem", at the Apollo Theater, which celebrated the foundation's 20th anniversary. He was a guest on the "San Giuseppe" episode of Mario Batali's Food Network television show Molto Mario. In 2010, Imperioli signed on to play the lead in the ABC television show Detroit 1-8-7. Working with the writer Gabriele Tinti, he wrote the text "Pride" for Tinti's book New York Shots, and participated in a reading of The Way of the Cross at the Queens Museum of Art in 2011.

Imperioli won the Tournament of Stars competition on the cooking show Chopped in 2014, sending $50,000 to his designated charity the Pureland Project, an organization which builds and maintains schools in rural Tibet. In 2016, he guest starred as the angel Uriel on the Fox show Lucifer.

On March 13, 2019, Imperioli was cast in the lead role of Rick Sellitto in the NBC drama series Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector. Imperioli co-hosts a podcast with Steve Schirripa titled Talking Sopranos, which began on April 6, 2020. The two provide inside info as they follow The Sopranos series episode by episode. By September 2020, the podcast had reached over five million downloads.

On September 17, 2020, Imperioli and Schirripa signed a deal with HarperCollins book imprint William Morrow and Company to write an oral history of the show; the book titled Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History of The Sopranos was released on November 2, 2021. In July 2020, he hosted a show on NTS Radio called 632 ELYSIAN FIELDS, which was inspired by A Streetcar Named Desire. In September 2020, Imperioli provided narration for The Whistleblower, a podcast about the 2007 NBA betting scandal. Imperioli is the guitarist and vocalist for the band Zopa. In 2020, Zopa released their debut album entitled La Dolce Vita. In 2021, Zopa headlined the Freakout Festival in Seattle.

Imperioli portrayed Andrew Cuomo in the Showtime limited series Escape at Dannemora (2018), Angelo Dundee in the Regina King directed One Night in Miami (2020), and served as narrator in the 2021 Sopranos prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark. In January 2022, Imperioli was cast in a lead role in the second season of the HBO dark comedy series The White Lotus. For his performance he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series nomination. In 2023 it was announced that Imperioli would make his Broadway debut in the 2024 Sam Gold-directed adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People, acting alongside Jeremy Strong and Victoria Pedretti at the Circle in the Square Theatre. He acted in the Paul Schrader directed film Oh, Canada which is set to premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Personal life
Imperioli married Victoria Chlebowski in 1996. They have homes in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and in Santa Barbara, California, and have three children. He and his family are avid practitioners of Tae Kwon Do. In 2008, Imperioli became a Buddhist.

title: Michael Imperioli


text:
Talk:Middle class

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 May 2020 and 3 July 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): JIAZHI SHUAI.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Unclear
The last paragraph of current usage is gramaticly uncertain.

From the statistics quoted I would draw the inference that "working class" has negative conotations in the US, and that "middle class" has negative conotations in the UK.

That is also the case anecdotaly.

However that is not how it is worded in the article. we also need some references. Jmackaerospace (talk) 13:20, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

--Thulasimani p (talk) 10:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)== Collars ==

From my experience the terms "white collar" and "blue collar" are almost exclusively American, yet in this article they seem to be contrasted with the expansion of American middle class. I may be incorrect, but I feel the wording should be changed.82.41.15.93 (talk) 13:42, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

 * From my experience your experience is geographically limited. "White" and "blue" collar appear often in Anglophone literature of class and stratum; in Australian English they're typical shorthand for occupational and some cultural features (strata / Weberian class). Fifelfoo (talk) 00:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

 * The term collar aint used in UK.. so yeah the article is too general and needs revamped and clarified.
 * --Andymcgrath (talk) 09:09, 05 December 2009 (UTC)

White-collar refers to jobs that can be done wearing a light colored dress and collar remaining free from stains of sweat. Blue-collar refers to jobs where wearing a dark collored dress, often a prescribed uniform, is desirable, because the work may require handling materials like    soil, oil, grease, coal. There is a risk of staining. Collars of workers  doing certain works and working       in places like farms  gets stained by sweat. Irrespective of there origin and usage, these iconic words describe  universal  situations that are common knowledge. No other word can be substituted.--Thulasimani p (talk) 10:10, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

current govt usage
It would be helpful to add a paragraph about what the US govt considers "middle class", for instance when they want to cut taxes for the so-called middle class. It seems they would include 95% of the populace.--dunnhaupt (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2009 (UTC) Government prescribes a income limit below which a tax concession is available. Both middle and lower class that is 95% of the populace is eligible. Since lower class pay negligible tax,  the benefit they receive is also negligible. Hence it is essentially a benefit for the middle class--Thulasimani p (talk) 10:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

 * The US government has no definition of middle class. Federal, state, and local agencies have many definitions of middle income, as each is free to create its own definitions. For example, about 12 different federal agencies are responsible for gathering the data used to compile GDP figures. Sometimes a single agency will have three of four definitions, depending on the situation. That being said, journalists and writers of undergraduate economics textbooks seem to have settled on a definition which the government occasionally uses, perhaps more frequently than others, namely, the middle three fifths of the population in terms of annual household income. The top quintile is then considered high-income while the bottom quintile is low-income.

 * Politicians sometimes use the term "middle class," especially in campaign speeches, but this does not give the term any official status. In the early 1990s, Bill Clinton pioneered the use of the term "hard working people like you and me" as a substitute for "the middle class." Zyxwv99 (talk) 14:36, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

American use of the terms middle and working class
It should be pointed out that in the USA, the term middle class is often used to describe what would usually be called working class in other countries. --195.0.221.197 (talk) 11:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

 * I strongly concur. The way these terms are contrasted in the article seems to me inappropriate based on common usage.
 * --Mcorazao (talk) 15:11, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

 * Indeed thats true. What constitutes as working class in the UK, would be the equivalent of middle class in the US. While middle class in UK, is the equivalent of upper class in US. The article doesnt explain this, the usage of the term is different for each nation.

 * Many from the US who would describe themselve middle class, wouldn't meet the criteria (wealth or social standing) to be middle class in UK, hence most would be working class. Using my own example as an Accountant (and earnings), i consider myself working class in UK, but in US i would probably be deemed "upper middle class" (a term not used in UK). Essentially there is an inflation of the term Middle class in the US that the article does not touch upon.
 * --Andymcgrath (talk) 08:56, 05 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this article seems confusng, and is incorrect from a UK perspective, the usual toxic Wikipedia US-centrism I suppose.. "The middle class is a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy" is not true here, 'middle-class' means those in the higher (but not highest) income bracket and carries a lot of connotations as to lifestyle etc. 151.224.102.18 (talk) 14:39, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

 * The term "upper middle class" is occasionally used in the UK, but by and large the class obsessed English seem to have boiled their class system down merely to "middle class" and "working class" . Poshseagull (talk) 19:36, 21 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I added the explanation into the lede.. however we are left with a problem of knowing which middle class definition the rest of the article is referring to. Any ideas how to resolve this? 2001:14BA:684B:0:3160:4301:E0A3:15F9 (talk) 11:31, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Proposed removal: Geographic terms
Unless there are references to support it I believe the "Geographic Terms" section needs to go. It is not true that
 * The terms "Middle America" or "Middle England" were coined to associate these geographic areas with the Middle Class.
 * People generally make this association. Although some people may make this association, that interpretation is not widespread enough to make such sweeping statements (and certainly not enough to justify a whole section).
 * These regions of their respective nations are more Middle Class than other sections.

The references that are provided in this section appear to support specific statements but not the overall thesis of the section. From what I have read it is true that "Middle Australia" is commonly used to refer to Middle Class Australia but then "Middle Australia" is not actually a geographic term. Similarly occasionally some authors may use "Middle America" to refer to the Middle Class United States but then they are not using it as a geographic term. Arguing that this justifies the section is an equivocation (a type of logical fallacy).

--Mcorazao (talk) 15:11, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Language in 'Marxism and the middle class.'
"Marxism defines social classes..."

It lacks clarity and intellectual integrity to refer to particular or frequent lines of thought coming out of a long-lasting, diverse school of though as all-inclusive of all writers of the tradition. Not all Marxists think the same, by any stretch of imagination or rhetoric. This section must be clear who defines one thing or another in this or that manner.

If no one is able or willing to be specific, in the text, as to who wrote such things, then in the very least the language must be altered - a person, a single work with multiple authors, even an organization, can define a thing, but a broad, incohesive school of thought cannot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shaunmwilson1 (talk • contribs) 02:36, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Professional class

 * The professional class are a middle class group of professionals who are distinguished from other social groups by training and education (typically business qualifications and university degrees). Examples of such professions include academics, architects, engineers, lawyers, accountants, physicians, dentists, pharmacists, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, psychologists, sociologists, some non-corporate business-owners, economists, political scientists and other so-called "hard" scientists . Persons of this group tend to have incomes above the average for their country.

As all citations fail cite-check, moved to Talk: Fifelfoo (talk) 14:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Nadbank page doesn't exist
 * 2) US BL doesn't mention class
 * 3) No page ref (also, its not an academic work on class)

just adding template  ThinkingTwice  contribs | talk 10:11, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Clean up
This article is not as well structured and sourced as it deserves to be, and it needs development. It's a major topic, which averages over 700 views a day, so should be (and could be) better than it currently is. Indeed, the organisation of articles about social class in general need sorting out as there is a fair bit of duplication, dicdef and personal opinion scattered around these articles - a number could be merged. I'm prepared to work on this for a bit to help start it on the right track - I have done some political and social studies so have a loose grasp of some of the concepts, and know a few of the major authors to use for authoritative cites - but I am not an expert, so I may get things wrong. Any help in shaping the article would be much appreciated.  SilkTork  *YES! 17:34, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

The difference what constitutes Middle class in UK to US
Thats the most notable thing from my perspective that needs to be pointed out. Most of those who are deemed middle class in US would only meet the criteria (earnings/social standing) of being working class if they lived in the UK. Also the middle class in UK are seen as being posh, hence many people prefer to term themselves as working class.
 * --Andymcgrath (talk) 08:56, 05 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, and highlighted the discrepancy in usage, high in the article with my two changes. DouglasHeld (talk) 16:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

"middle class" is a false term in the USA
In the United Stated of America the term "middle class" is used by politicians to avoid saying "working class" or "working poor". There are fewer and fewer in the "middle" in the USA. The gap between the "haves" and "have nots" is getting greater. There term "middle class" is insignificant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.5.206.229 (talk) 01:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

45% exactly
The american middle class is said to be 45% of the population, then, in the very next sentence, a link is provided that gives several different percentages for the size of the middle class: "As the American middle class is estimated at approximately 45% of the population,[10][11][12] The Economist's article would put the size of the American middle class below the world average. This difference is due to the extreme difference in definitions between The Economist's and many other models." The paragraph is needlessly argumentative, and clearly comparing apples and oranges, and internally contradictory. If the point really needs to be made, it should be made differently, like perhaps this: "The American middle class is a term in various academic models, and is generally a smaller subset of the population that the middle class as defined in The Economist's article."

History and evolution of the term
The first paragraph of this section has problems:

The term "middle class" is first attested in James Bradshaw's 1745 pamphlet Scheme to prevent running Irish Wools to France.[1][2] The term has had several, sometimes contradictory, meanings.

So far so good.

It was once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry of Europe.[by whom?]

I've actually seen this in several sources, including Merriam-Webster's unabridged. However, it's not correct. The peasantry included smallholders and millers, some of whom were quite wealthy. Conversely, many countries (notably Hungary and Poland) had large numbers of poor nobles. In England, armigerous gentry were technically untitled nobility, and not necessarily well-off.

While the nobility owned the countryside, and the peasantry worked the countryside, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city.

The nobility typically about owned 30 - 60 % of the countryside, depending on which country and period we're talking about. The rest was owned by the church and by freeholders. Also, the bourgeoisie were not new, just the word. The bourgeoisie had been around since the days of Charlemagne.

''Another definition equated the middle class to the original meaning of capitalist: someone with so much capital that they could rival nobles. By this definition, only millionaires and billionaires are middle class in modern times.''

Marx, a German, seems to have defined the French word bourgeoisie this way, but that was not how middle class was understood in any English-speaking part of the world.

In fact, to be a capital-owning millionaire was the essential criterion of the middle class in the industrial revolution.

This is nonsense. Try doing a search on Google books for the term "middle class" filtering for the years 1760 to 1850, and you will see that this is not how the term was used. Zyxwv99 (talk) 03:04, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

In France, the middle classes helped drive the French Revolution.[3]

This part is correct. Zyxwv99 (talk) 03:06, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Politically biased towards right wing politics
The whole descrpition (mostly inside the US middle class) is totally biased to right politics.

While it may be so that America is an right nation, it might be interesting to let it clear that the definition provided is not only about US middle class, but also how middle class is described by far right. Things like "authoritative parents" should not exist in there.

Since I personally don't like right politics, it ends up that I would not like to be that someone described in such middle class. Alas, you can be a perfectly healthy middle class member without the right symbolism.

Just saying ... anyone with better knowledge of left/right wing politics, and how to describe it in a better unbiased way, should be able to come up with a better description. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.4.204.26 (talk) 16:54, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

"Social reproduction of the middle class"
I think this whole section should be deleted. It employs a very specific theoretical framework and pre-supposes that its writer's narrow, principally American definition of the middle class applies to the more amorphous global definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.148.40.2 (talk) 12:24, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

 * It appears I was being blind when I wrote that comment just underneath this bit. It seems I repeated what you had already mentioned. I did actually alter the section to make sure it was somewhat more clear that it was merely opinion. I actually would not care if it was deleted anyway, to be honest. At least I made it a little more wiki-like.--Hypernator (talk) 22:11, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

The "Social reproduction of the middle class" part is written like a factual article but is opinion.
That whole section is basically written as if it is "matter of fact" but it is just opinion based on a book. Also the references 14 and 16 are the same thing. I suggest it just be removed completely if the writer cannot be bothered to state that: "In the opinion of Doob, Christopher B..."

Someone saying something in a book does not make it some kind of fact. It is technically their interpretation based on supposed evidence. This applies just as much to a philosophical opinion as it does science. Someone's opinion is not a piece of evidence, it is simply their point of view on the subject - an interpretation.

I would be inclined to suggest that it looks like complete nonsense anyway. To suggest that an entire group of people, labelled with an extremely vague title, all do a particular thing is pretty strange (bordering on insanity). Middle class is less vague in the UK because it is defined by the income/ financial status/ net worth of the person. In other words lower, middle and upper class tax bands. I am not sure how it is done in USA but I would imagine it is not a clearly defined category. I can see immediately that the section in question is very odd though, regardless.Hypernator (talk) 22:32, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

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Table - Middle-class share of all adults by country
Responding to this .

Wealth does not change by buying a house, it’s calculated by taking all assets (Financial and non-financial) less all debts including any mortgages. This means that buying a house just transfers equity between asset types, you can always sell the house if you want and capitalise on any net gain just like any other asset. An income only method which you seem to support can screws the facts, it can incorrectly categorise millionaires who focus on non-financial assets as poor because their main yearly gain is non-financial until the asset is sold. Then when they do sell the asset they flip-flop though the class groups which is wrong. Pensioners are another group, they often already 100% own their houses and cars and they don’t have young kids to support etc. They chose to retire and subsequently under an income only method they artificially drop out of the middle class bracket because their income drops, but in reality their disposable income after mortgage payments etc. is simpler to what they had before. They are still living a middle class lifestyle its just they don’t need to have as much money coming in as someone much younger who pays a mortgage, is buying a car and has children.

As the article describes there are different whys people have used to show who are middle class. So instead of blanking out the table of data you don’t like, can I suggest you go and find WP:RS data which shows the information based on income only and perhaps add that to the current article along with the current split by wealth. This way we will give a reader a more rounded view of the subject as they would be able to see both methods and draw their own conclusions leaving the page with a WP:Neutral point of view. ThinkingTwice contribs | talk 10:06, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

 * I never said that buying a house lowers wealth. What I said was or tried to say is the following: as shown by the OECD link, at the Middle Quintile, nearly all wealth is comprised of Non Fin Assets, which obviously means Home equity for the most part. This is not cash or anything which can directly be used to buy goods and services unless you sell the house and keep cash. So now the question is what determines home equity: Home equity is higher in places where there are a) higher home prices b) higher home ownership rates and c) low debt mortgages. Factor A is probably most important. So in essence we are ranking middle class on the basis of who has the more expensive housing market? I think that’s absurd. No WONDER you see Germany and Sweden well below poorer Spain and Italy and others. Australia has the most expensive housing market and consequently the highest median wealth. In reality, their lifestyle would be no different if Home prices were half what they are now. In fact it would be better!  In the USA, you can buy a house with only 3% upfront equity, which when combined with low Home prices in 90% of country leads to low Home equity and thus NF wealth. Another example, is that a family who just bought a house and has low equity may very well not even be middle class despite being upper income! Also, middle class renters will

Never be middle class according to this definition unless they accumulate some other asset. In Germany, where majority rent, This is exactly what you see.

 * Meanwhile, the same OECD link says that a huge portion of Financial wealth is concentrated in the top 10%. This is also known as liquid wealth and can easily be converted to consumption.

 * While the examples you provide on wealth are correct, the benefit of wealth per year is tiny in comparison to income. Income is used at a 90-100% rate in most counties (hence a 0-10%) savings rate. Wealth is only “used” to finance consumption during Retirement or Extraordinary circumstances. Of course it can also produce income itself. And typically when wealth is used during retirement, it is liquidated at a recommended 3-4% rate per year. Therefore wealth can be seen as a buffer or nest egg. As mentioned above though, most of this at the middle is simply what you have in your own home.

 * I also wanted to illustrate just how small of an impact NF wealth (in terms of home equity) has in financing consumption. First of all, only about 3% of homes are sold in a given year. Assume half use proceeds to upsize and other half to downsize. Let’s even assume that the homes are all debt free with no mortgage. Of those who downsized, say they kept HALF as cash and the other half to buy a smaller property. So you do the math, and even with these generous assumptions, you still have only .075% of home equity being transferred as cash in a given year. And of that amount, it’s unlikely all will be used in a year, since the goal was probably to live off it for years to come.

 * This is all why a more complete measure of income has been or should be used which incorporates wealth withdrawals. I am Pretty sure most surveys already include pensions so that is not a issue. If they do not include withdrawals from wealth they should, but I suspect it won’t add that much to overall income given the low withdrawal rate during retirements.

 * You make a valid point that retirees have lower income while having more wealth. If they are just sitting on the wealth and simply living off their pension, then they aren’t living a middle class lifestyle. If they are supplementing their pension with wealth, then they very well could have a rich lifestyle depending on how much cash they have saved or transferred from their main property. its A case by case scenario but I think the overall illustration above is fruitful. Also note that retirees are not a huge part of the pop anyway. But again, you must admit that wealth misses and includes people who shouldn’t be there; most renters and new Home buyers wont have much equity and not labeled in middle class even if they are in standard of living. Likewise an elderly person sitting on a house which appreciated may be considered well off from a wealth perspective even though her income only supports a lower lifestyle. He/she would have to sell house or take on debt to get any benefit. The only benefit besides that is living without a mortgage. This speaks to what you said before about someone labeled as “poor” when they sit in an expensive property. In those years that they are sitting on it, they are indeed income poor because they can’t buy goods and services (which makes me wonder how they could afford the housing costs), and can’t otherwise benefit from the illiquid property. Also you are assuming said person sells the house to begin with. Many elderly people simply stay in it and pass it on. A small % of the housing stock is sold in a given year from data I have seen in various nations. Nevertheless the example you provided of an elderly person having less expenses like children and no mortgage is true of most elderly people no matter if their house is worth 100,000 or a million. Wealth differences don’t change this almost fact of life. Of course they may have higher expenses elsewhere like
 * health care.

 * I will gladly add an income perspective. Thoughts?? — Preceding unsigned copy mment added by Lneal001 (talk • contribs) 14:08, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

A simple illustration showing importance of income for financing consumption. We assume 3% rate for fin wealth which is spent in a given year, and (for NF wealth) we assume 3% of homes sold of which, half are downsized, half of that cash retained, and 20% of that spent in a given year.

Country A (all per adult)

Income: 50,000 NF wealth: 10,000 Fin wealthy: 50,000

50,000 + nil + 1500= 51,500-savings= consumption

Country B:

Income: 30,000 NF wealth: 250,000 Fin wealth: 100,000

30,000+375+3000= 33,375-savings= consumption.

So even a massive difference in wealth in favor of B will only marginally close the distance in terms of consumption. If the difference was purely due to NF assets, as in the middle quintile (where NF assets dominate=home equity), then the boost to consumption for B would be almost trivial.

This is all in terms of DIRECT impact. Indirectly, greater wealth causes more income, though that would already be taken into account. If the higher wealth in B is due to a higher home ownership rate, then we would have the benefit of a larger portion of the population living for free, which obviously is a positive vs A. If however the higher NF wealth is simply due to higher home prices (for example Australia vs USA) then there really is no net benefit unless you sell the house and take a cash proceed (which would be included in the calculations above). Plus you must counteract this with the fact that higher home prices also means less money for other goods and services.

Thus when you see median wealth of say Italy double that of Germany or Sweden for example, it does NOT mean that the former has a higher standard of living, because the the latter two make up for it by having far higher income.

Sent from my iPhone — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lneal001 (talk • contribs) 16:31, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Possible Misquote in Power and Class
The power and class section quotes a line from The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret, that begins, "In 2020, the labor force numbered 152.7 million people..." Since the book was published in 2012 and it's not even 2020 yet, I assume that was a typo meant to say 2002. I tried to go to the source to verify but I don't have access to the full text. If someone with full access wants to verify, that would be nice.

Also the entire Power and Class section is based on a single source. It seems like a good one but some effort should be made to find more info. Plasteredpegasus (talk) 18:38, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Article written by a Marxist
Why is this being allowed to fly? It has clearly been written by someone viewing the world through a Marxist lens. The entire article is littered with the political phrases of Marxism, such as breaking down society into "the bourgeoisie" and "the proletariat" with mentions of a "ruling class".

The article ought to lead with a breakdown of definitions by region (because obviously they differ in the US, UK, and others) and MAYBE have a small section further down discussing Marx's thoughts on the subject.

82.9.121.234 (talk) 23:12, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Terminology section: Lack of Factual Accuracy
Terminology section contains following statement:
 * "In medieval European feudal society (8th–12th centuries), a "middle class" composed primarily of peasants who formed a new "bourgeoisie" based on the success of their mercantile ventures, eventually overthrew the ruling monarchists of their society and ultimately led to the rise of capitalist societies."

This statement ignores the 3 Estates of Feudalism (which has well been well-attested by historians). For some reason, the editor has considered limiting Feudal society to the 8th-12th centuries; which is contrary to most accepted definitions of between 9th-15th centuries (see Feudalism) Since the statement is unsourced, there is no way of understanding the meaning of the sentence. This entire section should be revised in a meaningful way.

--AnalyticalHistoricalHobbyist (talk) 15:58, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Update: the statement is sourced in the next section: History and evolution of the term. It cites Marx' Communist Manifesto. Which means this section has a NPOV issue as well.

--AnalyticalHistoricalHobbyist (talk) 16:16, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

History and evolution of the term section: NPOV issue
The first paragraph should be greatly expanded upon. As currently written, this section is focused solely on a Marxist interpretation.

--AnalyticalHistoricalHobbyist (talk) 16:18, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

lack of NPOV in first two paragraphs
Looking at the first two paragraphs, I feel that there may be an issue with maintaining a neutral POV. According to MOS:LEAD, the special emphasis should be placed on having a WP:NPOV, being concise, and proper citations. These two paragraphs fail on all of those fronts.

Bold claims are made with no citations, such as “ Modern social theorists—and especially economists—have defined and re-defined the term ‘middle class’ in order to serve their particular social or political ends.” No matter where this was, such a bold claim should require a citation. But the fact that it’s in the very first paragraph adds even more reason to remove it.

The second paragraph also uses terminology that’s far too specific to Marxian theory, such as “petite-bourgeoisie” and again lacks citations for all of its claims.

Ideally, it would be better to clean up these paragraphs than flat-out remove them. However, I don’t have the necessary expertise to properly fix the issues myself, so if there’s no objections to the removal of these paragraphs, I will remove them.

--Captainsnacc (talk) 04:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * the lead does not require any cites. It summarizes point made in the article. I don't think it's biased. Rjensen (talk) 07:23, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

{{Reply To|Rjensen} Maybe I’m misunderstanding the principles, but in MOS:LEAD I saw “ As a general rule of thumb, a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs and be carefully sourced as appropriate.” With at in mind, I feel like the paragraphs I removed did have sufficient justification for removal. Captainsnacc (talk) 04:35, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Definition of middle class
Just definition 119.160.68.180 (talk) 13:02, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

UK usage, article image
this has been mentioned before on this page (multiple times), but this article really needs to differentiate clearly between the UK usage of the term and the more typical US/international use.

Also, why is the main image of the article about wealth instead of income, when the article at multiple points defines the middle class as those with enough income to buy non-essential goods?

--jonas (talk) 20:17, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Extremely Biased
The First paragraph describes a middle class as existant, while there are no sources it is even an actual thing. There is even research to be found (on page 1 of a simple google search) that this may be a faulty conclusion:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2083379 94.110.113.219 (talk) 21:44, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Not true-- the citated article says the middle class really existed. Rjensen (talk) 21:49, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Middle class


text:
Santa Clara River

Santa Clara River may refer to:

 * Santa Clara River (California), a river in Southern California
 * Santa Clara River (Utah), a river in Utah
 * Carmen River, a river in Mexico also known as the Santa Clara River

title: Santa Clara River