“George says to me, ‘We are normal,’” Hobson says. “And we are. We go to the movies every weekend. He likes to have the same experience that others do, so we don’t watch in a screening room closed off to the world. We go to the local theater in whatever city we are in.” Then, in the closest McLean ever comes to irony, she writes that Hobson “tells me about one Friday night they ate at Sizzler.”

And there you have it: Don’t get all uppity about the mega-wealthy changing the world to suit their liberal preferences—the Hobson-Lucases go to the movies with the norms, and once they ate at Sizzler on a Friday night. I can picture the scene. George and Mellody ensconced in a leather booth, chatting about their reactions to The Fault In Our Stars as they decide between the Tri-Tip Sirloin and the Malibu Chicken Combo. George, with his permanent half-smile, a morsel of ketchup stuck to his beard, looks around the dining room in expectation of being recognized. When they return from the endless salad bar the couple chats about Steven and Sheryl and Valerie and Rahm, compares travel schedules, laments the grief the Republicans are giving the president, and wonders whether global warming will rob their daughter of the ability to one day buy a mansion in Miami.

It is here, in this tableaux, as the billionaire and his wife try to fit in among the screaming children and teenage couples and senior citizens asking for a discount—Lucas is eligible, by the way—that we see most clearly what James Wolcott doesn’t grasp about the “very rich.” Progressive, tolerant, ethnically and sexually diverse, they are nonetheless ideologically and culturally uniform, unable to treat seriously opinions not mentioned on the Huffington Post or on Charlie Rose, trapped in a performance of reverse-snobbery in which one re-establishes a connection with the public by spending an hour at a casual dining franchise. What worries me about the American establishment isn’t its venality. Its banality is far worse.