MDIA 5006

"He had developed night vision for detecting new styles of life. "Style of life"-Lebensstil in German-was a term invented a hundred years ago by the German sociologist Max Weber, the father of status theory itself. All new styles of life, he said, were created by "status groups," like-minded souls who try to create spheres of their own, insulated from the opinions of people outside. The socialites of the Saturday route had their style of life in the 1960s … and hippies had theirs. It was not until the late 1950s that the terms themselves, "status," referring to social position, and "style of life," referring to the manners and mores of status groups, emerged from academic sociology and became part of everyday language."

SHOUTS & MURMURS casual about genocidal Cambodian despot Pol Pot... Pol Pot has a problem. It is 11 a.m. on a warm, lazy California morning and he's having breakfast poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The problem is that he ordered the flapjacks, and the waitress has just brought him…