Ran three miles. Came home and ate half a cylinder of Pringles, because I was too lazy to make oatmeal.

As I was running (and watching an interview with Amy Fisher on the Insider), I thought more about the TNR article on The Times Style section. Can you have a social conscience and still like nice things? Admittedly, I’m a very neurotic blogger, but these things worry me. Can you still love your hand hewn dining room table, your sassy boots, your new CD and also say that you care about the poor?

Feminism already grappled with a similiar question awhile ago. Bitch PhD probably has written about lipstick feminism before, but I’m too lazy to look through her archives. Libertarians with a social conscience, like my friend Jane Galt, don’t see any conflict between consumption and conscience. In fact, consumption brings relief to the poor. Me? I’m not that sure about the magic hand of capitalism, and I worry that liking party dresses and the patina in our old wood floors, while it may not directly lead to world misery, is at least a distraction.

Perhaps as a reaction to the TNR article, the Times has an article today on rich people who consume in all the wrong ways — MTV’s Super Sweet 16.