Hoo boy—she is mad, too! Just look at her little fists clenched in front of her. This is the strongest display of emotion we’ve seen from Cayla in a long time!
Now that he’s put “the intolerant” of the world in their place, the un-didactic Mr. Batiuk takes a(nother) swipe at those wicked Wall Street Billionaires, who in Cayla’s mind have somehow (how, exactly?) made college tuition difficult to afford. Les soothes her by relating an anecdote that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. had shared in his commencement address to Rice University’s Class of ’98:
I’ll pass on to you what another Methuselah said to me. He’s Joe Heller, author, as you know, of Catch 22. We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch 22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?”
Joe said to me, “I have something he can never have.”
I said, “What’s that, Joe?”
And he said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Let’s don’t quibble over the distinction between having “the knowledge that I’ve got enough” and just “enough”. Cayla expresses to Les her concern over the expense faced by their soon-to-be-blended family, and Les’ idea of easing her mind is to (mis)quote a writer, because writers are wise and all-knowing. Billionaires, on the other hand, are “greedy, amoral morons” who fuck things up for decent folk like “us”.
From April 2010:
Son of Stuck Funky 