Presenting, for Your Confusion...Alessandra Stanley

Stanley writes, and the world goes "Huh?"

And now, presenting TV-beat reporter Alessandra Stanley goofynon sequitur of the week,which leadsoff her review oftwo new cop shows, "Southland" and "The Unusuals," on the front of Wednesday's Arts page:


In the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt was considered a traitor to his class, and in the 1960s so was Mick Jagger. The lead characters in two new police dramas that begin this week are upper-class kids who defy their upbringing to become cops. That downward mobility has little to do with solving crimes, but it does suggest that these days, it is fashionable for the rich to be self-loathing.