Classy with Jonathan Menjivar · Pineapple Street Studios and Audacy

Am I a Classhole?

July 5, 2023·45 min·4 clips

Producer Kristen Torres feels like a classist monster after rejecting cheap socks at a swap meet.

The episode opens with a scene at the Santa Fe Springs swap meet in LA, where Jonathan and producer Kristen Torres are visiting a place both frequented as children. Kristen picks up socks her mother used to buy her but puts them back quietly because she doesn't like the polyester blend. Later on mic, Kristen describes feeling like a 'classist monster' — a phrase that captures the episode's central tension. She frames the sock rejection as symptomatic of all the ways she has changed since her working-class childhood, and names the feeling as guilt rather than anything objectively bad. Jonathan introduces the 'Am I the Classhole?' game, where he and JP Bramer respond to caller questions about class violations. JP is an advice columnist and author who grew up in Oklahoma with Mexican laborer relatives on one side and white professionals on the other — a background he describes as 'prairie rich.' The first caller describes a salary transparency moment at dinner with a colleague, where the caller revealed they earn $25k while the colleague, who had been complaining about class oppression, earns nearly double. JP notes the irony of two exploited workers competing over who has it worse. The second caller discusses navigating a cross-class romantic relationship, where she fights her own internalized class judgments about her boyfriend's spending abilities. JP responds that this kind of active consciousness is healthy and practical, and that a nice time doesn't require an expensive dinner. Jonathan then poses his own question to JP about over-thanking service workers and housekeepers — particularly with his housekeeper, a relationship complicated by the fact that his grandmother was also a housekeeper. JP says he has the identical instinct and recently concluded the performative over-politeness may be condescending rather than helpful. A caller from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn wonders whether opposing a Subway fast food franchise in her neighborhood makes her a class hole. JP rules yes — mostly for comedic purposes — while noting the offense is minor. The second half of the episode features a long conversation with comedian Wyatt Senac. Wyatt describes getting an internship at SNL, a dispiriting PA job, and eventually landing a writing position on King of the Hill at a time when studios were subsidizing diversity hires. He arrived at that job $30,000 in credit card debt. Once he started earning consistently, he paid off the debt and then immediately acquired more — buying two cars, including a black Jeep Cherokee with chrome rims, going upside down on the loan. He describes spending money on friends, overtipping, and giving cash to a man outside his neighborhood Ralph's grocery store, partly as class guilt mitigation. After leaving King of the Hill to pursue performance, Wyatt spent four or five years unemployed, exhausted his savings, and ran up $60–70k in debt. As he faced losing his apartment and his car was repossessed, the man from Ralph's boarded his bus and offered him a place to stay. Wyatt reflects on the role of class-based aspiration in his spending — he says he was comparing himself to rappers and athletes and trying to justify his place in a predominantly white TV industry. He landed a job on the Daily Show shortly after, and years later still drove past the Starbucks where the man from Ralph's used to hang out, looking for him.

As heard by us

An uneasy conversation about class guilt, politeness, and the limits of trying to atone.

Classy with Jonathan Menjivar turns class anxiety into an awkward, close-range conversation about guilt, power, and what politeness can actually fix. Menjivar sits with the discomfort instead of sanding it down.

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Why you'd press play

For when your politeness starts to feel like a guilt tax.

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