As with any other human activity, there are various skill-levels in the practice of snobbery. We have identified six levels. Where, you may be wondering, do you fit?

We have created several fictitious situations to test your place in the pecking order of social put-downs. Mark your best answers and then identify yourself in the scoring section at the end.

Situation 1: Neighborhood Snobbery.
You’ve taken an old friend out for lunch. You want the old friend to meet a fascinating, down-scale acquaintance, a maverick author. You have warned your friend that this writer lives in a questionable part of town. After lunch, you and your friend give the author a ride home. As you approach the author’s house, and as the neighborhood becomes more and more WW2-asbestos-shingle bungalow, your friend is heard to mutter, "This is not so bad…" You know your friend said this loudly enough that the author in the back seat heard it. What is your response?

a. You stop and, after ascertaining that your friend has bus fare, ask her to get out of the car.

b. You cringe, blush, and keep on driving.

c. You force a smile and say, "I noticed on the Multiple Listing Service site the other day that some of these places as already going for the low six figures."

d. You guffaw, slap the steering wheel, and say, "At least it’s one step above Tobacco Road!"

Situation 2: Domicile Snobbery.
A down-sized friend is showing you her downscale house to which the family had to move after downsizing. It is small, old, musty. With difficulty, you bite your tongue and manage to say nothing until you are shown the tiny bathroom, on whose floor is an antique, dirty brown shag carpet dimly visible in the light from the 40-bulb over the cracked sink. What is your response?

a. Tears fill your eyes and you give your friend a long, sincere hug.

b. You stroke the mildewed walls and say, "It’s like living in a piece of installation art."

c. You grimace and say, "This will be easy to replace. Have you noticed that even Home Depot is carrying terrazzo these days?"

d. The total affront to your good taste overwhelms you and you hurl yourself at the toilet just in time for that stained ceramic vessel to receive your massive up-chuck.

Situation 3: Media Snobbery.
Though you live some distance from the East Coast, you began subscribing to the New York Times even when you and your spouse’s income was still in the lower six figures. Now that your income is solidly in the mid-six figures, which of the following most closely matches your present behavior?

a. You save the papers and make a weekly run to deposit them in the waiting area of the emergency room of the local charity hospital.

b. You often leave the thrown paper on your front lawn until early afternoon to be sure that neighbors and passers-by can see proof of your subscription.

c. At each monthly meeting of the parent-teacher organization in your children’s school, you make a motion to require the Times as a daily "textbook" in the Contemporary History course.

d. You carry clippings, in your purse or wallet, of items from the editorial pages of the Times to share with friends and colleagues as proof that "liberalism" is still dangerously alive in New York City.

Situation 4: Automotive Snobbery.
You and your spouse delight in driving a matched set of his-and-her Ford Excursions (the "his" Excursion is black, the "hers", white). Which of the following best applies to you?

a. You install the darkest possible tinted glass in your Excursion because, deep down, you are ashamed to be seen driving such a behemoth.

b. Before taking delivery of the two S.U.V.’s, you slipped a mechanic a hundred dollars to deactivate the low-beam headlight switch so that the high-beam is on at all times.

c. You have 120-decibel diesel horns installed in both vehicles.

d. In addition to the GPS screens which came with both vehicles, you have flat-screen TV’s installed for the front and back seats, along with a DVD player, wireless internet access, and satellite video. Although the installers of this equipment pride themselves on making the equipment invisible to the outside observer, you insist that all antennas be large and prominent.

Situation 5: Offspring Snobbery.
As your teen-age child moves from middle school to high school, the child’s grade-average consistently declines. You find yourself dreading the day the PSAT results appear in your mailbox. What do you do?

a. You have your child take a three-day battery of full-range aptitude tests and spend hours with a counselor discussing all possible future courses of study and development.

b. You decide that a theater-and-modeling career is the best future for your child. You enroll the child in every available private, after-school class in dance, drama, diction, piano, and modeling.

c. You trade in your C-class Mercedes for an S-class and max out all credit cards to get into the best country club in the area so that you and your child can spend evenings with the families of the best potential future spouses for the child.

d. You max out all credit cards and send your child to a Swiss boarding school so you don't have to think about the brat but you can drop the name of the school in a thousand conversations.

Situation 6: Oenological Snobbery.
The CEO of your company comes to dinner. You serve a Lafitte-Rothschild that you paid $792 for on ebay. The CEO downs the glassful in one gulp, belches quietly, and asks for a refill. What do you do?

a. You ignore what has just happened and query the CEO about the condition of his golf game.

b. You excuse yourself. Take the wine, go to the kitchen, pour the remainder into another container, refill the bottle with Gallo, go back to the dining room, and refill the CEO's glass as if nothing had happened.

c. You take a sip, and, as if the CEO were not present, begin a discourse with your spouse about the playfully woody quality of the wine, commenting on its subtle obbligato of unassuming modernity.

d. You hurl your glass of wine at the CEO and resign on the spot.

Situation 7: Political Snobbery.
You discover that your teenage offspring is reading Karl Marx IN THE ORIGINAL GERMAN. You find a dog-eared, much-underlined copy of Das Kapital under the kid's mattress, along with a heavily used Langenscheidt's German-English English-German Dictionary. What do you do?

a. The following evening, while on the stair machine at your local workout emporium, you brag to your fellow stair-climbers about your child's political precociousness.

b. You take your Republican precinct chairperson out to dinner and ask where you went wrong.

c. You write an angry letter to the local newspaper, going on at length about the subversive, radical left-wing elements on the faculty of your child's middle school.

d. [See Situation 5, Choice "d", above.]

Scoring:
Give yourself 1 point for each "a" answer, 2 for each "b", 3 for each "c", and 4 for each "d". Total your points and find yourself on the following scale.