Sometimes, NYT columnists believe common knowledge

Sir:

Frank Rich describes the vanished world and ethos of 1956 "middle class America" depicted in a home movie. He extols 1956 middle class America's quasi-egalitarian values; its "faith in its own unbounded future" and its belief in "shared sacrifice and...lower-case democratic values", apparently in partnership with benign industrial giants like 3M.

He presents a 21st century contrast: "Many of America’s best young minds now invent derivatives, not Disneylands".

Neither derivatives nor Disneyland (nor Scotch Tape) have any significance or societal value beyond their function as lucrative products and profit centers for their inventors. The racially and socially segregated "homogenous" middle class of 1956 may be viewed as a self-serving Scotch Tape repair applied to the American society depicted in Richard Wright's "Native Son", published in 1940.

The Scotch Tape repair failed decades ago.

s.