I intentionally avoided use of the word "unrepresentative", as I was not sure what would qualify as representative of those who have been evicted. I understand that my use of "sympathetic" may be viewed as similarly vague, but I believe that its meaning may be more well-understood.
What point were you trying to make? I assumed you weren't talking about rich assholes getting evicted for unconscionable behavior, since that would be completely irrelevant to the discussion about gentrification (at least, as far as I could tell). Instead, I fuzzily matched your argument to the nearest one that I thought made sense in context ("they could have found an even less sympathetic postergirl for evictees if that was their agenda") and I answered the fuzzily matched argument.
It seems you were talking about rich assholes getting evicted for unconscionable behavior after all. Sorry, but I still don't see what they have to do with gentrification. Explain?
>"this raises questions about how representative Inge is of the evictee population. I suspect the answer is "not very."
You are correct in your fuzzy logic, I was first making the point that the author could have picked a less sympathetic individual, if the author's intent had been to malign evicted tenants. My second point was intended to state that I am not sure what type of person would be "representative" of the individuals evicted; criticizing an author for not finding a person who does not fit an undefined descriptor seems unfair to the columnist.
> I was first making the point that the author could have picked a less sympathetic individual, if the author's intent had been to malign evicted tenants.
Your specific example was outside the scope of gentrification, which is what we were all discussing. I accused the article of baiting us into falsely generalizing from Inge's case to conclude (fuzzily) that "evicted poor people only mind being kicked out because they're a bunch of ungrateful slobs that turn down the abundant opportunities everybody heaps upon them because they believe they are entitled to something better". Inge's hypothetical wealthy twin evictee would not have been a better candidate to advance this agenda because smearing her would not have smeared the protesting masses who, by and large, are not as wealthy.
> My second point was intended to state that I am not sure what type of person would be "representative" of the individuals evicted
I gave you three examples. A fourth example would be to choose an evictee at random and investigate them. It's entirely possible that this is how the story came about and that it's coincidental that she is such an unsympathetic figure. My original post observed that the likelihood of interpretation #4 is lowered by the extreme nature of Inge's case.
> criticizing an author for not finding a person who does not fit an undefined descriptor seems unfair to the columnist.
In a world of incomplete knowledge, finite opportunity cost, and human-resource-intensive processes for rigorous inference it's entirely fair to have a complaint that is not mathematically precise.
