The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein on how the recession is affecting country clubs, institutions that make him “positively ache for the revolution”:

The story here is that once-exclusive country clubs are finding they can’t support themselves in the economic crisis. So they’re going where other business establishments have gone before: They’re opening their doors to members of the public who would like to exchange money for goods and services. Sort of weirdly, they’ve done it by hiring a chef named Michael DiMarco who seems determined to turn the place into Applebee’s (“he remade the menu to his liking, adding onion rings with ranch dressing for $3.95, topping his signature salads with french fries and eliminating all steaks smaller than 16 ounces”).
So I feel for them on that. But the economic facts are simple enough: Like most people, the members of the Uniontown Country Club can no longer pay an establishment to bar people they don’t like from setting foot on the premises.

Yes, God forbid anyone run an exclusive club expressly designed to keep the riff-raff out, right Ezra?