"Bennett Gibbons was a very fortunate young cow," begins this funny tale of social leveling.

The first advocates of socialism promoted social leveling in order to create a meritocratic or technocratic society based upon individual talent.

Like most Brits, he saw a society committed to complete social leveling and missed the way the class system worked.

"Moderne" rather than modern, Art Deco conveyed ambivalence toward the 20th century and its social leveling.

"Europe 1992 is not just a matter of harmonization and certainly not of social leveling," a prominent West German industrialist said.

James Key-Wallace, a 1999 graduate, attributes the social leveling to limited distribution: "The drugs come from the same half-dozen sources.

Two pages later, however, he concedes that "any commitment to social leveling was at best ephemeral."

And the effect is a kind of virtual social leveling.

It's a tidy solution, this social leveling, to troubling questions about class divisions in America, and it's one that Hollywood has fallen back on time and again.

The very notion of transforming an academy of fine arts into a crafts school was an act of social leveling.