Something there is that does not love a barrier.

In a previous life (no, the one before that), when I was a corporado, the company of my employment devoutly observed the formalities of rank and those of us who toiled at whatever level longed to obtain whatever fragments of conspicuous privilege were allowed to the next. Or whatever. So that, as a case in point, when I once moved into a new office in a new city a carpenter arrived one day to install a false wall, the room's existing dimensions having been determined somewhat too generous for my humble use.

Once, in fact, when I was laboring in New York, a new guy just transferred in from the provinces attained instant celebrity by ordering and - yes! - obtaining a clock for his office, a perq commonly assumed available only at the next higher level of command. The cry went up: "Joe [his name changed here to protect the innocent] has broken the clock barrier!" And everyone spent the rest of the afternoon ordering clocks of their own.

All of which comes to mind because in Massachusetts now, the state where (although it was recently turned around by "Mitt") - the state where, I say, once the embattled farmers stood, a newly-elected Governor Deval Patrick is piteously confessing to "screwing up" for having requisitioned a leased Cadillac and some "high-end" office furniture (including, no doubt, a clock) and for hiring a "chief of staff" for his wife. And so I assume the Caddy-plus-chief-of-staff barrier, although somewhat tattered, is still intact in the Commonwealth. Alas.

What we need around here, IMVHO, is a few more breakers of barriers.