But what's really dismal is that even reforms that could keep the gap from getting wider — ending the mortgage-interest deduction, challenging residential segregation — are politically toxic.
"Wages at the time were really dismal, $6,100 to $8,400 annually, and it took 21 years to reach top pay," Philip F. Rubio, the author of "There's Always Work at the Post Office" (2010), a history of the struggle of African-American postal workers, said in an interview.
This was towards the tail-end of my really dismal drug addiction and through my bleariness it was amazing to see someone possessed of such clarity I interviewed him years later and said I'd seen him perform.
Howard Archer, chief UK economist at Global Insight, said the data was "really dismal", and warned that the current financial sector turmoil was likely to "deepen the pressure on housing market activity" as lenders will be forced to tighten lending criteria further.
Beth Rosenberg, the parent of a learning disabled child, started the organization in 2009, in order to give her son, and other children with disabilities "practical skills and employment options," which for these kids, Rosenberg says, "is really dismal".
But what is really a dismal horror story is told with a kind of Shubertian loveliness that transforms it into an elegant, melancholy meditation on love and courage.
Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.
Given the hostile reception and dismal ratings of Bravo's Start-Ups: Silicon Valley (as well as tepid numbers for Cheezburger Network-set LOLWork), another startup-focused show might seem like a really bad idea.
Exhibit A: the dismal personal-income report released Friday morning.
