"It's a closed system of scorn and self-congratulation".The problem, as Mr Almond sees it, is that this easy, idle indulgence only empowers the conservative punditocracy.
The lavish food, wine, clothes, cars and sensuous self-indulgence – the easy grace of the true aristocracy – is deeply envied by the middle-class upstart Ryder: the outsider, looking in – who yearns to emulate such consummate style.
It's too easy to succumb to self-indulgence, and we must try to resist it!
But five years of considerable prosperity and easy credit have honed self-indulgence.
The lack of any direct contact with one of his subjects, and the distance of his relationship with the other, might have led a lesser writer to self-indulgence or an easy sentimentality.
When we reflect on Bieber's Louis Vuitton embossed, Lamborghini cortege it is easy to equate addiction with indulgence and immorality.
And far too much in "Our Idiot Brother" is much too easy, including the soft, sentimental indulgence it lavishes on Ned and the satirical barbs it flings at his sisters.
"Far too much in 'Our Idiot Brother' is much too easy, including the soft, sentimental indulgence it lavishes on Ned and the satirical barbs it flings at his sisters," A. O. Scott wrote in The Times.
It's easy to see why: an indulgence built to rival Versailles, or Schönbrunn in Vienna, it is full of trompes d'oeils so intricate that even after studying the ceiling for several minutes I could not tell what was a statue and what was a fresco.
As with anything especially colourful and starry-eyed, it can go on a bit in places (only one track clocks in at under the 5 minute mark), but it never dips below being interesting so it's easy to forgive the occasional indulgence.
