In Lee Cary's blog post Jeffery Immelt's Convenient Religion he notes:

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, said on Wednesday his generation of business leaders had succumbed to “meanness and greed” that had harmed the US economy and increased the gap between the rich and the poor… 

It appears to me that like Lisa Lerer of Politico, Immelt is channeling his inner-Michelle Obama, who also believes America has succumbed to meanness and who counsels young Americans to not give in to greed.

From a New Yorker profile last year of the now first lady:

[Michelle] Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we’re a divided country, we’re a country that is “just downright mean,”

And from a report of a campaign stop last year in Ohio:

A former attorney with the white-shoe Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin, [Michelle] Obama explains that she and her husband made the choice to give up lucrative jobs in favor of community service. “We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”

So now we have an example from both the media and business of echoing Michelle Obama.  Perhaps they were paying attention when Barack Obama made it clear, “Whatever Michelle Says Is the Message” and like the good obsequious followers that they are, they obey.

Sorry, that was me succumbing to meanness. 

It is certainly more likely that these people simply share a world-view that we're all mean and greedy  (and slothful and complacent and lazy and uninformed and uninvolved and isolated and too comfortable and selfish) and most of all in need of state-enforced coercion to overcome our failings.

Jeff Dobbs blogs at The Voice in My Head