WAYNE, N.J.--Seat belt guru and presidential hopeful Ralph Nader says a strong democracy doesn't tolerate a culture of everything-for-sale. Though innocuous by itself, the statement's implication--in the context of Nader's anti-corporate rants--is that American democracy is in the crapper.

I used to disagree with this implication, navely beholden to the pious claim that the best things in life are free, or as the Beatles put it, money can't buy me love. Then I realized that 20 years after John Lennon's death, it's Michael Jackson who owns the lion's share of Beatles memorabilia (not to mention the Elephant Man's skeleton). Still, I clung to the belief that not everything in America is for sale.

Then I took a summer job with The Princeton Review.

For a generous $17 an hour, I participate in what is essentially a numbers racket, an enterprise that boasts enough coded charts, spreadsheets and Scantron forms to lure Ace Rothenstein (DeNiro's Casino character) out of retirement/hiding. But the bottom line is this: For about $1,000, my employer guarantees high school students a 100-point improvement on the Scholastic Assessment Test. If they don't get it, they get to take the class again for free. And again. And again.

The Princeton Review was founded around the time of Lennon's shooting by some whiz kid who combined Mark David Chapman's obsessive personality with sound business sense. This lunatic registered for every SAT the Educational Testing Service offered, learning the test inside and out. Upon realizing that it was a huge load of crap, our hero went back to his parents' Manhattan apartment and started tutoring. Twenty years later, his business has effectively ended Kaplan's monopoly on test preparation.

The company exists in a strange paradox. Our credo: The SAT is a worthless test that discriminates against women, racial minorities and the poor. We hate the SAT. Long live the SAT.

Somehow the good people at The Princeton Review have smilingly accepted this Orwellian state of affairs. And after a few weeks on the job, so have I.

My job consists of walking fairly intelligent 16-year-old kids through junior high school math problems, which sounds a bit like teaching sex ed at Amy Fisher's high school.