If I have markup like this:
<div id="foo"></div>
and I want to detect later whether div#foo still contains that same character entity, I'd like to be able to do so by comparing it to 
rather than to
(which in my code base is rather obtuse for maintenance purposes).
I've tried things like this (using jQuery):
console.log($('<textarea />').html($('#foo').html()).val());
But that seems to still output the nice little square "what you talkin' 'bout" character rather than the desired 
.
I'm open to plain JavaScript or jQuery-specific solutions.