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On Trump, snobbery, and the roller derby — 49 Comments

1. On Trump, “Now you either find those things so repellent that you can see nothing else,”, sadly that is my best friend. He detests the Dem, yet he is repelled by Trump. Believes Floyd was murdered, as was the cop at J6, and Trump encouraged an insurrection on J6. I tried to get him to vote for Trump, but he would not. Didn’t vote for Harris either. So, we don’t talk about Trump.
   Oh, he doesn’t like some of his picks either, but a lot of Trump supporters don’t either.
   Still he is my best friend, my Other Brother.

2. There has been a resurgence of roller derby starting in the mid 2000s. It was featured in an episode of the tv show Psych in 2008. I hadn’t seen or heard about it since the 70s before that. Never really got into it myself.

3. I always hated psychology, and the only psych course I ever took was “Physiological Psychology,” which was very interesting. It was mostly biochemistry and brain anatomy, and that was more to my taste.

   I mention this only because I suspect I’m about to cite a psychological truism, but I’m too lazy to look it up. Anyway, I think that most children are very sensitive to status, and that’s especially true of girls. Neo’s insensitivity to status and her attraction to the déclassé are clear signs of gender dysphoria, and I think it’s quite likely that Neo is transgender. It’s not too late to transition, but roller derby?

   I don’t know, but how about a ballet written around the drama between two roller derby lesbian girlfriends? I can picture a banked stage, with lots of running, jumping, slamming, and punching. Maybe a score by “The Ramones”? Final scene: all the girls go to a Trump rally. The ballet gets rave reviews, and leftist heads explode.

4. I come from a working class rural background and have somewhat transcended that by graduating from a couple of “elite” institutions. My social circle includes both cloud people and dirt people. I’ve always seen Trump Derangement Syndrome as overt class warfare. The hatred and contempt directed towards those who support Trump shocked me.

5. Trump: I have read on the internet (yea, I know) that while Trump was born well off, his father had him do physical work at their properties from a young age. He’s certainly not lazy. And in his work he must get cooperation with all kinds of people: finance people, unions, bureaucrats, laborers, probably the mafia. In person, he’s comfortable with all kinds and they’re comfortable with him. (Faculty lounge at Harvard might be an exception.)
   Roller derby: I too was a fan as a kid. Being in the Bay Area, I watched live the games whose last half were taped and sent around the country. What I still don’t understand: The Bay Bombers skated six months a couple of times a week. There were usually three or four other teams which were opponents for an entire month. What were the other players on the other teams doing during this time?
   Frank Deford wrote a book several decades ago about RD in this era: “Five Strides on a Banked Track”.

6. I grew up the child of professionals in a working class rural town. As a child, friendship across class lines wasn’t an issue. What was an issue was that I was academically inclined, a heavy reader, which made me an outlier among the boys, but not among the girls. (A female classmate of working class origin but who was as bright as I, decades later expressed her appreciation for my respect for her intellect.) For my sister, it was a mirror image: three of her male classmates went to college and graduated, but the only female classmate who got a degree didn’t got to college until her 40s.

   As a studious nerd in a working class rural town, I occasionally got some flack for being a “little professor.” It wasn’t all bad. In 7th-8th grade I played sports everyday on the lawn of some friends. I hoped that things would be better at the regional high school, based in a town with a lot more professionals. As an indication of my fitting in better in that atmosphere, I got elected to the Student Council. At the same time, I got some flack from friends from the host town about my being from a town with all those farmers. (Both towns had farmers. Oh well… )(In his memoir, a peer wrote about the snobbishness of children of professionals of that town towards working class people. I wasn’t imagining it… )

   From getting it coming and going, and seeing multiple categories that inspired scorn or scapegoating, such as class, race, educational or intelligence level, religion, etc., I concluded we all form “us versus not us” groupings. Prejudice is a manifestation of our grouping into “us versus not us.” As such, prejudice is inherent in our beings, myself included. I am both sinner and sinned against. I so decided before I got out of high school.

   Our friends on the left believe that they are free of prejudice. They aren’t snobs about Trump, but responding to his “eevulness.” Tell me another one.

   Once again I revert to Tom Lehrer, from his patter leading up to National Brotherhood Week. “I know there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that.”

7. Our neo, from ballet to roller derby!

   Where have I heard that before?
   ____________________________

   Where Cathy adores a minuet,
   The Ballet Russe, and crepe suzette,
   Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
   A hot dog makes her lose control
   What a wild duet!

   Still, they’re cousins,
   Identical cousins and you’ll find,
   They laugh alike, they walk alike,
   At times they even talk alike

   –“Classic TV Theme: The Patty Duke Show”
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr8nJfD7sKE

8. Pour moi, roller derby = genetic miracle, 20-on-the-10-scale Raquel Welch in Kansas City Bomber.

9. Neo: I love your blog, in part because your posts cover so much territory, from dance to politics to Con law, and you always leave room for (or attract) commenters who had humor and insight of their own.

   This post, with the memory of roller derby, really made me smile. Thanks.

10. I was crushed to discover that the “Bay City Rollers” had nothing to do with roller derby. Nor were they from Bay City, Michigan. Nor was the singer even female.

    The “Bay City Rollers” was actually a Scottish boy band specializing in 50s/60s rock covers.

    –Bay City Rollers, “I Only Want To Be With You” (1976)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0oSHtxdPus

    I’m having a Lola moment. I heard his voice as female.

    Of course, the original was the debut single from the immortal Dusty Springfield:

    –Dusty Springfield, “I Only Want to Be with You”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osVaF4t-zFc

11. Bay City Rollers.

12. Thanks for the clip, Neo, that was fun! Never seen roller derby myself before. Coincidentally, last night I was watching an old Columbo episode. A gnarly ex-con’s girlfriend was always nagging him to take her to the roller derby.

13. “Gringo” @ 2:24 wrote
    Prejudice is a manifestation of our grouping into “us versus not us.”
    I agree with your comment.
    ————————————————-
    I find your screen name offensive. I don’t know your ethnicity, but wonder how you would react to a screen name of “Spic” or “Beaner”.
    In fact, I doubt that Neo would permit those screen names. Double standards.

14. I fondly remember roller ball for the reasons you describe well. As a young man I watched Rollerball which was a futuristic movie that made the roller derby into a life and death experience and I absolutely loved it. My opinion was considerably altered by what I had smoked that night. I watched it again several years later without chemical enhancement and it was awful.

    Roller derby was as American as any sport could be this side of football.

15. Dax:

    Gringo is a gringo … I assume.

    Thus, he gets the N-word exception. 🙂

    I’ve heard various explanations for the term. A colorful one is from the song, “Green Grow the Lilacs.”

    –Gordon MacRae, “Green Grow the Lilacs”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2kAkvIuyCY

    ChatGPT lists various possibilities but favors its first:
    _________________________________

    The term “gringo” likely comes from Spanish as a modification of the word “griego” (Greek). In Spain, “hablar en griego” (“to speak in Greek”) was a common expression akin to the English idiom “it’s all Greek to me,” meaning something incomprehensible or foreign. Over time, “griego” evolved into “gringo,” referring to foreigners who spoke unintelligibly or with an accent.
    _________________________________

    Your mileage may vary.

16. hes probably spent a fair amount of time in Latin America, and the adjective stuck

17. Similar to JMSinNorCal, I’ve always been ‘in the middle’, attracted and repulsed by both the ‘class and dirt’ people. And so I know folks in both groups. I’ve worked with both, though I’ve ended up at a desk.

    My simple take on the reaction to Trump is that people who go to college think that college has made them smarter than someone who only graduated HS. Thus they think that their own viewpoint – their open-mindedness, their deeper understanding of the issues, etc, – is a superior viewpoint as compared to the ‘muscular class’, as VDH calls them.

    These elitists don’t know what they’re talking about because they don’t interact with the working class. They don’t, maybe even cannot, understand that intelligence comes in many different flavors. Anyone who doesn’t live in that bubble knows this.

    I also have relatives who didn’t go to college and some of them have the reverse viewpoint, seeing college graduates as ‘educated idiots’ and someone to be somewhat wary of. It’s also a form of close-mindedness.

    These are, of course, generalizations.

18. Oh, the memories! As a young queer, I once found myself at a post-bout party with the members of the San Francisco Bay Bombers and their opponents. Having watched more than a couple of skaters get thrown over the rail, I asked one woman if the apparent animosity on the track was for real. “It’s all fake except the pain,” she said.

19. I came from a nouveau riche family which couldn’t handle its money. The second generation blew up spectacularly and I, in the third, ended up living in a van with two other guys, trying to figure out a life.

    I was blue collar for several years. I will never regret it. I was book smart, but I knew those blue collar guys knew important things that I didn’t.

20. “It’s all fake except the pain,” she said.

    MollyG:

    There’s a Hemingway short story right there.

21. Doggone it, huxley, now that’s stuck in my head.

    But it’s not so bad. I loved that show (my real first name is Cathy, and back then, I liked to imagine that I was more like Cathy than Patty). And I think you have hit the nail on the head as to the theme song and Neo’s post.

    Was I a snob when I was younger? Maybe. The fact that I identified with Cathy is revealing. My father, a lawyer, was one generation away from working class roots (his dad did a lot of things but was mostly a car salesman, and his dad was an immigrant), my mother two generations (her dad was a doctor, his dad ran a grocery store, the dads before him were farmers.) I didn’t have much exposure to the “working class,” a phrase that embodies so much condescension that I have learned to hate it. But in my mid-30s we moved from classy New England to decidedly not-classy upstate New York, where we bought a dairy farm because it was the only place we could afford one. Our life as farmers with small children and nowhere near enough money put us on the other side of the class line in many ways. I’ve never forgotten introducing myself to the other parents in the Montessori nursery school that (maybe still snobby) I had managed to find in a nearby college town. The other mothers were mostly spouses of professors or doctors. When I said my husband had just started a dairy farm, there was this startled silence, and then somebody asked, “Why?”

    (This was long before it was chic to be an “artisan” farmer. Now, I’d probably have enviable cachet. But back then, farming meant dumb, poor, and lots of manure. Which, except for the dumb part, wasn’t that far off.)

    We kept that farm for decades and, now retired, have stayed here, in the poor, rural, beautiful neighborhood where we milked our cows and raised our kids that is now our home. If I ever was a snob, I can’t be anymore, because I know my neighbors. Maybe they don’t all have college degrees, but they know things that Ivy League graduates will never know. They can fix things, build things, bake things. They show up when their neighbors need help. They don’t care about your politics. They don’t traffic in hate. They go to church. Farmers’ families, janitors’ families, unemployed families, milk testers’ families, mixed in with teachers’ and lawyers’ families. The janitors and milk testers are at least as worth knowing as the lawyers and teachers, and often more so, and their children were my children’s friends, and I have loved watching them grow up.

    People who don’t know “working-class” people tend to lump them together. But they don’t lump, any more than anybody else. They come from backgrounds every bit as rich and unexpected as people from richer towns, and often more so, since most of them don’t have the affluent urban or suburban roots that the college-educated take for granted. Just one example: last year, on our way home from a trip to the Canadian border to see the solar eclipse, we stopped at a convenience store in one of NY’s many depressed, benighted small towns. I asked the cashier, who totally looked the part of a convenience-store cashier in a depressed, benighted small town, whether she had had a chance to see the eclipse. Oh yes, she said, and it was beautiful, but not quite as good as the last time she saw a solar eclipse, which was in Belgium.

22. Dax

    I find your screen name (Gringo) offensive. I don’t know your ethnicity, but wonder how you would react to a screen name of “Spic” or “Beaner”.
    In fact, I doubt that Neo would permit those screen names. Double standards.

    If you want to find “Gringo” offensive, go right ahead. I will keep using it. There was one time when I was upset at being called “Gringo.” In the Peruvian mountain town of Huarás, while walking around it seemed I got called “Gringo” several times a minute. I didn’t like it. (BTW, I found out that in Peru, Gringo didn’t mean foreigner, but Caucasian. So a Creole from Lima was also a Gringo). I found out that people in Huarás were very outgoing, and very jocular. In addition, they were proud of their Quechua language. The hotel clerk taught me some rudimentary Quechua, some–very little–which I remember. I grew fond of Huarás. Yes, you get called Gringo, but they are friendly and jocular.

    I took a bus out of Huarás to Olleros to commence a five day hike. Some of the bus passengers told me that I would be robbed and beaten–or was it killed–on my hike. Having become familiar with their jocular nature, I laughed it off. I saw very few people–more llamas than people– on the hike. On the last day, I finally saw someone, who invited me to spend the night in his stone dwelling. I shared my food. (Though several years later, with the arrival of Sendero Luminoso, such a hike could have been dangerous.)

    I worked on oil wells from Guatemala to Tartagal, (Salta, Argentina) on the border between the Chaco and the Andes. Tartagal: very hospitable, loved the place. One time a school bus drove by me. Kids were all yelling, “Gringo.” Well, I was. (In Argentina, Gringo means foreigner. So an Italian immigrant is a Gringo.) There was no hostility at all from those kids. I met enough of them to know.

    At times I used the blog name Boludo Tejano. Some may find the term Boludo offensive, but it doesn’t have the pejorative sense that Pelotudo does. One can call a best friend a Boludo.

    When I was first in Houston, I stayed at a rooming house w a lot of Hispanics. Over the years in the oil field, I sometimes stayed there between jobs. Some there called me “mojado,” for my ability in Spanish. They were mostly mojado.

    In Spain, “hablar en griego” (“to speak in Greek”) was a common expression akin to the English idiom “it’s all Greek to me,” meaning something incomprehensible or foreign. Over time, “griego” evolved into “gringo,” referring to foreigners who spoke unintelligibly or with an accent.

    I worked for a while as a teacher or substitute teacher. Many students were born in the US, or had come to the US as infants, with Mexican parents. I would sometime speak Spanish to them. (I passed the certification exam for Spanish, with only 3 years of HS Spanish.) A couple of times, I was told that I spoke Chinese (habla Chino.). An aide who was the mother of one of my students told me it meant that I spoke too fast. Their Spanish had slowed down to the tempo of English, their first language.
    _________________________________

23. My ex-Marine, CPA son is dating a roller derby woman, so it’s still a thing. He also goes to WWE events. I try hard not to look down on him. 🙂 (Roller derby is a real athletic competition, unlike wrasslin’, which at least is athletic.

    There is class snobbery everywhere. I went to a state college, which was looked down upon as inferior by friends attending the state universities. (They’re all universities now, but still looked down upon.)

    The company I worked for had engineering departments in Seattle and our small eastern Washington town and the engineers there looked down at our engineers as country hicks (most of them came from smaller colleges). By the way, our hick engineers designed the tallest (at the time) self-propelled man lift (180 ft*).

    And while Trump graduated from the top business school in the country, Wharton, he’s talked about as if he were a moron because he now identifies with middle class morons. Remember when he was the darling of Oprah and Walters?

24. I grew up in the rural south. My family was better off than most but there really wasn’t any room for snobbery in the usual sense. All the kids went to the same school, the parents all knew each other, etc.

    But what I came here to say was about Trump and snobbery. I’ve thought from the beginning that snobbery was a major factor. It was especially clear in a couple of people I know, who were affluent but not particularly liberal or progressive. At least one I think had even voted for W. But their immediate instinctive reaction to Trump was simply “Eeewww.” As in “eewww, a roach.” Other objections just filled out that one.

25. On gringo ,, I always heard it was from the “halls of Montezuma “ trip the US Marines made. At that time they wore a green uniform coat. They were “green coats” which became gringo after a time. That was from a Mexican tour guide at the battle sight. Could be I suppose..

26. Barry Goldwater was also the wrong kind of rich, but that was more about ideology than about manners. Lyndon Johnson was even more the wrong kind of rich and he very much did have the wrong kind of manners, but he was a Democrat (also self-made, through political corruption).

    Roller Derby is due for an HBO (or at least a Showtime) series (maybe there already is one). It’s a submerged subculture different from Mainstream America, right? It has some nostalgic appeal. Production people will have a chance to recreate its Golden Age in the post-WWII era. There are roles for women as embattled heroines struggling for an even break, and roles for men as the sleazy exploiters who hold them back. All the features of the cable template are there.

    Are women really more sensitive about status? That sounds like one of those tales from earlier in the last century, when men were rough and tumble and concentrated on earning a living and having a drink with the fellas, and women were at home fretting about not being one of the affluent club ladies and about being looked down on because they made their own dresses or didn’t have servants. So much of social psychology relates to a lost world that manages to live on in the assumptions of academics. As men became more affluent and polished and less rough and tumble, they became more sensitive to status and the “eeeww factor.” Women care a lot about status, but in a very different way than their grandmothers did. I believe that for women it’s now more about professional standing than social or cultural standing. Few are worried about getting accepted by the DAR or the Daughters of the Confederacy or the Cotillion Ball.

27. So, neo, is roller derby just ballet on wheels? Quite a comparison, but I love it!

28. Not sure why Dax thinks the word “Gringo” is offensive. I’ve traveled a lot in Central and South America, mostly on mission trips. The people I’ve encountered have usually been super friendly and have often referred to us as “Gringo”s, obviously not meant to be offensive. In fact we’ve even referred to ourselves that way. I’ve always assumed it referred to people from North America, but I could be wrong.

29. I also like roller derby as a kid, and saw it once at Cincinnati Gardens. The steep banking surprised me as well.

    Ellen Page starred in a fairly decent roller derby film in 2009 called “Whip It”.

30. I think the term “gauche” covers it. Saw it in another thread, I believe. You can be rich and powerful but still gauche. And you don’t have to be rich not to be gauche.
    I was born in 45, and my friends were a that or a year or two either way. Probably too early to get interested in Roller Derby. But we were physically active in sports and just running around. It’s one thing to hop a chain-link fence when you’re sixteen. But we could go over them like steeple-chasing thoroughbreds when we were nine.

    There was the usual high-school class thing; frats, jocks, greasers, nerds, so forth. There wasn’t much mixing during free time such as lunch hour but when circumstances put us together there wasn’t anything noticeable.

    In retrospect, though, it might have been certain of the girls were looking for their MRS prior to graduating high school and paid more attention to such things.

    MIght be why the frat guys all had good-looking girl friends.

31. Re: Rollerball

    Watching “Rollerball” (1975) tonight, it’s pretty great. Not “2001,” but a decent dystopia. It reads pretty valid today.

    James Caan, in all his Caan 70s glory, plays a lethal roller-derby-style game so well that the corporate powers that be find it necessary to have him neutralized.

    I’m still kind of a leftist. The big split is still between the rich and everyone else. However today the rich have found a clever lever by allying themselves with minorities and thereby washing away their sins.

    It’s now the rich against the middle class.

32. People who don’t know “working-class” people tend to lump them together. But they don’t lump, any more than anybody else.

    Mrs+Whatsit:

    What a wonderful life story!

    Quite so. I don’t find it easy to pigeonhole people either and I’m glad of it.

33. This is absolutely correct, IMO, snobbery is a big political factor. Unlike earlier forms of snobbery, today’s form is largely based on educational credentialism.

    Tom Watson Jr, longtime head of IBM, said in his memoir that as a teenager, he was very attracted to a girl in his town. But her mother would not allow them to date because the Watsons were not an Old Family.

    Now, IBM was not yet the behemoth it later became, but it was already a well-known and well-respected company, and young Tom was clearly the heir apparent. But this apparently did not count due to the Family issue.

    Today, I think such an objection would be more likely based on college credentials, also field or intended field of work.

34. Many interesting vignettes from people’s lives. I could add one, but it would take too long.

    As for Trump and class. I have come to believe that his life prepped him for his role in being a President that is the leader of the deplorables. It’s such an improbable story. It seems almost providential to me.

    I often get upset because he doesn’t use precision in his speeches. They are more a train of thought with ad libs about various things. I get impatient, but he’s also funny, transparent, and authentic. And that’s appealing. Did I mention he’s a fighter?

    I watched him when he appeared on the Greg Gutfeld show. One hour of joking around with the other cast members on the show. Quite a different impression from his rallies.
    He was warm, and quite likable, a side that many people don’t see if they just see his speeches.

    And huxley is right, it’s the elites against the middle class. I’m sure not an elite – never was, never will be.

35. “grin·go (gr?ng?g?)
    n. pl. grin·gos Often Offensive
    A foreigner in Latin America, especially an American or English person.
    [American Spanish, from Spanish, foreigner, especially an English-speaking foreigner, with a poor Spanish accent, possibly alteration of griego, Greek, from Latin Graecus; see Greek.]”
    https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Gringo

    Something about being called a “foreigner” in your own country, by foreigners. Also something about calling yourself that.

    “But they are friendly.”

    Whatever.

36. Roller Derby movie staring Raquel Welch (!!):
    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068795/

    Remembering the Derby:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asXlpX_OsDw

37. Dax
    Something about being called a “foreigner” in your own country, by foreigners.
    The examples I gave were of my being called “gringo/foreigner” in a foreign county, NOT in my own country, the USA. As such, I have no idea what you are talking about.

    Also something about calling yourself that.
    My blog names of “Gringo” and “Boludo Tejano” originated in commenting on Venezuelan English language blogs. (many connections to Venland..) Given the different nationalities involved in commenting there, I consider those appropriate identifiers of my nationality, and thus appropriate blog names. There is also some humor involved (Boludo…). Is humor verboten? I carried the names over into other blogs.

    I used to comment at The Economist on Latin American affairs. I was once mistaken for a citizen of a Latin American country, because I was more knowledgeable than the ignorant Euro lefties who dominated the comments.

    If you consider “Gringo” offensive and not politically correct, go right ahead. I will continue to use “Gringo.” ¿Me entendés, pana? You unnerstan’ ?

    For offensive, I recall the elderly Trinidadian woman who called me a “white m-f
    c” for having the bad manners to wear shorts in tropical Trinidad. Too informal for her. I wonder what she said to the multitudes of Trini men who also wore shorts. She must have been Ann Althouse’s aunt. 🙂

38. One aspect of snobbery in our time that was not so prominent in earlier generations is the emphasis on impracticality and unreality as markers of status.

    Americans used to derive status based on real-world success and achievement. Trump represents this kind of roll-up-your-sleeves savvy.

    Since the 60s the measure of cool – especially among college kids – has shifted to one’s ability to live outside reality rather than wrestle with it – or to turn inwards to one’s exquisite feelings. Kinda like the old Chinese elite who bound their feet and grew extra long fingernails to demonstratively hobble themselves.

    The 60s kids talked themselves out of the adult task of fighting a war, went to live in impractical communes that betrayed a naivete about the world and human nature – and many of them and their descendants still hold unrealistic, romanticized views of the poor and minorities. The transgender movement is a classic example of people demonstrating status by flouting/floating above reality – and sniffing at/mau-mauing more down-to-earth people who “just don’t get it”.

    This is what elitism looks like in our narcissistic generation – “Luxury Beliefs” that can only be maintained by people insulated from life’s harsher truths, and self-indulgence instead of real achievement… unlike today’s Leftie college kids, I don’t think Barron Trump was given crayons or a snack corner to help him handle the trauma of repeated attempts on his father’s life.

    As mentioned in the recent “Musical Interlude” thread, there are parallels with the Victorian-era Social Reformers and Fabians.

    This soft, unrealistic, self-indulgent elitism is what many people voted against this time around.

39. The thing is that snobbery operates on more than one axis, so it’s a mistake to conflate all cases with wealth, or even with old vs new money. (What about “shabby genteel”?) The right or wrong types of book, for instance, are clear subjects of snobbery.

    Lord knows there was plenty of snobbery in musical tastes, which operated in complex ways. Even among classical music lovers – the most snobbish of all – it operated. Tchaikovsky just wasn’t as cool as Brahms.

    And that can change over time, too. Fantasy/scifi are much more prestigious today than when I was in my teens. I also noticed that Patrick O’Brian moved up vastly over the course of his career. (IMO, that last was deserved; he’s on another level entirely than the rest in his field.)

    People will always find ways to lord it over others. But economic class really isn’t at the core of it, much as the Marxists want us to believe that.

40. Mona Charen
    Jay Nordlinger
    …

    …the beginning of a list of such snobs whose never-Trumpism seems dominated by an aesthetic judgment. I don’t put Bill Kristol on the list because aesthetics seem very low on his priority list.

    Just before Lincoln took office, Buchanan remarked that the office of President is not suited to a gentleman. Buchanan was predicting Trump: a man whose vulgarity matches the demands of the office. The Nordlinger branch of never-Trumpism fails to appreciate this.

41. Heck, JFK preferred to eat burgers ‘n fries to Jackie’s more rarified Francophilic cuisine. (To be sur, almost getting killed in war just might make one a less fussy eater….)

    In fact it was Jackie who gave the White House its cultured luster and status (though of course she had to denigrate Mamie Eisenhower en route…).

    In any event , Jack knew a good thing when he saw one and went along for the ride…
    – – – – – – –
    WRT snobbery, everyone—or most everyone—can/will feel snobbish about something or other. (OTOH, they don’t necessarily have to express it if they do).

    The real problem, seems to me, is that snobbery has evolved—MORPHED—into hatred.
    SHEER HATRED.
    Moralistic outrage.
    Ethical INTOLERANCE OF ANYTHING one doesn’t agree with.

    It’s as though anyone who doesn’t agree with you is an AFFRONT. A personal THREAT.
    Someone to be obliterated.
    Or Canceled.

    So much for “agreeing to disagree”.

    Much more like throwing Voltaire out the window…

42. You really have to consider the New York City context in which Trump grew up and functioned most of his life: the ‘right’ people in New York all lived in Manhattan; mostly in a very few neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, Sutton Place, maybe Gramercy Park, etc. Oh, most of them had country houses up the Hudson, or along both sides of Long Island Sound, but they NYC digs were in a very few Manhattan neighborhoods. Most of them prepped. Most of them went to ivy league colleges, the little ivies, or the seven sisters (for women). Their accent was fairly distinctive, but wasn’t really the “New York” accent of screen and television.

    What they weren’t was from Queens. They didn’t live in Queens, they didn’t sound like they were from Queens. They didn’t send their kids to New York Military Academy (unless they were needed discipline and had been kicked out of several other private schools). Maybe they went to Wharton, but usually for graduate school…or to Penn for law school. And, they may have had Central or Eastern European mistresses, but they didn’t marry them. Trump married Ivana, who was definitely ‘not one of us’.

    THAT’s what was wrong with The Donald from day one. Worse, he was a successful developer. The right people were happy to take his money for charity galas, and even happier when he fixed the Wollman rink on time and under budget when the city couldn’t get in done for several years. But while he was invited to the galas, etc., he was never, ever, part of society. He was always too “bridge and tunnel” as the expression goes. To get a sense how he was regarded by the right people, look at the Nevada senator at the Corleone even at Lake Tahoe at the beginning of The Godfather Part II.

    Having lived and practiced in major law firms in Manhattan during the ’80s, this was all common knowledge, thoroughly understood. It is probably the Democratic establishment’s self-protection that keeps it from being more explicitly detailed.

    I would be willing to bet that if someone showed the above to Trump and asked is that more or less accurate, he’d say “Yes.”

43. well jfk was a rapscallion of sorts, after harvard he had a minor position with naval intelligence, where he became acquainted with inga arvad, then his father opportuned to his friend forrestal, to get him assigned to his solomon islands where he had the run in with the japanese destroyer, which was
    dramatized in a book and later a film starring cliff robertson, around the time of the election,

    now World War two was indesputedly the Good War, unlike say the Great War, that only produced Harry Truman,

44. In fact it was Jackie who gave the White House its cultured luster and status (though of course she had to denigrate Mamie Eisenhower en route…).
    ==
    Her cutting remarks, IIRC, concerned Lady Bird Johnson. By some accounts, Mamie did not care for Mrs. Kennedy and the courtesies she extended to her included slights. All three, btw, were daughters of the upper class where they grew up. In my experience, communication among such women is multilayered and subtle. Also in my experience, genteel women of Mamie’s vintage started out with other women catty-cordial. You might make something more congenial of it; you might do so quickly or incrementally. At the beginning, you were catty-cordial and sometimes never better than that. My grandmother was a lovely human being; with her next door neighbor, she was catty-cordial. For 38 years.

45. This is a fun post. And pretty accurate about Trump versus the electorate.

    It’s interesting that long ago, there were cool shows like “Sex and the City” being made, and Trump had a cameo appearance or two in it as the glamorous and beloved playboy/entrepreneur. A self-proclaimed Democrat too.

    I grew up in a rural farming community and my father ran a relatively successful small business serving that economic sector. My childhood friends were the children of truck drivers and farmers mostly. But because we had some money, there were a number of childhood trips to NYC and other parts of the US, to see art museums, Broadway shows, Lincoln center opera (the Met), and the ABT ballet.

    I’ve been aware of the appearance of conflict between being a “discriminating” consumer or participant of the arts, media, and social relationships and interactions, and just being open to all the wonderful things that life has to offer, for most of my life. Don’t be closed minded, was my unspoken motto.

    On the other hand, we all have exposure to things that just seem to be a bit too icky and stay away from. Is that snobbery? Maybe. It took me a long time to actually pay attention to country music. And I wouldn’t ever buy any disco music even though I liked some of the better stuff.

    Now that I’ve been back on the dating scene for a while, one of the things that tickles me are the couple ladies I’ve met who drop F-bombs with aplomb. It makes me feel at home and amuses me for some reason.
    _______

    I’ve never had an interest in roller derby, but it’s a perfect example of déclassé. And it strongly reminds me of a local gal and entrepreneur named Jolene Green who opened a cool restaurant that hosts a lot of live music. The place embraces a surfer, skate, and skateboard déclassé and counterculture vibe.

    AND Jolene herself is something of a roller derby queen. Jolene Geen could maybe pass for Jewish and her late husband was, but she is ethnically Italian.

    Her place and some fun images (Jolene with the arm tatts):

    https://www.lucyspg.com/
    https://www.lucyspg.com/?lightbox=dataItem-l8otjclq
    https://www.lucyspg.com/us

    She has a poster wall inside, and the one that always makes me smile is this similar to this one:
    https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/e3kAAOSwrMNevVoY/s-l640.jpg

46. As I understand it:

    In Australia, the Australian people do not like to do classicism against blue-collar jobs, or against any jobs.

    [I’m not saying that- in Austr. that snobbery + snobs vs. some jobs is not 100% gone from Australia, but I admire the idea + practice of no job snobbery.]

    I think the idea for this Australian practice is something like: there’s just [us] on this island, so we all need to stick together, + [value ALL industries], no matter if these industries + jobs are called, “unpleasant”, or “low class” by- [some upper class snobs], + [some middle class snobs].

    (In my words- in Australia- if you don’t like how your boss, or your customers treat you, you can’t just move 2 or 3 states away, like people can in The USA or other nations, + start again.
    You and the people around you, have to get along, + value each other, where you are.)

    I think the idea is: we have a limited number of people in our island/country, so we have to stick together, + work together, to keep us ALL going.

    I really admire that way of doing things.

47. “The transgender movement is a classic example of people demonstrating status by flouting/floating above reality – and sniffing at/mau-mauing more down-to-earth people who “just don’t get it”.” – BenDavid

    Just so. A great comment in its entirety.

    And there are so many good comments on this thread, it’s veritable banquet of thought. Thanks to Neo and all who have commented so far.

48. I said that I thought a huge part of the intensity of that hatred [of Trump] was snobbery.

    –neo

    There’s also an aspirational … ahem … quality to it.

    In my humble Man-about-Albuquerque encounters I’ve run into guys, who were kinda losers in today’s status rankings, but they were glomming onto Trump hatred in attempts to ally themselves with the Cool Kids.

    Bad timing, that.

49. I was visiting my grandfather and he wanted to watch wrassling, out curiosity I asked” Grandpa you ever watch boxing? NO, that stuff is fixed.” End of discussion!

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