European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 18, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 18 the stars and stripes wednesday september 18, 1985 comments today s crossword the elite strive to be Middle class by Russell Baker new York i am too disdainful of shoddy goods. The word for this condition is it is a bad word that is meant to make the person to whom it is applied seem despicable. The air is filled with such words. No Tice How Rotten you feel when somebody Calls you a sexist a Yuppie you Don t like feeling Rotten do you so you Stop saying lady you sell your to avoid further assault right that s the Way i am about elitist so when shoddy goods arc being offered i am now very careful not to curl my lip. I sometimes even hear myself hypocrite defending inferior stuff. Plastic for instance. Until a few years ago it was obligatory to be scornful of plastic. No More. Now journals of advanced opinion the sort that use words like synthesis and go on about Neo this and Neo that speak disparagingly of people who speak disparagingly of plastic. Intellectually Plas tic is in. 1 now speak Well of it. 1 have a typewriter that is mostly plastic and rubber bands. Between us it is an infuriating piece of junk but you won t catch me saying so and if anybody eke says so i m Likely to reply so you re one of those tiresome elitists who arc always putting the Knock on plastic he not Long ago i heard myself denouncing somebody for saying a television show called lifestyles of the Rich and famous was vulgar and trashy. American shave always enjoyed vulgar trash i said and Why not what could be healthier than the whole darned country silting by the to set enjoying some Good innocent healthy vulgar trash then to put the Boot into this critic of lifestyles of the Rich and famous 1 said people like you would rather see the whole country Reading Virginia Woolf instead of having a Little harmless this was a neat Way of calling the poor Devil an elitist As i knew Loo Well having had the trick pulled on me Many years ago after telling a Small audience that when it came to comic strips Rex Morgan not even in the same league with i l sure some coarse voice of the people replied and i suppose you think America would be a better country if everybody went to the uffizi gallery every sunday instead of Reading the Katze Jammer kids this Exchange occurred during the Early Eisenhower period when there was a Brief attempt by a few Brave pioneers of conservatism to rehabilitate Middle class tastes. These had been so ridiculed Over the last 30 years that millions of americans actually did prefer the anarchistic i l Abner strip to solid Good Boring Rex Morgan i Don t know what prompted my recent defense of lifestyles of the Rich and famous because 1 have never seen it and probably never will. That s because i can t stand hearing about nobody with any self respect would permit his life to be local to news performers have their hair styled and considering How fantastically overpaid they arc i suppose they be got no right to resist it. People who permit their lives to be styled though strike me As being beneath contempt and i Don t want to look a them on television no matter How Rich and famous they Are. Naturally i would not say this aloud nowadays it would sound too come to think of it though what is so Salt of the Earlh about having your Fife styled if this were really the age of respect for the common Man instead of the age of the sales scam we would All nod with approval whenever somebody said god must love the common Man because he made him so magnificently As with so Many other aspects of modern life the struggle to avoid charges of elitism is a reaction against recent history. For most of the Century the terrible words that made people sound despicable were Middle from the age of Harding to the Dawn of Reagan ism it was a dreadful judgment to hear one say so Middle class you re so hopelessly Middle the party thus denounced was made to feel despicable because of the implication that he had t the discrimination Nec Essary to disdain Sho Diness avoid plastic and stay out of the clutches of quacks exploiting the Gullible who believe that life like a to Weatherman s hair can restyled. Those attitudes of course were they were swell once but they re out. Middle class is now wherein s at. 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