Jerks I
The full title should be: Jerks, How to Spot them and How to Deal with them without becoming one of them yourself.
The Jerk is the defining character of postmodern America. What the Man of Faith and the Man of the Sword were to the Middle Ages, the Jerk is to our own age. To do justice to the American Jerk would require many volumes, answering such questions as: Were there Jerks in the ancient world? (Yes, but far from defining the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Jerks were derided as the counter-example to proper behavior.) Are there Jerks in other countries or does the US have a monopoly? (It depends on what you mean, but Communist countries, Russia in particular, have been veritable factories producing millions of jerks per year.)
When moviegoers hear the term Jerk, they immediately think of Steve Martin's amusing film, but they are quite wrong. Martin's Jerk was more of a rube or a fool, and, while he often acted like a Jerk, he lacked the monomaniacal obsession with his immediate gratification that typifies the Jerk everywhere.
Another way to look at the Jerk is that he is a five year old boy in the body of an adult. I was speaking with my daughter on the telephone yesterday and was constantly interrupted by her three year old son, "I want to go on my walk, I want to go on my walk." He had done some piece of mischief on the walk and had been sent home, but right and wrong, cause and effect don't matter to a child his age.
"I want a cookie, give me a cookie, I want it no-o-o-w."
"Well, dear, let me break one of these big ones in half and if you finish..."
"No, I want a whole one no-o-o-o-w. Don't break it don't break it don't break it. You broke it and I won't eat it."
"All right, don't eat it."
"No, give me a cookie no-o-o-w!!! No, not the broken one."
Put up with this for two decades and you have an American college student. Remember the Doors' classic statement of the American adolescent's credo, "We want the world and we want it now"? They were serious, too. Put simply, the Jerk is the greedy selfish brat of five who goes to his grave refusing to grow up.
It is easy to spot the Jerk when you are traveling. He is the forty-something adolescent who wears a backpack, and as he pushes his way through the aisle of the plane, he inevitably swings it from side to side, knocking off an old lady's glasses and spilling someone's drink. And no, he will never say, "I'm sorry" or "Pardon me." He is probably unaware of the minor havoc he is creating, because he doesn't care. If he is flying First or Business Class, he inevitably stands up to look for something in his carryon, just as the horde of cattle-car customers is trying to get by. What is the point to getting an upgrade, if he cannot enjoy the chance to rub your nose in his temporarily elevated social status?
The Jerk is the last to switch off his telephone, because he is too intent on sharing his business and personal life with several hundred strangers. Overheard not long ago:
"He did WHAT?!! Put the little bastard on, yes, now. Listen, you little bastard, I am not buying--no, I said NOT--buying you another car. This is the third car you've trashed in two years . . . "
The worst cellphone behavior is on a commuter bus, where the passengers never have to turn it off. The Van Galder bus driver from O'Hare usually mumbles something about respecting the feelings of other passengers, but such admonitions are wasted on the Jerk--more often female than male.
"I'm on the bus. No, not fuss. I said bus. Yeah, bus. I'm on the bus from O'Hare. No we're still at the airport. No I don't know when we get in. I'll call you. Just calling to say hello. So whatcha doin? Whadidja have for breakfast? I had cereal. No, not beer, cereal. You know I don't drink before noon..." Ring
"Yeah, this is Jack, who's this? Sam? Sam who? Oh, Sam in marketing. Say, Sam, did you hear what that b--tch Lorraine done yesterday? Jeeze..."
"I'm on the bus. Yeah, the bus, from the airport."
Never have so many gabbed about so little for so long. What to do about the cellphone shouters
Strategy one: Talk very loudly to your travel companion in an effort to humiliate the shouter, who may turn out to be hard of hearing and the one person for an excuse. Now the poor guy will spend the day feeling sorry for himself and angry at the Jerk who insulted him.
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Most rightists have no interest in returning to any point in the past. We may talk the past up, but very few would step in a time machine if they had a choice. If this is a character flaw, it's one we'll have to live with.
I don't much care for jeans either, though I've worn them my whole life. I decided recently not to buy any more, and figure out some sort of fashion sense that doesn't include them. But I can't really blame anyone for wearing them. Why not? It's what they've done and seen for their entire lives. Many young people are likely entirely unreflective about it, possibly to the point of being unaware that there was a time when jeans were never seen in public.
People don't want to stand out or look strange, and going back to 1920s dress would have just that effect. But it's possible to get by without jeans, so that's a good place to start if you want to do something. Leave the jeans at home, possibly don a hat, forget the hoodies and graphic tees. Maybe someone will notice.
About videogames, I don't really see why playing a videogame is worse than watching a movie or tv show, or playing a board game or parlor game. One shouldn't be a 'gamer' with all the obsessiveness that implies, but playing a videogame is just another way to pass the time. Perhaps all of these things are harmful, but then what are you left with? Work and more work. I spend some leisure time learning foreign languages, but not everyone cares about this, and I don't do it every spare minute of the day.
The question at hand is not nostalgia or a desire to return to the past but to maintain or restore fallen standards that people profess to believe in. For example, I may wish to restore the standards for teaching and writing Latin without at the same time putting on a toga.
As for video games, I believe you are quite wrong. In the first place, the most popular games are quite violent and were, in fact, developed by military organizations to desensitive soldiers to killing. In the second, it is quite obvious that playing Monopoly or Scrabble with friends is a completely different experience from video gaming, even gaming with friends. I have watched people playing together and it is as if they were absorbed into the machine, as in the movie Tron. TV is bad, games are worse.
There is only so much time in the day, and if young men are gaming, they are not getting exercise, reading, playing the piano, or anything else that develops rather than degrades their minds. Any good thing can be counter-productive: People can be so obsessed with fitness that they ignore their minds, or people can read and study so much that they ignore their bodies. What do they lose, however, in not playing video games? "Just another way to pass the time..." It sounds like a description of prison life. Video games are just one more method of enslaving the minds and souls of young people. For anyone over 21, it is a moral deathtrap.
I admit to being guilty for some love of video games. However, certain genres are fairly harmless and may help encourage an interest for a time or place depicted, strategy games in particular. A gateway drug so to speak.
I should add that not just most but all rightists, indeed all radicals of left and right, explicitly set up some period of the real or imaginary past as their ideal. For the Jacobins, it was ancient Sparta, for the Marxists (and their alter-egos the libertarians), it is primitive pre-social manbeasts, for Neoconfederates it is the world before 1865, for monarchists it is the world before the revolutions, for most Republicans it is the Leave-It-To-Beaverland of the 1950's. Not much good comes out of these exercises in nostalgia, unless they are taken as opportunities to raise current standards.
I know Dr Fleming will probably disagreeing with me, but I have seen young men who went from playing mindless games to strategy games and cultivated an interest in knowing more about the battles, people, and places within the world. Many of the companies that produce them encourage this. Maybe its not as good as going to a library, but its an improvement over TV-zombiehood.
#54
I don't think that even has to include radicals. Non-ideological or ordinary people seem to hold such nostalgic ideas as well.
Alexander Cockburn, who writes for you and is sometimes fairly middle-of-the-road and is not as much of a radical as his other leftist counterparts, seems to believe in good eras and bad eras and asserts that any era that did not have public policies of his preference was definitely one that was not worth living.
For him, 1960s were a beautiful paradise world of post-Civil-Rights, Great Society social democratic paradise; the 1950s were the darkest days; the 1930-40s were the victorious days of the New Deal; the 1920s were dark "neoliberal" days; and the late 19th century was an unimaginably horrifying black hole of "neoliberalism". What amazes me is that even many veteran journalists like him are prone to such simplistic notions of history fitting all their foregone conclusions; where X policy is good, because X policy existed in a certain era, and that era was paradise on earth. Very selective view of everything.
The dead past is not worth reliving. It's futile to pass positive or negative comments about it. It's also futile to make comparisons to it, when today's situation is totally unique and does not resemble the past. But even self-declared pragmatists do it.
Dr. Fleming, you give Republicans too much credit. They don't want to return to the 1950's. They want to conserve the 1960's.
Granted, when we dress up, we need something better than the cheap kind of khakis. But my old seven dollar Steve and Barry's khakis were good enough for work, because they satisfied the dress code I had to adhere to at the time, and a couple pairs of them now serve as weekend wear around the house or doing odd chores. We dont have to be expensive to look passably good. For real dress up, of course we need chinos or wool blend trousers.
My father never had more than a couple pairs of jeans his entire adult life, and they were for work. He never wore them for anything else. Come to think of it, did they even have a concept of 'casual wear' back before the fifties? It seems there was only work clothing (which was everyday wear), and dress wear.
Getting back to Dr Wilson's comment above, I believe the original name for jeans was 'waist overalls', because they were just overalls without the bib and straps.
"‘waist overalls’, because they were just overalls without the bib and straps"
Thank you Allen Wilson. You always have a way of cutting to the very heart of a conversation with your talent for combining similar thoughts into appropriate words that represent those thoughts. From this day forward, I will never look at Levi jeans the same after your most accurate description of them as "waist overalls."
It seems that there is something sociopathic about the jerk. While he's not necessarily the scheming, cunning con-artist type or the evil backstabber who'll do anything to get ahead, nevertheless he does have that sociopathic lack of concern for others or sense of shame. He's almost like a sociopath without the intelligence to hide it.
He is also too unintelligent or just too lazy to involve himself in industrious sociopathic schemes, so he just becomes a jerk instead.
This familiarity with the past that all serious men are aware of is a great mystery. I have never really seen it treated with the respect it deserves by modern writers except perhaps by Josef Pieper. One thing about the word nostalgia is that today it has more to do with emoting about one's own personal memories, than it does about understanding a true or living tradition which we share with other souls -- both living and dead.
The great sailor, Odysseus, was nostalgic and Homer noticed this again and again in his poem about his hero. Socrates was rather nostalgic days before his death,more worried about putting Aesop to verse, than when his ship from Delphi would finally and literally come in. So too many of the saints who seem always to remark how much more help they can be from there, than from here.
I have lived half of a long life watching or listening to silly "know it alls" either running from their past and glorifying a future that never quite arrives, or distinguished scholars simply patronizing the past and its better qualties as "mere nostalgia". Stasis was (and remains) as much a knowable, if not fully comprehended, reality to Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine,and St Thomas as it was for the Three Kings from the Orient.
If there was one singular and distinguishing feature of the modern Christian (whether they want less Catholicism or more Protestantism in their favorite readings) is the obvious fact of having lost, not only their "Way" and truth, but the blanket condemnation of every other soul, living and dead, who ever attempted such a delightful, normal, simple and human, adventure.
Dr. Patrick touches on some of this in the December issue of Chronicles and Clyde Wilson hits it square and hard with his essay on prosperity. I hope some of the bloggers will take a look at those articles.
There is no such thing as a unique period of history, though perhaps every generation since the Renaissance has made such a claim. For people who have a knowledge of history, "There is nothing new under the sun. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Naturally, circumstances change, but human nature does not, and the more we pretend it does or can, the more likely are we to fall into utopian projects that always turn out to be some form of concentration camp, physical, moral, or spiritual. And, how do we discover the outlines of human nature, if not by studying man in history?
My most esteemed friend, Dr. Fleming, please refrain from using the term "Neo-Confederate" which is a made-up Marxist propaganda epithet for anyone who thinks the federal government is too strong and the Confederates may have had a few worthwhile points, and/or that Southerners should be considered as a people rather than as "class enemies."
I, too, hate cell phones in public, but I've found a way to fight back: the portable cell phone jammer.
http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info.php/pName/broad-spectrum-cell-phone-jammer/
I accept my learned friend's correction with this proviso, that the majority of people I have met in Southern movements are indeed NeoConfederate in the sense that they have turned a living tradition into an artificial ideology cum lifestyle. They are mostly better than average people but hold naive and delusional political dreams sling with a highly abstract and fanatical views of southern realities. It is the world we live in that even the best sentiments are corrupted
Into a movement.
It’s a real problem knowing how to dress when everyone around is dressed sloppily. How far one can depart is a fine line that needs to be found in every situation. Since we are social beings, there is an obligation of conformity. If the community one belongs to (family, parish, etc.), which is otherwise good though not ideal, dresses badly one has to know the extent to which one can depart from the ways in which others dress. I first realized this in the 1950's. When I was a student at Trinity College in Washington (far different then from what it is now), the English poetess Dame Edith Sitwell gave a talk at one of our assemblies. She was quite old and wore mediaeval clothes, and a very large aquamarine ring. I was most impressed with her. I knew of course that as far as mediaeval clothes went, Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi. But I could not resist the aquamarine ring, and so acquired an amethyst one, that being my favorite stone, but just as large as hers. The next year, as a graduate student in Manhattan riding the subway it became obvious that the amethyst ring could not be worn to evening entertainments in the winter, since it would not fit under gloves. I lent the ring to my sister, and it was eventually stolen from their car in Nairobi. Today the problem is worse. Dressing too differently is itself ostentatious, and is a silent but obvious criticism of everyone else. On the other hand, the ugly way people dress is it itself a moral and ontological evil, which one must resist.
Rob @16 - Edwin Lee "Eddie" Mathews is the greatest third baseman of all time.
The last time I wore blue jeans was my senior year of high school, (nota bene, Dr. Fleming) class of 1965.
I wear khaki Dickies for yard work, etc. I do own a pair of jeans, but I have never worn them. (Sort of sounds like "I didn't inhale.") They are a very bright blue, not the normal dark blue-jean blue.
I upset my wife last month when I told her to look for some brown shoes that would go with my Dickies because I was going to start wearing them to work. Ha! Ha! (She is too easy to get a rise out of. They do have a crease!) I actually wear some good trousers, but not "dress" trousers, because I sit at a computer most of the day and sometimes have to crawl under desks to get property numbers from computers and other IT equipment. They recently down-graded the dress code where I work to allow "shirts with a collar," which means polo shirts, but no tee shirts. I continue to wear a dress shirt and tie, but I am in the minority among my coworkers who do not have direct contact with our customers.
Here is a data point on the path leading to the collapse of civilization. The dress code does not allow jeans or sneakers, but management has authorized fund raisers for some Fridays that allow employees to wear jeans and sneakers in return for a donation. ($2, I think.) People actually pay to dress down!
I might wear my Dickies for the 800 mile drive to Illinois, but I'll bring some better clothes to wear when we get there. . .and in case we do get to Rockford.
And we haven't gotten to cell phones in church yet.
As for non-American jerks - yes they definitely exist but probably in lower concentrations, particularly in non-Western cultures (African and Middle Eastern in my experience) where people are aware that their behavior and actions in public reflect upon their families.
Regarding France, some very recent anecdotal evidence: a French business partner visiting over the Thanksgiving weekend remarked at how polite, friendly, and helpful clerks and sales staff at box stores were, relative to their French counterparts.
I wish it were true that we haven't gotten to cell phones in church yet. Often at my parish, someone will have forgotten to turn off their cell and it will ring during Mass. The person is always embarrassed and shuts it off. Am waiting for the day that someone answers it and starts talking during church! Would like to think it won't happen but not hopeful.
Oh, and people who take calls on their cells during movies or concerts need to be horsewhipped. I have had to shush people and they acted like there was something wrong with me!
A mild brief for jeans, if I may. I used to wear khakis on my daily rounds, but somehow the only khakis that fit around the waist were a little too tight in the back--I think you know what I mean. So I started wearing jeans all the time. At least this way no one has a reason for giving me unwanted attention. I do agree, however, that in principle jeans are an inferior style of dress. If there is something out there that fills the bill, I would be happy to embrace it, as long as it is reasonably priced. Even if I were wealthy, I would refuse to spend more than, say, sixty dollars on a durable pair of trousers. I would deem it a foppish waste of money. It goes without saying that I wouldn't have anything custom-made if that can possibly be avoided.
I smell an epic poem (a la Virgil) in the making here. "The Jerkiad."
Cell phones in church? Don't attend the less formal evangelical churches. People have Bible apps on their phones. So they act like they're looking up the sermon text, but actually send and receive text messages, instead of, or as well as, looking up the text. Yes most of them actually look up the sermon text and no more, but I've seen them texting too many times. And of course their pew neighbors know exactly what they are doing. Worst of all, it's not as if the sermons are boring. And their furtive sideways glances to see if anyone notices them are far from distracting.
A question for Dr. Fleming: Modes of dress (i.e. fashion) vary over time. So at what point does old-fashioned clothing become ostentatious or purely anachronistic? You yourself said you would not revert to wearing a toga. I think Elizabethan and Colonial American fashion quite pleasant to look at, but obviously wearing doublet and hose or breeches and waistcoats is out.
I was in the grocery the other day when a husband and wife came in dressed as if they were going to dinner at a fine restaurant (it was 2 p.m. in the afternoon). They were not simply grabbing a jug of milk on their way home--they were loading a cart with weekly supplies. To be honest they appeared rather ostentatious. I know they may have had a perfect explanation for their clothing and it did not bother me. I did notice other shoppers glancing at them and then, after the couple passed by, giving looks to their shopping companion(s) that said things like: "Well! I guess I underdressed for this party," or "Look at Mr. and Mrs. Uppity." Yes, some of those folks were probably jerks but it made me wonder about when (or where) dressing up becomes pure show.
I agree that wearing suits to church and for many other functions is certainly proper.
Or is the problem related to our society's (maybe my own remnant of) egalitarianism? We have virtually no codes of dress for class or occupation, and most people seem to demand that it should be that way. I always dress modestly and in a manner that I thought was appropriate for the situation. However, I never wear suits for any normal activities of the marketplace--shopping, banking, etc.
Maybe changing fashion and dress codes are themselves a slide ever downward.
In big cities there's greater degeneracy - peer pressure has no effect due to size and transience.
"What the Man of Faith and the Man of the Sword were to the Middle Ages, the Jerk is to our own age."
The merchants and managers rule in our age. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, we'd be in the Plastic Age.
In Bushido the author mentions how if good business practices grant a Samurai profit, he's apt to adopt bad ones. There's no honour in being honest if the motive is mere profit. Unrelated to this, the Samurai doesn't waste money.
I'll repost it if I can find the book (often my books wander though).
@ 74 David Wihowski
You raise some great points.
At the risk of being brutally rebuffed by the populous here, I absolutely love jeans. Unlike men, women have more style options in fabrics that are extremely comfortable and wash beautifully. I’ve seen very classy women *and* men pull-off some wonderful style wearing jeans. With that said, I also believe there is a time and place to wear them. Certainly, Church and formal social events are out of the question - - - even semi-formal is risky.
David’s comment “We have virtually no codes of dress for class or occupation, and most people seem to demand that it should be that way” is a *key* point. The problem with sloppy, dressing “jerks” is that they don't have limits. They wear beat-up, ripped jeans (and other garments) that they believe are Vogue. Many wear clothes that are too small with their guts hanging out and showing all there blubber. I’m astounded at people’s ignorance surrounding the fact that how you dress commands how you are treated - - - judging a book by its cover has relevance, and anyone who says it doesn’t is in denial. Let’s face it; the clean-cut guy of normal weight can pull off casual dressing better than a 400lb hippie.
Simply said: There is no “shame” in today’s society, and this stems from parenting. Although jeans were stylish in my youth, I would never have dreamed of wearing them to Church for fear of my fingers burning when touching the Holy water. My parents instilled “shame” on me. (Darn them anyway. LOL!).
OT a bit: I saw a very interesting ad in a local paper recently. A major department store was offering classes on “manners” for kids (I believe ages 10-15). Perhaps they should extend it to adults. (I’d love to know the response rate).
I had not intended to set up for a fashion consultant, so I shall just make a few general observations. My general point, in bringing up dress, was twofold: first, to point to dirty and inappropriate clothing as a type of rudeness that has become all too prevalent, and, second, to make the connection between the dumbing down of standards of male clothing with the general decline in standards--educational, moral, social.
It is certainly true that one may dress up to be offensive or dress outlandishly to draw attention to one's self. Oscar Wilde's green velvet suit was a silly piece of self-promotion--though it did work--and today, the wearing of 18th century or even 19th century clothing would seem bizarre, though I have known men who wore spats. There are possibilities closer to home. Suppose I am rich and fashionable and have a poor working class relative. Every time he comes to my house, I make a point of wearing very expensive clothes to put him in his place. What am I but a jerk. As I believe I remarked above, I sometimes dress down when I go to other people's houses in order not to make people uncomfortable, though I have noticed that here in Rockford, my example has inspired a number of younger men to put on a necktie when they entertain or go out. But, this has nothing to do with the example cited above, of the well-dressed couple in the supermarket. I assume they were not dressed in evening clothes for opera but simply well-dressed and well groomed. Whom were they hurting, and whose business is it whether they were on their way to a wedding or a party, coming home from a job that required such clothes, or simply enjoyed looking their best? I won't say that I never leave the house without a jacket and tie, but I would say that nine times out of ten that I go out in public, to a store, my barber, etc., I do. I may not succeed, but my goal is to dress like a grownup instead of as a child.
As for jeans, pretty or ugly, new or old, what you wear is one of my business. But, I would suggest, do not pretend to be socially conservative if you cannot dress the part. When someone makes a rational and historical argument, e.g., that jeans are part of a Marxist cultural revolution, the answer, "yes, but I like them," is the worst possible answer. One has three choices: you can be simply ignorant of decent standards; you can side with the revolution; or you can dress appropriately.
Wearing decent blue jeans to school or stores is not, today, a piece of intentional bad manners. It is, however, an unintentional means of collaborating with the Revolution. By all means collaborate. Wear jeans, eat fast food, watch TV, play video games, cheat on your wife, buy Kanye West CDs--it is none of my business, so long as you do not try to persuade me that you want to roll back the revolution. Here is the heart of the matter. People go out and protest infanticide or scream support for the divine Sarah, as if you are taking part in a counter-revolution to restore republican liberty and Christian decency, but they cannot take the trouble to dress appropriately. This illustrates perfectly the problem of political conservatism: It is all talk--editorials, talk radio, voting--and no walk.
I think part of the problem here is that it is much easier to be a conservative than a reactionary. Maybe that is not the right way to phrase it, but by that I mean: It is natural for someone to assume that his childhood or young adulthood was an ideal time and that everything since has been downhill. It is much harder to realize that even then the rot had set in and things might have been much better 25, 50, 100, or 500 years earlier. Unfortunately, younger people today have not known a world without blue jeans and video games.
Personally, I disliked jeans even as a teenager (I don't know why, since I generally quite like blue as a color, but I always found them ugly) and I haven't played video games since about the time Super Mario Brothers 3 came out (twenty years ago, when I was ten), but I can sympathize with those of my generation who have a hard time weaning themselves from them (and I of course I do have similar faults of my own).
I would like to thank Dr. Fleming for his stimulating essay and comments.
This is only the first of a series. We can do more transportation-related problems: rudeness on airplanes, for example, or change gears and talk about cell phones and iPhones etc.
Here's another fashion change I wonder what Dr Fleming thinks of - long hair on men.
Just back from the hardware store buying more mortar. I'll change back into my jeans now. Some of you seem to despise jeans but if you do any heavy work around barbwire, nails, lumber, etc, those khaki's don't fill the bill.
I surprised no one has mentioned the worse-than-jeans-in-public phenomenon: sweat pants! Or how about those fitness buffs downtown who race the sidewalks at noon sans shirts? Gott im Himmel!
As a young college teacher, I agreed to write a book with a sociologist friend on the social significance of hair. Our project foundered, but I learned a few things. Obviously, male hair length varies greatly from culture to culture and from age to age. Warrior ales who are very secure in their virility may tend to flaunt it with long hair, as the Spartans did. Cutting the hair very close or bald may indicate either mourning, hence the sacrifice of vitality, an initiation period (the Marine Corps, prison), or insecurity. Our culture was dominated by Pauline admonitions against long hair, thus short hair (within reason)=Christian and virtuous, and long hair can indicate either the rollicking roisterers of the courts of Charles I and II or, today, a rejection of Christianity and its explicit teachings about sex roles and denunciations of all homoerotic tendencies and behavior. Naturally, there is a range. My parents thought Jack Kennedy needed a haircut and they always found my hair too long.
PS to Jim: I explicitly stated that jeans were good for manual labor. I wore them when I worked in a car wash and sometimes when I was working in the creek one summer losing money as a commercial crabber. If one really had an objection to blue jeans, they are made in khaki colors--though they show dirt faster. I once inherited a pair of brown jeans. Good strong denim is an excellent fabric for working and can even be made suitable for other uses, but in normal social circumstances it makes a statement. Worse than men in sweat pants are women in sweat pants, though in most of the cases I have seen, I am grateful they have covered themselves up discretely.
Thats similar to what Ive thought. I've known of some gentlemen from eastern Europe where it is some places the norm for some clergy to wear long hair, and they did themselves quite tastefully. In my case, I regrew mine as a sense of freedom after getting out of the army. I chalk it up to a bad habit.
On the other hand, I dont understand how some men my age like the bald look. Looking like a prisoner whos been humiliated by having is head shaved is not my cup of tea, but I am unaware of a specific Christian admonishment against it.
J.E.B. Stuart and Jefferson Davis had long hair. As did John C. Calhoun. Dabney and Gildersleeve also had quite long hair. As far as I know all of these men were good Christians.
While I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Fleming, I think a certain concession should be made to a younger generation of which I am a member. The popular culture that is so rightly derided here is nevertheless so ubiquitous for people my age that attempting to avoid it simply cannot be done without parents or even whole neighborhoods acting together to educate and cultivate their youth. This, at least now, is too unlikely to happen. A more reasonable objective is long-term subversion. I am a victim of video games and a little Kanye West music, but perhaps my children won't be now that I have been exposed to something much higher and more worthy of human life. All children need a conduit to the past, whether it be through literature, history, or, in my case, philosophy. Perhaps I am rare, but if my case is more than just my own, when discussing the under thirty generation we will have to be satisfied with men who play video games but, if we are lucky, develop a taste for Virgil, Aristotle, Aquinas, Chesterton, and Fleming.
If MD will reread what was written above, he will see that he has either misstated his argument or misread the comment.
I am sufficiently persuaded by the reasoning that I shall see if I can find an *inexpensive* alternative to jeans. Although the no-nonsense Norwegian (and Pacific Northwesterner) in me initially balks at looking debonair, one of my New Year's resolutions will be to pay more attention to properly conservative dress standards. The problem is that I've been bending over backwards not to seem like a dandy. My feeling now (propelled in part by the fact that the fictional character Mitch Rapp, whose counterterrorism talents I find admirable, is quite well-dressed) is that the fear of dandyism can be too staunchly maintained by men who don't want anyone to think for a minute that they are in the same fashion-conscious boat as metrosexuals and effeminates (a major deterrent, that).
At last, a convert! My recommendation is wool or a wool blend. They wear well, look good even after 10 hours on a flight to Europe, and in the end costs far less because the trousers last so much longer. My wife complains that I only come in two colors, charcoal and gray, though in fact wear khaki colored wool as often. No one would ever mistake this rumpled specimen for a dandy. I have no hesitation about wearing a jacket with a frayed sleeve or scuffed shoes. Lucky for me I have a wife to needle me.
My thirty year old son, a bit of a bohemian, warns me that if I persist in doing a book on this I could simply give vent to my mean-old-man propensity to rail at the younger generation, but my intention is actually just the opposite. For example, young men who are not yet ready to put on jacket and tie to go out to dinner may settle for business casual as a halfway measure. But, while you're at it, throw on a tweed or corduroy jacket over your checkered shirt. Your wife or girlfriend will be grateful.
Finally, and this is my last word now (for the moment) on dress codes, I remember way back in 1969 hearing my fellow graduate students complain about how they were treated in the graduate library at Chapel Hill, in business offices, and in stores downtown. (By the way, these grad students were a hygienic and sartorial disaster). When I, who was normally the complaining sort, observed that I was always treated well, they answered: That's because you always wear a jacket and tie and they think you're faculty. Gosh. I got better treatment because I dressed the part I would soon be called upon to play. (How times have changed!) Every year in Europe I hear the same complaints from Americans, how foreigners are so rude to them. Of course, the fact that their fanny packs, sweats, running shoes, and poor hygiene constitute a kick-me sign is of no more significance than the chip on their shoulders that so many tourists wear. Ah, a whole nother chapter: Jerks Abroad.
Tom Fleming writes: " No one would ever mistake this rumpled specimen for a dandy. I have no hesitation about wearing a jacket with a frayed sleeve or scuffed shoes."
This is only one of several of your saving graces!!!
Of course this, "Lucky for me I have a wife." is another one!!
In the interests of candor, I should add that my oldest and rattiest Harris tweed jacket is decades away from the condition of Jedge Robert's second best blazer! I used to wonder what kind of a woman would put up with Robert, and then when I met that one in a million lady, I realized he needed someone who was half frontierswoman and half saint--and he was lucky enough to find her.
Yes, but I will never forget the joy that you and Gail brought with your last to my run down old farm. It very much reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's last descrption of his delightful visit with Belloc in 1952.
“Enter old man, shaggy white beard, black broad cloth garnished with food and tobacco. Thinner than I last saw him, with benevolent gleam. Like an old peasant or fisherman in French film. I went to greet him at door. Smelled slightly like a fox. I have known the man for over thirty years so it was slightly disconcerting when he kissed my wife's hand and then bowed to me saying, ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.”
The jeans mindset penetrates deep. Earlier today I saw my father who asked me why I was so dressed up (trying to get rid of the T-shirt wearing). He suggested, why dont I just wear a nice flannel shirt and a clean pair of jeans like he does, thats dressed up enough. As Dr Fleming says, the revolutionary mindset is there whether he knows it or not - and otherwise my father is an old school military brass reactionary. And yet, he dresses like a farmer when he isnt at work.
Thanks for the suggestion. Wool is my favorite fabric, so this shouldn't be too hard.
I have a quick question. In my neck of the woods, cowboy boots are considered proper casual dress attire. The problem is that they dont go too well with khakis. So I wear them with jeans, since I'm not sure about wearing those polyester western slacks. Any suggestions for something that goes good with boots and doesn't look tacky?
Also, perhaps a consideration of the differences in every day dress between Europeans and Americans and a more detailed description of the Appearance of American travelers in Europe would help some of us to understand just how far down hill we have gone.
Since the issue of men's hair length has been raised, I'm curious to hear Dr. Fleming's views on the opposite issue of the bob for women, which was so revolutionary and controversial when introduced in the 1920s, but since the 1950s has usually been treated as a conservative, even maternal style. (Most of the current crop of depraved Hollywood starlets have quite long hair, quite unlike their flapper predecessors.)
Allen Wilson,
" cowboy boots are considered proper casual dress attire."
Mr. Wilson,
The more I learn about your mode of life and your neck of the woods, the more I admire you and yours!! Lee jeans are worn around here by most honest cowboys for county fair and rodeos. Those polyesters are just a bridge too far in my opnion but a nicely kept stetson, leather boots, bolo tie worn over a white shirt with a clean shave is appropriate public attire around my country.
Stay away from what Merle Haggard called "the beads and Roman sandals" syndrome, unless of course you married a city woman and she dresses your kids with sandals and shorts in the summer. Every honest cowboy knows you can never have the last word with a woman, especially when it comes to her kids.
The topic of blue jeans and ugly, sloppy clothes in general cannot be treated simply as an instance of bad manners. Bad manners always imply a contrary consensus, from which they are a departure. The number of people within the consensus may vary, may be quite small, but it must exist. What we have today is something unprecedented: an almost universal consensus that ugly clothes are the right thing to wear. It’s people who resist this who are the exception, who stand out, and unavoidably trespass against the normal obligation of conformity to one’s community. The affirmation of ugliness that modern customs in clothes constitute is the real problem, and it is an ontological and theological one. Sound societies see Creation as good, the material world as reflecting the mind of the Creator, and beauty as a magic glimpse into the reality of things. This imposes an obligation on human beings to look good rather than to look ugly. An insight so obvious that in the past it never had to be stated, and only the opposite excess—too much attention to personal appearance—needed to be warned against. Looking deliberately ugly and sloppy is, as well, a negation of human dignity, which even those who deny Creation, somewhat inconsistently, acknowledge.
The problem is much worse in women, and is somewhat connected with the lack of modesty, but is by no means coterminous with it. In fact, part of the problem is that the few voices that are raised against the way girls and women dress nowadays are always couched in strictly religious terms, and quote time-bound guidelines by Pope Pius XI. It is just such a terrible waste that young girls, at the height of their beauty, instead of embodying the grace that is in them, walk around looking like prostitutes. It’s the loss of beauty more than inappropriate sexual suggestion that is the more regrettable.
So whether and when blue jeans should be worn by men is certainly not unimportant, but it is a very small part of the whole problem. I was somewhat disappointed that, because the readership of Chronicles seems to be predominantly men, this promising discussion got bogged down in the pros and cons of blue jeans.
I was steel worker for years and I wore what we called dungarees, blue jeans from a manufacturer's "seconds" store. At 40, I got my first white collar job. Now I'm the owner of six navy pinstripe suits. I'd rather face the hangman than wear jeans on the job, even on that pathetic workplace perk, casual dress Friday.
I agree entirely that we have not even to address the subject of dress but that is largely because it is rather off topic. That is why I posted a new piece to get back to the subject I have chosen. We can return to the cult of ugliness later