From the New York Times, David Brooks on Jeb Bush:
That doesn’t mean the party will snap back to its old establishmentarian tendencies. Bush had several moments [in last week’s debate] to deliver a devastating blow — like challenging Trump for going after his wife — but he couldn’t quite turn them into hot-blooded signature moments. Three hundred and fifty years of WASP reticence have left habits of gentility and emotional guardedness that inhibit him, just as they inhibited his father.
And Marissa Rothkopf on a new restaurant that is
small and understatedly elegant. It befits a chef [Christine Nunn] who also wrote “The Preppy Cookbook,” a set of recipes inspired by and catered toward the Locust Valley lockjaw set.
She linked that phrase to William Safire, back in the 80s; and her brother David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy, reveled in it on twitter:
The latest from my sis, @marissarothkopf: Getting well beyond lunch for the lockjaw set at Picnic on the Square
(This is prejudice justified in the speakers’ minds by the belief that they are Jewish outsiders. Says a friend: “Imagine if somebody wrote, ‘Three hundred and fifty years of Jewish insularity had left Chuck Schumer with habits of tribal loyalty and paranoia that inhibit him, just as they inhibit others.’” My Protestant wife says no one speaks lockjaw except Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story. When she came into my family 25 years ago, my father called her Brenda Frazier, a reference to a debutante in the 1940s who was on the cover of Life Magazine– because my wife has perfect manners. She politely pointed out to my father, Did he really think that was a compliment? Brenda Frazier was an airhead who repeatedly tried to kill herself and drank herself to death. Riding back to NY, she said without inhibition, “I saw all the Woody Allen movies, I know about anti-Semitism. I never heard about anti-anti-Semitism.”)
Bigotry dies out with time. I’ll admit I had no clue what “lockjaw” even was up until now. Also, nobody under the age of 50 would ever link to Safire, which of course reinforces my first point.
Yeah, anti-WASP prejudice is socially accepted in America although I’d say I’ve only really seen Jews engage in it specifically. The rest of America tend to attack the hegemonic whiteness, which includes Jews of course, but that isn’t necessarily bigotry(although it can be in some instances).
I think part of the unease on the debate of Jewish privilege – that we are now part of white America full-stop and have been so for a long, long time – is that you can’t really identify yourself as an outsider anymore and thus these attacks on WASPs reinforce a mythical notion of marginalisation which simply is laughable today. And when that option is no longer possible, your own privilege has to be examined. And people really don’t like that. Witness the hysterical attacks in the Jewish press on the concept of Jewish privilege to see what I mean(Tablet has really been out there in particular).
So maybe these slurs on WASPs, casual and “harmless” as they may be, are at root a sign of anxiety over your own group’s status.
I still look back to the 2010 ‘Girls controversy’ on the issue of race for reference point. When Dunham got criticised for the monolithic whiteness on her show, she countered by saying she’s “Half-Jewish, Half-WASP” and going on saying that 50% of her cast are Jewish.
Lena played by old rules, the same Rothkopf and Brooks does. But the problem for Lena was that America had moved on. It was simply not possible anymore to pretend being Jewish on TV or in the mainstream of our culture was somehow a victory in and of itself.
And as a result of that miscalculation, Lena got crushed. So that was 5 years ago. Lena had to adjust because she is still quite young. Rothkopf and Brooks are not young, so their outdated social compass will probably never be corrected, but then again their readership isn’t anyone under 50 either.
(Sorry).
By the way, isn’t this ironic:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/style/weddings-marissa-rothkopf-mark-a-bates.html
I remember back in the 80’s, Russell Baker described Trump as a “pushy WASP” –(which I guess he is, I think German Americans qualify).
The richest WASPs are perhaps laughable for ultra good manners, emotional restraint (emotional frozenness) but also enviable for running America as they used to do and probably still do (more than these materials suggest). The richest Jews are laughable for (in some cases) having no discernable manners at all, for running over other people like ten-ton trucks, and enviable for running America as they, to a large extent, also do.
Perhaps the nexus between WASPs and AIPACeteers is the military-industrial-complex which, after 1967, cemented the alliance between American imperialism and Israeli imperialism. remember when Jews who used to be known as human-rights champions started cheering for Central American dictators in line with cheering for Israel.
Guess that it is a bit of a sign-of-the-Times that WASPs are taking it on the chin in public in an out-and-out display of Jewish, what?, arrogance? Wonder if the WASPs will figure out how to fight back? Perhaps not, because they will be so protected inside the walls of their gated-communities and their high-priced country clubs that they will not even notice what the upstarts are saying about them.
Probably the only time I have found myself agreeing with Philip Weiss.
WASPs are the only group it is socially acceptable to be prejudiced against or mock. WASPs are much more vulnerable than Jews in this respect.