i guess its time to note again how poorly humour is conveyed over email... i was only kidding about you calling me a hipster doofus: your term "intellectual hipsters" reminded me of elaine, in seinfeld, accusing kramer of being a "hipster doofus"...
fussell does indeed provide the X alternative in the last chapter (the X way out) where he waxes orgasmically about the cool X type people:
page 180:
what kind of people are Xs? the old-fashioned term bohemians gives some idea; so does the term "the talented". some Xs are intellectuals, but a lot are not: they are actors, musicians, artists, sports stars, "celebrities", well-to-do former hippies, confirmed residents abroad, and the more gifted journalists, those whose by-lines intelligent readers recognize with pleasant anticipation. X people can be described as "self-cultivated". X people are independent-minded, free of anxious regard for popular shibboleths, loose in carriage and demeanor.
and on and on he goes... except this whole X category just sounds like the yuppie urban upper-middle class to me, or the folks that kelley might call the lifestyle left (if i understand her right), on the one hand, or on the other, the "dedicated" artist who is cleverly rude at unexpected times, to show how unassimilated he is...
i would say that fussell invented the X category (its not a class, he tells us) to make sure even those incapable of laughing at themselves would buy the book, because they could quite happily put themselves in that category ;-). but perhaps thats just my middle-class anxiety pushing me to drag the rest into the mud...
--ravi