There are worse things to call that than Fred Astaire socialism, although I have no idea what Astaire's views were or whether he had any -- a quick net search turns up that Ginger Rogers was a conservative Republican (sigh, another illusion crushed), but nothing about Astaire. His last film was the 1960s adaption of Finian's Rainbow, lyrics by Yip Harburg (of The Wizard of Oz), the reddest writer on Tin Pan Alley, the play, anyway, is pretty left wing. I can't remember the movie. But a job's a job, he didn't have to agree with Harburg to take a role.
I think the comment about the importance of the knowledge and skill that goes into having the taste to make the relevant distinctions or even, in some cases, the stuff about which distinctions are made, goes to what's deep, if anything is, in this discussion.
Btw, my rudeness wasn't directed at anyone who criticizes my wardrobe -- feel free, fire away -- but at a particular troll who made a very ugly remark based on my net handle.
I don't buy the argument that we should give the money that we might spend on something good for ourselves to the poor. Peter Singer once (quite seriously) performed a brilliant reductio on that argument by contending that declining marginal utility, the fact that each addition unit of wealth means less to those who have it, plus a few other premises (in his case, utilitarianism), means that we should give everything we have to the poor, because, after all, a dollar to someone who lives on three hundred dollars a year, as billions do, means a lot more to him/her than to someone who lives on, say 65K a year. That's where the argument that you shouldn't spend your money on Armani, you should give it to charity, leads. Apart from the fact that the $69 I spent on an Armani Black Label suit isn't likely to do much to alleviate the troubles of the poor, the are so many problems that are so manifest with this line of reasoning, even if a lot more money is involved, that it should not be necessary to go into them on this list. That won't stop people, I am sure. ;->
--- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
> A lurker on this list writes the following about
> this thread:
>
> "Go with me on this, as I pull this thread into my
> WGA obsession.
>
> "The thread is about how both corporate right and
> the sectarian left
> go after progressives who wear expensive fashionable
> clothes. Andie
> posted a rant inviting critics of his Armani suits
> to F-off; why
> should any of them dictate to serious activists
> their clothing style
> choices.
>
> "Compare to the disdain the WGA faces when they
> invite fans to their
> pickets for theme days: the moguls call them
> unserious and the
> radical left can't even be bothered to show up.
> Meanwhile, the
> participants in the labor action report back on the
> fun, the sense of
> community, the things politics are supposed to
> have."
>
> I replied:
> The only thing wrong with well tailored Italian
> suits is that not
> everybody can afford to wear them and if everybody
> could afford to
> wear them we would have to have a lottery to ration
> them. If I could
> buy well tailored Italian suits I certainly would.
> But I would
> probably feel guilty for not giving the money to a
> Central American
> cooperative.
>
> If I haven't commented on this thread so far it is
> because I think
> that all sides have been pretty inconsiderate. They
> don't considered
> the fact that there can be such a thing as Fred
> Astaire socialism,
> which is a kind descendant of Oscar Wilde socialism,
> and the Fred
> Astaire variety was not at all alien to the Italian
> working class
> neighborhood that I remember from my youth. I
> remember people who
> worked at the GE during the week and were proud to
> dress up for dinner
> at the weekend and practice the fine art of bella
> figura. They were
> proud that they knew how to sing and could tell a
> good story and knew
> what went into making a good and beautiful building
> or a powerful
> opera. They were proud to tell me why Hank Williams
> was great but
> Jimmie Driftwood was shit, or why the Marx Brothers
> made good movies
> and the three Stooges which was just vulgar. They
> were proud to
> explain why a good shoe was well made and why so
> many factory made
> shoes were awful, even if they could not often
> afford the well made
> shoe. My Aunt V, who sometimes voted for the
> Socialist mayor of
> Schenectady, used to tell me that style, elegance,
> and good work were
> working class virtues and we had to fight for it.
>
> I don't know what everybody is ranting in this
> thread, to tell you the
> truth. Most people in the world don't get a chance
> to search out
> quality food, clothes, music, art, literature for
> many reasons. One of
> those reasons is that most people are economically
> deprived. More
> than 50 per cent of people in this world have never
> used a telephone
> and large portions of people do not have good water
> much less good
> food. But even without that major reason for the
> lack of quality,
> most people in the American middle class are simply
> not exposed to
> wonderful food and well tailored clothes or
> beautiful and uplifting
> architecture or challenging and engaging art,
> consistently and at an
> early enough age in order to know the difference.
> In Northern Italy
> even the working classes can discriminate between a
> well tailored
> piece of clothing and a lousy piece of clothing even
> if they can't
> afford the former. When I was young in Schenectady
> everybody I knew,
> knew the difference between good bread, cheese,
> prosciutto, pastries,
> etc. and the bad stuff. But when I go to places
> like Schenectady now
> -- or Nashville or St. Louis -- very few people can
> distinguish
> between decent bread and anything else. Why? I'm
> not quite sure, but
> I do believe it's exposure and desire and
> opportunity. It is not
> economics.
>
> For me the question is closer to Oscar Wilde's
> question of beauty and
> quality and its relation to socialism... and why
> capitalism provides
> the economic possibility of abundance but at the
> same time undermines
> excellence. It is a question of the depth of
> experience in everyday
> life.
>
> My Italian working class neighborhood in an
> industrial town wasruled
> by General Electric, the Catholic Church, the
> democratic machine, and
> the union local. But the people in that
> neighborhood I remember from
> 1965, had a good eye for "the quality" of certain
> things -- good food
> of course, but also good music and beautiful well
> made clothes and
> well designed "things". But their Italian-American
> children and grand
> children who moved to the suburbs often simply don't
> care. My great
> grandfather could tell you why Verdi was good and
> Puccini was "like
> adding sugar to honey" and he never even finished
> the third grade.
> He could tell you the difference between a good
> stone mason and a bad
> stone mason and could point out the well built
> churches in town and
> the ones that were just "mish mash". He knew who
> was the good tailor
> in town, where the good cloth came from, and what a
> well cut suit
> should look like even if he didn't own one. And all
> he did in his
> life is work in a factory and own a store. My great
> Uncle Tony could
> tell you why Louis Armstrong was great and why
> Italian leather was
> well tooled and why he liked Frank Sinatra and Billy
> Holiday but why
> so many other popular singers were "empty". Uncle
> Tony never
> graduated from high school, but he did take classes
> in classical music
> and the union hall. He belonged to a reading group
> at the union hall
> and read poetry. Yes there was a poetry group for
> the factory workers
> at the union hall in Schenectady, NY. I tend to
> think that because
> such people were around I learned to appreciate
> quality.
>
> This whole thread seems misconceived to me. The
> question is one of
> quality and excellence and why once the working
> classes all knew
> people who were master craftsman who "knew" quality
> in their everyday
> work. You can only respect quality once your basic
> needs are
> satisfied. But you have a better respect for
> quality and excellence
> if you know working class people who strive for it.
> In most places in
> the world the basic economic struggle is what
> outweighs everything
> else. And yet I believe that it is a loss that
> working class and
> middle class neighborhoods have lost their everyday
> relation to crafts
> people who actually strive to make things with high
> quality. I think
> this is why many people in the middle classes don't
> distinguish
> quality on many levels. But I don't know why so
> many people I have
> met in the South and the Midwest seem to actively
> reject quality or to
> actively resent good craft makers. It is as if
> quality itself is an
>
=== message truncated ===
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