Archibald Cox, once dean of US labor law scholars, and Special Watergate Counsel sacked at Nixon's orders(ultimately) by Robert Bork, later a DC Cir. Appellate Judge and US S.Ct nominee, was famous for his bow ties, in which he (Cox), at 6'++, rail-thin (all that handball, I am sure) and every inch an Ivy League WASP, looked completely natural.
A story: at a trial way from his usual haunts, someplace where aristocratic Ivy League lawyer/law profs were regarded with suspicion and hostility, opposing counsel made a deprecatory reference to Cox's "Harvard phony clip-on bow tie" or something like that. Cox stood up to his full height, and ostentatiously untied his bow (real) tie and retied it, then sat down. Didn't say a word. Opposing counsel was crushed.
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Sep 22, 2007, at 10:50 AM, Carl Remick quoted
> the FT quoting Louis
> > Auchincloss:
> >
> > > "It is a myth," he continues, that a once great
> and powerful class of
> > > white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants has been pushed
> aside; the ruling class
> > > has simply eliminated the ethnic and religious
> bars to entry, and
> > > expanded. "Proust studied this very carefully,"
> he says. "He
> > > understood that society would take in anybody it
> wants."
> >
> > That's not the way E. Digby Baltzell tells it.
> Baltzell says the old
> > WASPs were such racists that they refused
> admittance to the wrong
> > sort and were pushed aside. There's still a ruling
> class of some sort
> > - it just ain't the WASPs.
>
> But Baltzell certainly didn't see the WASPS as a
> monolithic force, as
> he discussed in his "Puritan Boston and Quaker
> Philadelphia: Two
> Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority
> and Leadership"
> (1979). It's been many years since I read the book,
> and in refreshing
> my memory about Baltzell's main points ran across
> the following
> customer review at Amazon.com, which seems
> consistent with what I
> remember of this intriguing book. BTW, Baltzell was
> the
> quintessential WASP in appearance; he was one of the
> last individuals
> I can recall who could wear a bow tie and look like
> he really meant
> it, viz.:
> <http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v43/n02/baltzell.gif>
>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Fascinating study of social leadership in America
> By Christopher P. Atwood (Bloomington, IN)
> January 13, 2000
>
> Digby Baltzell uses the history of Philadelphia and
> Boston as very
> real examples of two types of leadership. In Boston,
> the "Boston
> Brahmin" elites formed a strong upper class that was
> not tolerant,
> certainly, but took responsibility for community
> life and exercised a
> tremendous influence on American culture, politics,
> arts, and science.
> In Philadelphia, the "Proper Philadelphians" were
> charming,
> tolerant--and deeply irresponsible, abandoning any
> role in governing
> the city and making it by common agreement the worst
> run city in the
> United States. When Philadelphia needed a mover and
> shaker, it
> imported some one from outside, like Ben Franklin.
> Baltzell takes these difference back to the colonial
> period and the
> dramatic differences in the viewpoints of the
> Puritans who founded
> Boston and the Quakers who founded Philadelphia. He
> also sees these
> changes working forward as the old upper-class
> socialize immigrant
> elites into their respective patterns, producing the
> Kennedy clan out
> of Boston, and Grace Kelly out of Philadelphia. Many
> of the points
> here can also be seen in David Hackett Fischer's
> Albion's Seed.
>
> Baltzell's bedrock conviction is that every society
> needs an upper
> class and is going to get one whether it likes it or
> not (the history
> of revolutions proves this rather conclusively).
> Those who see the
> very fact of social stratification as an personal
> affront will of
> course get affronted. The interesting point he makes
> though is that
> many things anti-elitists think are opposites
> actually go together. As
> he shows from his examples, social tolerance goes
> together with a much
> more blatantly money-conscious and just plain richer
> upper-class, and
> societies with widespread hostility to "elites" also
> show deep
> cynicism about their leadership and society in
> general, a cynicism
> merited by the generally short-sighted and narrowly
> (as opposed to
> broadly) selfish behavior of the upper class.
>
> Does this sound familiar? Baltzell's final point is
> that in the wake
> of the sixties, which he compares to the English
> civil war (1640-1660)
> environment that spawned the Quakers and released "a
> host of
> self-righteous seekers" on the land," American
> leadership has moved
> much closer to the nakedly plutocratic and
> irresponsible leadership
> model found in Philadelphia. And along with this
> change in the upper
> class has grown egalitarianism, openness to
> immigrants, cynicism,
> leadership gridlock, and social tolerance. The irony
> of communal
> utopianism producing results exactly opposite of
> what was intended
> would not have surprised de Tocqueville, Baltzell's
> great mentor in
> sociology.
>
> Don't think that this book is just about grand
> theory--it is filled
> with a host of fascinating portraits of the two
> cities' upper classes,
> and so contains a good deal of the achievers of
> America from colonial
> days to World War II. The simple quantitative
> analysis is effective
> and not off-putting.
>
>
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/156000830X/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_top/104-4052789-8040733?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books>
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Carl
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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