David Brooks and "libido for the ugly"

During my life, I've managed to avoid reading more than perhaps a couple thousand of the words David Brooks has published. However, I've recently been reminded (by a column by Brooks, which I also haven't read, save for excerpts in a post by Steve Sailer) of some of them -- a few paragraphs from Bobos in Paradise I once stumbled across on Google Books:
The [New York Times wedding] section was also, predictably, WASPier. About half the couples who were featured in the late fifties were married in an Episcopal ceremony. Today fewer than one in five of the marriages in the Times page are Episcopalian, while around 40 percent are Jewish [. . .] it's pretty clear the trends of the last 40 years have been bad for the Episcopalians and good for the Jews. [. . .]

The section from the late fifties evokes an entire milieu that was then so powerful and is now so dated: the network of men's clubs, country clubs, white-shoe law firms, oak-paneled Wall Street firms, and WASP patriarchs. Everybody has his or her own mental images of the old Protestant Establishment [. . .] The WASPs didn't have total control of the country or anything like it, but they did have the hypnotic magic of prestige. As Richard Rovere wrote in a famous 1962 essay entitled "The American Establishment," "It has very nearly unchallenged power in deciding what is and what is not respectable opinion in this country." [. . .]

Meanwhile, every affluent town in America had its own establishment that aped the manners and attitudes of the national one. There were local clubs where town fathers gathered to exchange ethnic jokes and dine on lamb chops [. . .] The WASP aesthetic sense was generally lamentable--Mencken said Protestant elites had a "libido for the ugly"--and their conversation, by all accounts, did not sparkle with wit and intelligence. [. . .]

Though this elite was nowhere near as restrictive as earlier elites--World War II had exerted its leveling influence--the 1950 establishment was still based on casual anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and a thousand other silent barriers that blocked entry for those without the correct pedigree.
I found the text I've bolded quite ironic, considering that his NYT photo features Brooks -- in a pink shirt and tortoiseshell glasses -- attempting to ape the 1950s northeastern "WASP" aesthetic, with some unique additions of his own -- including garish tie and gap-toothed leer. More importantly, here's what Mencken actually said:
On certain levels of the American race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly, as on other and less Christian levels there is a libido for the beautiful. It is impossible to put down the wallpaper that defaces the average American home of the lower middle class to mere inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers. Such ghastly designs, it must be obvious, give a genuine delight to a certain type of mind.
This passage comes from a 1927 essay in which Mencken mewls about how ugly he finds "the coal and steel towns of Westmoreland county". It's hard to see how Brooks could have mistaken Mencken as commenting on the tastes of "Protestant elites". (Mencken notes "the valley is full of foreigners" -- although he ultimately blames America for its lack of aesthetics.) Brooks evidently consciously misappropriated Mencken's line to add some weight to his anti-WASP sniping.

13 comments:

sg said...

"The section from the late fifties evokes an entire milieu that was then so powerful and is now so dated: the network of men's clubs, country clubs, white-shoe law firms, oak-paneled Wall Street firms, and WASP patriarchs. "


Brooks obviously doesn't know what a patriarch is.

If these men really were patriarchs, they would have defended their turf and flooded the land with their profoundly numerous descendants.

Robert said...

I can't understand why anybody takes the New York Times seriously! I don't think that Brooks consciously misappropriated the line from Mencken. I think Brooks, like many people who write for the Times, just doesn't get it and takes quotes from Mencken in the context of the neat package that they have wrapped Mencken in. To them, Mencken is famous only for hating puritans and protestants so anything he ever said must fit within this context. I doubt that Brooks ever read the essay by Mencken but found the title somwhere and just assumed what it meant.

Anonymous said...

I noticed Sailer didn't put this post up on his iSteve blog. It's only up at VDare, which gets less views and less "mainstream" views in particular than his regular blog. It's possible that he just didn't put it up yet, but usually they go up at the same time. He'll stroke his ego from time to time mentioning how he thinks all these important mainstream people read his iSteve blog regularly. Maybe he didn't put it up because of it's "sensitive" nature.

Landser said...

I noticed Sailer didn't put this post up on his iSteve blog. It's only up at VDare, which gets less views and less "mainstream" views in particular than his regular blog. It's possible that he just didn't put it up yet, but usually they go up at the same time. He'll stroke his ego from time to time mentioning how he thinks all these important mainstream people read his iSteve blog regularly. Maybe he didn't put it up because of it's "sensitive" nature.
--

Nor did Sailer even mention in the slightest the harassment and cancellation of the American Renaissance conference over the weekend.

Instead, he focused on more 'important' subjects like what kind of outfits the men's figure skaters are wearing at the Olympics instead!

*Come to think of it, why no post or commentary from you n/a on this matter, hmmm?

Anonymous said...

Actually it looks like Steve did put it up.

Here is the cached version.

However, the main link to the post indicates that the page does not exist. So either Steve himself erased it or Google (owner of Blogger) removed it.

n/a said...

"*Come to think of it, why no post or commentary from you n/a on this matter, hmmm?"

This is not a politics or general news blog. Several of the blogs I link to have discussed the issue in depth, and most people who care know.

Nordicist said...

Thanks for sharing that remarkable passage from David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise. His envy and resentment of “WASPs” is on amazingly clear display there.

Theo Tiefwald said...

sg:"flooded the land with their profoundly numerous descendants."

Biology 101: the higher or more evolved the species or race is, the fewer offspring it has and the more time it invests in caring for its few offspring.

Hence the low birthrates of Whites (more evolved) and the very high birthrates of Blacks and many Asiatics (who are more primitive).

Landser said...

This is not a politics or general news blog. Several of the blogs I link to have discussed the issue in depth, and most people who care know.
--

n/a,

I still think there should be greater solidarity amongst the so-called 'Race Realist Right'.

n/a said...

Landser,

I see little value in "showing solidarity" per se, and I don't have the patience or tact to persuade people to care who don't already. Again, I'm sure the portion of my audience who cares is well-aware of the situation.

Anonymous said...

The WASP aesthetic sense was generally lamentable

Slim Aarons and Ralph Lifshitz seem to disagree.

sg said...

"Biology 101: the higher or more evolved the species or race is, the fewer offspring it has and the more time it invests in caring for its few offspring.

Hence the low birthrates of Whites (more evolved) and the very high birthrates of Blacks and many Asiatics (who are more primitive)."

Theo,

I am not trying to be a jerk, just making the observation that some people because of their ideology see themselves as patriarchs and therefore have many children and invest in them. The Puritans were such, having more children on average than their genetically similar peers in England, and investing more in them, having higher literacy rates than their peers in England. This because of their ideology and seeing themselves as patriarchs of a new society. The successful WASP men Brooks describes however did not see themselves as patriarchs so they follow the more general pattern of having fewer kids and investing more in them. I just think Brooks was idiotic to describe them as patriarchs when they didn't even see themselves as such and their behavior doesn't indicate it either.

Steve Sailer said...

"The WASP aesthetic sense was generally lamentable--Mencken said Protestant elites had a "libido for the ugly""

It's strange to bring this up in the context of country clubs, since many WASP golf clubs -- Augusta National, Cypress Point, Pine Valley, and so forth -- are world famous for the beauty of their golf courses, while Jewish country clubs tend to be famous for their lavish dining.