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Last Updated: Oct 14, 2008 - 7:41:27 AM |
The men wore suits from Brooks Brothers or J. Press, the women white
gloves and pearls, and places like Westchester County were their
natural habitat.
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The late Brooke Astor wore the crown of that kingdom.
High up on a hillside in Briarcliff Manor or on the 15th floor of her
duplex apartment at 778 Park Ave., Astor set the tone for the way the
rich are supposed to behave, dressing the part to perfection. "I always
wear a hat - you see, I was brought up to all that," she once explained.
Since her death in the summer of 2007, the world she inhabited seems to
have passed into history as well.
The world of the old elite where Astor made her home was known as the
Protestant establishment, or more derisively, that of WASPs, short for
white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Within the parts of the country like the
Northeast suburbs where they held sway, it was their do-as-I say
authority to decide where everyone else could work, study, live and
play.
That was then.
But the emergence of a new set of rules that allowed entry into the
elite, not through bloodlines and family social position but by
achievement, began to take shape in 1958, the same year that a British
sociologist coined the term "meritocracy."
The prediction that the new elite would come from strivers with high
levels of educational achievement and good scores on standardized tests
- not just well-connected bluebloods - was taken up by a wide range of
reformers. The "rise of the meritocracy" coincided with the demolition
of the walls of exclusion that WASPs had erected around elite colleges,
professional schools and jobs in law, medicine, academia and finance
that kept out Jews, Catholics and other minorities. New pathways were
opening into selective colleges and well-heeled suburbs. The social
privileges that the WASPs were accused of hoarding began to fall from
their hands.
"The WASP establishment, as we call it, didn't emerge until the early
20th century," noted Nicholas Lemann, an author and journalist from
Pelham who has written about the old WASP aristocracy. "It had a fairly
short heyday. In midcentury, it had an iron grip on everything, and by
the last quarter of the century, it was palpably losing its grip."
Lemann noted the American society was composed of a number of competing
elites with overlapping and warring interests, and the WASP echelon
held its place in the sun for an unusually long time. "It was
long-lived for an American elite, short-lived if you think elites last
forever, which they never do," he said.
The decline of the WASP has been a staple of social observers, magazine
writers and academics for decades, if not generations. A Time magazine
article in 1969 looked at the supposed decline of WASP power and noted:
"Although it is possible to exaggerate the decline of the WASP, he is
indisputably in an historical retreat."
While it is always possible to exaggerate the decline of the WASP - and
some observers contest the idea that their institutional power is in
decline - it seems now more than ever the WASP has left its central
position on the historical stage, even in places like Westchester and
Putnam counties.
It may be time to send in a final thank-you note for all the memories.
The death of 105-year-old socialite, philanthropist and uber-WASP Astor
at her beloved Briarcliff Manor estate, Holly Hill, last year may be
seen as a bookend, the passing of a social scene. Or look at the inside
view of a well-heeled observer writing a regular feature for Vanity
Fair magazine about the decline of the WASP. Jamie Johnson, heir to the
health-care fortune, observed in a recent piece that "prestigious sport
and social clubs are really the only remaining society fixtures WASPs
still govern."
Now, 50 years after the term "meritocracy" was coined, the handwriting
on the embossed stationary is perfectly legible: The WASP has lost his
place on top. Whether the old elite will be missed remains to be seen.
Carll Tucker, 56, grew up in a bastion of WASP privilege. The
third-generation Yale man learned how to ride, play tennis and follow
the rules of etiquette. He knows where the fish fork goes on the place
setting and what to do with a finger bowl. But Tucker doesn't miss the
world he grew up in and said goodbye to all of that in a recent memoir
that sent him fleeing in an old recreational vehicle across the
country. His own kids were raised Jewish and without the strictures
that marked his own upbringing.
Tucker called it a "corrosive" way of life.
"When I was growing up, manners were the most important thing in life,"
he recalled. "Keep a stiff upper lip. And never be enthusiastic.
Enthusiasm was ill-bred; it rattled the teacups. Everyone lived in a
very narrow band of social acceptability. No one talked about anything
substantive."
Still, there were positive attributes to the old Protestant
establishment he would like to see more of. At their best, he said, the
old WASPs were "driven by the public good" and imbued with a "rigorous
dedication to duty."
There was also a distaste for excess. Tucker can recall an older family
member of his, a pillar of the financial establishment who put on work
clothes every weekend to putter around outdoors, turning ashen with
fury when he was told about the kind of lavish entertainments that were
being thrown around northern Westchester beginning in the 1980s by the
likes of Ivan Boesky and Carl Icahn, corporate titans and Bedford
neighbors.
"It's wrong in every which way - conspicuous, wasteful, boastful, added
nothing to society," he said, recalling the verdict of his stepfather.
"They lived much more moderately," said Tucker, a Bedford native and
the former publisher of The Patent Trader newspaper.
Not much nostalgia is felt by others who suffered the sting of the
WASP, and hostility is still evident in recollection of the ways the
WASPs wielded their power. As social commentator Camille Paglia noted
in a recent essay, "I have been at war with WASPiness since I grew up
in upstate New York in the 1950s and early '60s. There is no way to
describe the brute social power of the WASP establishment of that
period."
On a similar note, journalist Phillip Weiss recalled the enmity
outsiders felt about the WASP establishment. But when Weiss went to
Harvard in the early 1970s, he found out the old order was changing
rapidly, and the walls of exclusion were coming down fast.
"There was a lot of rage among Jews toward the WASPs, the old order.
And I shared in that," said Weiss, a journalist from Cold Spring.
"I came to Harvard and thought the WASPs run this place. And it was
changing before my eyes," said Weiss. "I grew up as an outsider with a
very keen sense WASPs were on top. Now it's a meritocracy. I think it's
wonderful the establishment has proved to be fluid. America is such a
dynamic society. I think that's a great thing."
Though a connection to the Mayflower and Yankee blueblood may not be a
requirement to join the elite anymore, the allure of the old WASP
mystique still remains strong.
"If you think of it as a brand, it's a very powerful brand," remarked
Susan Cheever, whose family name has often conjured up images of the
genteel rich, lonely train stations and gin-soaked despair, as
described in her father's short stories.
Cheever, an author and biographer who was taught how to make a martini
at the age of 6 by her grandmother, sees a reaffirmation of the old
WASP style way beyond the borders of Westchester. Like the
democratization of luxury goods and the spread of Martha Stewart to the
local shopping mall, it seems that the ways of the privileged few are
coveted by the not-so-privileged many.
"Things that used to be exclusive to the rich are now completely
popular," said Cheever, whose father, John Cheever, wrote about the
world of WASPs in a series of short stories and books before his death
in 1982. "There was a big push to make things that were exclusive to
the rich, to make them available to everyone. Golf used to be a rich
man's sport, a country club sport. Now everyone plays it."
Cheever, a Westchester native who lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side,
noted that striving up-and-comers often took great pains to gain entry
to the institutions of the old elite, and the preppy look that WASPs
favored is still a mainstay in this country and abroad. J. Press, the
clothing store for the preppy connoisseur, is now owned by a Japanese
firm, and Brooks Brothers has become a national chain.
"Preppy style is one of the few things this country has managed to
export in fashion. You could argue that style is an echo of WASP
elitism, and it's huge in Japan and Europe," said Cheever, 65. "The
clothing also connotes a certain kind of ethic, the old preppy ethic.
But it's interesting to see what gets passed along with the clothing,
and what doesn't."
In any event, Cheever doesn't see the world created by the WASPs going
away soon. The culture needs to have an elite, she said, and many of
its attitudes and customs appear to be imprinted by the old WASP
tradition.
"There's certainly a class structure still in place. Now it has a lot
more to do with money. But there's different ways to become an elite -
it can be bloodlines, or it can be money," she said. "The WASP elite
has company now, in that golden chair, where they can be admired and
resented and hated. But they're still there
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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