I couldn't shake the feeling that sneering at someone's ignorance, particularly in the matter of taste, immediately marks one out as a member of the kind of "elites" that have understandably caused such vitriolic resentment.
I hear you. And, as someone who can be a snob about a number of things, I try not to make fun of or look down on other people's taste. Whatever it is. With, you know, varying degrees of success. But I do try to avoid it, mostly because it's rude, but also because it feeds the dynamic you describe here.
All of that said, we're not talking about somebody's personal taste and how that is expressed in their own home or appearance.
It's the freaking White House, home of one of the three branches of the US government and residence of it's chief executive.
Trump is a vulgar clown, and his residence in Trump Tower reflects that. I don't care. Whatever floats his boat.
But that kind of garish, ostentatious display doesn't belong in one of the the physical seats of our national government.
Cheez Whiz: it wasn't so much the piece I was talking about (as I said I found it interesting and informative), as the reaction it (most particularly the coinage Regional Car Dealership Rococo) provoked in me. While it made me laugh, to me the name RCDR had an unmistakeable whiff of class (de haut en bas) contempt. But then again, maybe that's more just from an English viewpoint.
Well, the tone I got from that McMansion piece was how RCDC was a corruption of the thought-out sources it munges together that simply juxtaposes them without creating or defining any relationship beyond proximitry. Appropriation, if you will. What mockery there is comes from the analysis of the failure of the idea. Is the mockery undeserved? Is criticizing the asthetic taste of the President of These United States punching down?
Looks like a relatively normal room. I'd describe it as grad student / working class (i. e. without a lot of excess cash), but with good taste.
In short, the inverse of excess money and no taste.
Other than a "this looks like pictures I've seen" sort of observation, I really don't have any room to criticize decorating choices. My wife and I always said that our style was "graduate students who occasionally had some found money" crossed with "people actually live in this room".
Earlier this year I got tired of having to climb out of the futon and bought living room furniture that I sat "on" rather than "in". It felt really strange to go shopping for furniture without my wife. Plain because I'm a graduate student at heart. Inexpensive because, well, I might only realistically need to get ten years out of it. Three pieces so that I can separate the granddaughters as needed to avoid "Grandpa, she's poking me!" Everything else in this picture has a back story.
PS Maybe it's because such matters in the UK are so absolutely coded by social class, and awareness of that and its myriad disadvantages is impossible to avoid.
I enjoyed Cheez Whiz's link, which was interesting and informative. I laughed at Regional Car Dealership Rococo (it's perfect!), but it still left me obscurely uncomfortable.
Tempting and enjoyable as it can be to mock Trump, and his absurd and transparent pretensions, I couldn't shake the feeling that sneering at someone's ignorance, particularly in the matter of taste, immediately marks one out as a member of the kind of "elites" that have understandably caused such vitriolic resentment. A sense of superiority, no matter how easily explained, always makes me question how justifiable such feelings are/can be.
I'm not preaching here - I've had to work out why I ended up feeling so uncomfortable after reading it and laughing, and this is just my first stab at trying to account for that feeling.
At the risk of trafficking in stereotypes, IMO DJT's taste in decor (and many other things as well) can be attributed to "he's a not very bright, rich old white guy from Queens".
Shiny and loud == "klassy"
The woman who had that McMansion hell website has a Patreon, and she recently posted a dive into what she calls Regional Car Dealership Roccoco, her term for the Trump architectural esthetic. https://www.patreon.com/posts/mcmansionization-126873692
Yarvin has spent the morning chatting about Austrian economics with 86-year-old crossbench peer and Keynes biographer Lord Skidelsky.
I have to admit, every time I see the name Skidelsky, I think of skid marks, but reading the piece convinces me I shouldn't feel bad about it.
Whenever I read anything by Yarvin, I feel like I'm back in college listening to some zero-social-skill rando who overdosed on Ayn Rand in high school holding forth at 2 in the morning after doing enough bong hits to anaesthetize an elephant.
hsh: I agree. But I liked her take on it He begins telling me about how America’s biggest problem is “decades of mass immigration”. I point out that the US is, you know, a nation of immigrants, to which he responds: “It was originally founded by people of north-west European ancestry.” I note there were people there before them. “There were native Americans, and they lost out,” he replies. “Sucks for them.” This is an odd comment from the spokesperson of a party claiming one of its key beliefs to be that “indigenous people have an inseparable bond with their homeland and are its natural stewards” to make.
and particularly when she says this: Cave turns to me. “So what’s your skill then, spinning stuff into a story?”
“No,” I reply. “My skill is keeping a straight face when someone tells me something, and inside I’m thinking: fucking hell.”
A bunch of people I read were talking very enthusiastically about this piece by a FT journalist who went to a party for Curtis Yarvin and the "new, new right". It's reasonably insightful, and rather entertaining: https://archive.ph/qgC6d
Thank your lucky stars that Strump hasn't razed the White House and replaced it with a garish casino.
Yet. Gotta save a few big projects for the third term.
I have to admit that everytime these inland forages of oceans come up, I have to struggle whether they are spelled with a u or an o in English (btw, the same with disaster vs. desaster)*.
No excuse for Persion though.
For that matter no one noticed that feasibility got misspelled feasability in the title of my PhD thesis until after it got approved and published (electronically). Well, at least it is easier to find that way.
*in German it is Golf and Desaster
Harmut's typos make me laugh, but I want to extend them, from:
"His Orangeness and his role models round the Persion Golf"
to
"His Orangeness and his role models round the Perversion Golf"
Re: bad taste. Napoleon should be part of the discussion.
It isn't just that the design is tasteless. It's that the execution is so poor. I think "sloppy" is the word I'm looking for.
It's like no competent craftsmen could be found to do it. Although most likely nobody looked, if they had there might have been a derth of people willing to work under any terms except cash in advance. A poor reputation can do that.
As someone who grew up DC/MD and had a government worker dad may I say: this is as bad as anything anyone has done to that city. I took lots of field trips as a kid and nowhere was anything that awful. How fucking dare he.
On “A New Gilded Age”
I couldn't shake the feeling that sneering at someone's ignorance, particularly in the matter of taste, immediately marks one out as a member of the kind of "elites" that have understandably caused such vitriolic resentment.
I hear you. And, as someone who can be a snob about a number of things, I try not to make fun of or look down on other people's taste. Whatever it is. With, you know, varying degrees of success. But I do try to avoid it, mostly because it's rude, but also because it feeds the dynamic you describe here.
All of that said, we're not talking about somebody's personal taste and how that is expressed in their own home or appearance.
It's the freaking White House, home of one of the three branches of the US government and residence of it's chief executive.
Trump is a vulgar clown, and his residence in Trump Tower reflects that. I don't care. Whatever floats his boat.
But that kind of garish, ostentatious display doesn't belong in one of the the physical seats of our national government.
"
Cheez Whiz: it wasn't so much the piece I was talking about (as I said I found it interesting and informative), as the reaction it (most particularly the coinage Regional Car Dealership Rococo) provoked in me. While it made me laugh, to me the name RCDR had an unmistakeable whiff of class (de haut en bas) contempt. But then again, maybe that's more just from an English viewpoint.
"
Well, the tone I got from that McMansion piece was how RCDC was a corruption of the thought-out sources it munges together that simply juxtaposes them without creating or defining any relationship beyond proximitry. Appropriation, if you will. What mockery there is comes from the analysis of the failure of the idea. Is the mockery undeserved? Is criticizing the asthetic taste of the President of These United States punching down?
"
Looks like a relatively normal room. I'd describe it as grad student / working class (i. e. without a lot of excess cash), but with good taste.
In short, the inverse of excess money and no taste.
"
Other than a "this looks like pictures I've seen" sort of observation, I really don't have any room to criticize decorating choices. My wife and I always said that our style was "graduate students who occasionally had some found money" crossed with "people actually live in this room".
Earlier this year I got tired of having to climb out of the futon and bought living room furniture that I sat "on" rather than "in". It felt really strange to go shopping for furniture without my wife. Plain because I'm a graduate student at heart. Inexpensive because, well, I might only realistically need to get ten years out of it. Three pieces so that I can separate the granddaughters as needed to avoid "Grandpa, she's poking me!" Everything else in this picture has a back story.
"
PS Maybe it's because such matters in the UK are so absolutely coded by social class, and awareness of that and its myriad disadvantages is impossible to avoid.
"
I enjoyed Cheez Whiz's link, which was interesting and informative. I laughed at Regional Car Dealership Rococo (it's perfect!), but it still left me obscurely uncomfortable.
Tempting and enjoyable as it can be to mock Trump, and his absurd and transparent pretensions, I couldn't shake the feeling that sneering at someone's ignorance, particularly in the matter of taste, immediately marks one out as a member of the kind of "elites" that have understandably caused such vitriolic resentment. A sense of superiority, no matter how easily explained, always makes me question how justifiable such feelings are/can be.
I'm not preaching here - I've had to work out why I ended up feeling so uncomfortable after reading it and laughing, and this is just my first stab at trying to account for that feeling.
"
At the risk of trafficking in stereotypes, IMO DJT's taste in decor (and many other things as well) can be attributed to "he's a not very bright, rich old white guy from Queens".
Shiny and loud == "klassy"
"
The woman who had that McMansion hell website has a Patreon, and she recently posted a dive into what she calls Regional Car Dealership Roccoco, her term for the Trump architectural esthetic.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/mcmansionization-126873692
"
Yarvin has spent the morning chatting about Austrian economics with 86-year-old crossbench peer and Keynes biographer Lord Skidelsky.
I have to admit, every time I see the name Skidelsky, I think of skid marks, but reading the piece convinces me I shouldn't feel bad about it.
"
Whenever I read anything by Yarvin, I feel like I'm back in college listening to some zero-social-skill rando who overdosed on Ayn Rand in high school holding forth at 2 in the morning after doing enough bong hits to anaesthetize an elephant.
"
hsh: I agree. But I liked her take on it
He begins telling me about how America’s biggest problem is “decades of mass immigration”. I point out that the US is, you know, a nation of immigrants, to which he responds: “It was originally founded by people of north-west European ancestry.” I note there were people there before them. “There were native Americans, and they lost out,” he replies. “Sucks for them.” This is an odd comment from the spokesperson of a party claiming one of its key beliefs to be that “indigenous people have an inseparable bond with their homeland and are its natural stewards” to make.
and particularly when she says this:
Cave turns to me. “So what’s your skill then, spinning stuff into a story?”
“No,” I reply. “My skill is keeping a straight face when someone tells me something, and inside I’m thinking: fucking hell.”
"
GftNC, it made me a little nauseated. Weirdos in a bad way. I'd take an hour-long shower after being at that gathering.
"
A bunch of people I read were talking very enthusiastically about this piece by a FT journalist who went to a party for Curtis Yarvin and the "new, new right". It's reasonably insightful, and rather entertaining:
https://archive.ph/qgC6d
"
Napoleon III was more into kitsch art afaik.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Cabanel)
The reproductions I can find on the net all lack the correct (and aesthetically sickening) ivory/pink shade and thus do not give the proper impression of the original.
This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_as_Mars_the_Peacemaker on the other hand is more on the ridiculous side but not necessarily bad taste or low quality art (like the gilded plastic statue of His Orangeness).
The precedent would be https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Claudius_as_Jupiter_(Pio_Clementino_Museum)#/media/File:Claudius_(Vatikanische_Museen).jpg
Again not low quality art but the discrepancy between the real person and the image (Claudius being widely known for having a walking disability, so the proper deity would have been Hephaistos)
"
The casino is down the street, at will formerly be The Treasury Building.
"
Thank your lucky stars that Strump hasn't razed the White House and replaced it with a garish casino.
Yet. Gotta save a few big projects for the third term.
"
Thank your lucky stars that Strump hasn't razed the White House and replaced it with a garish casino.
"
IIRC Napoleon I was more "over-the-top bad taste", but that may just be he has more stuff to see in Paris, and what I saw.
"
Snarki, Napoleon I or III or both?
"
I have to admit that everytime these inland forages of oceans come up, I have to struggle whether they are spelled with a u or an o in English (btw, the same with disaster vs. desaster)*.
No excuse for Persion though.
For that matter no one noticed that feasibility got misspelled feasability in the title of my PhD thesis until after it got approved and published (electronically). Well, at least it is easier to find that way.
*in German it is Golf and Desaster
"
Harmut's typos make me laugh, but I want to extend them, from:
"His Orangeness and his role models round the Persion Golf"
to
"His Orangeness and his role models round the Perversion Golf"
Re: bad taste. Napoleon should be part of the discussion.
"
It isn't just that the design is tasteless. It's that the execution is so poor. I think "sloppy" is the word I'm looking for.
It's like no competent craftsmen could be found to do it. Although most likely nobody looked, if they had there might have been a derth of people willing to work under any terms except cash in advance. A poor reputation can do that.
"
As someone who grew up DC/MD and had a government worker dad may I say: this is as bad as anything anyone has done to that city. I took lots of field trips as a kid and nowhere was anything that awful. How fucking dare he.
"
"I know fully well how vulgar that is and I did it on purpose!'.
Well, we don't have to consider that. Trump has no clue how vulgar it is.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.