Having grown up around the working classes, I cannot glamorize them.  They have bad haircuts, terrible manners and ridiculous opinions.  Even their much vaunted authenticity, is suspect.  Some of the most disingenuous people I have ever met worked in factories.  One should never mistake a lack of imagination for honesty. These people will hit you from behind.

They’re also snobs.

Many people would believe me to be a snob.  I’ll briefly pretend to care so that I might dispute that.  I’m not actually a snob.  I’m an egomaniac.

There is a difference.

A snob believes they’re better than you for reasons beyond their control.  Money, blood, race or birthplace.  What they call “breeding.”  I believe I’m better than you for reasons within my control.  Taste, intelligence and effort.  If you are my superior in any of these, I’ll freely admit it and attempt to learn from you.  I’ll rape your knowledge like Ajax raped Cassandra in the temple of Athena.

But I could care less about where you’re from, who you know or how much money you have.  What counts is where you’re at, who you are and what you know.  That’s all.  Everything else is, frankly, beneath my concern.

What most people take to be snobbery is not.  Good taste is not snobbery.  It is simply the ability to make a judgement.  How you reach that judgement is the essence of a snob.

And most working class people are snobs.

For starters, most “working class” people are not even working class.  They are the affected middle classes.  They adopt the pose of the workers but flavour it with irony.  They drink Pabst, not because they prefer it or cannot afford better, but because it offers a taste of authenticity.  “Keeping it real,” has always been important to a certain type of fake.  A pose is tolerable.  An ugly pose is not.

To understand the reason for this posture, we must understand that it is, in essence, nothing new but, rather, a typical symptom of ongoing changes in power.

Just as the aristocracy’s glamour reached its peak as its influence declined –their manners becoming all important because their power was so far reduced– the workers have reached the pinnacle of their glamour.  When the aristocrats were at the height of their actual power, aping one might land you in deep trouble.  As they crumbled, the middle classes affected their manners and pretended descent.

Now that globalization has offshored our proletariat, it is much the same.  When Canada had a strong working class, aping their manners or slumming it in their bars would get your head punched in.  Now people sport ironic mullets, drink in faux dives and pretend ascent.

This imitation and its associated snobbery proves nothing new about the middle class but everything about the death of the working class.  No one can seriously listen to Bruce Springsteen without feeling tinged with nostalgia for the union man.  Hearing “Born in the USA” is much like reading Thackery was for our forebears: An esoteric relic from a bygone era; A snapshot taken a moment before the changing of the guard.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6RGEKGiLnk]

People imitate the working class for the same reasons they imitated the aristocracy.  Not only because they can but because it makes them look better.

Our society values nothing more highly than the self-made man.  When one pretends to have dragged themselves up from the muck, it reflects well upon their character.  When one was born in a nice house yet still ended up in the swamp, it makes them look bad.  These judgements are understandable but shallow.

Your roots –good, bad or, most likely, in between– don’t say as much about you as your aspirations.  The past is a corpse.  Drag it behind you, if you must, but be aware that it stinks.  Also, it’s useless.

But pointing out the middle class affectation of worker manners is about as insightful as pointing out that white people pilfer black music.  It’s just obvious.

What often escapes people’s notice is that the actual working classes were always snobs and, those who remain, still are.  As evinced by that crass parody, Sarah Palin, most are seized by a virulent anti-intellectualism, a disgusting bigotry and an unshakable sense of baseless superiority.

It’s not reverse snobbery.  It’s just plain old snobbery.  One can be a snob about almost anything and most people are a snob about something.

One often hears about beer snobs.  They probably picture a yuppie pitching a fit because the best Belgian brew is not on hand. Yet, the only people I’ve ever seen storm out of bar because of the beer selection are working class people.

Although there really isn’t much difference in taste between Keith’s and Canadian and they both have the important stuff, alcohol, should you lack Canadian, these chaps will –as Kaewonder once said– “Put in their monocle and step.”

It’s not a matter of taste.  They just cannot abide being seen drinking something else.  It would be bad for their reputation.

They care deeply for this reputation.  They must drive the correct vehicle, wear the right clothes and drink in the right places with the right sort of people.  Anything that steps outside of the norm is not to be tolerated.  Even if they could afford golf or tennis, even if they liked the sport, most of these people would not play.  It is outside of their class.

The inability to see this as anything but snobbery is patronizing.  In itself, it evinces snobbery.  Just what do those people have to be snobbish about? It reminds one of the  white person’s inability to recognize racism in anyone except white people or, having recognized it, to excuse it.

Yet all of this would be happily outside our concern if they were doing it upon their own dime.  Sadly, many of these working class snobs are now demanding government money to preserve the obsolete industries that succour them.  They are, in their own way, as bad as management.  Demeaning of welfare when it goes to other people, they have no problem taking it themselves.

The taxpaying citizens of this country must realize that it is not in their interest to preserve a dead class whether it be aristocratic, artistic, middle or working.  A man’s snobbery is his own business as long as he pays for it himself.

Once he fails to foot the bill, he has no more right to it.