It means that we don't celebrate and add to what's there, but must overthrow it every generation. Nobody was driven to do great things by the multi-generational happiness of being American. It assumes that no one made it to the top in a short leap from a stable middle class. ![]() Why can't Americans lay aside the dreary, formulaic trope of ethnic or class adversity as the only life story that makes us legitimate? This is the compulsory narrative of the permanent revolution. Every other ethnic group would be proud.īut I leap ahead. All about the hairline cracks in the inner map of old-world Waspdom. What an exquisitely written, lyrical, mordant book. I say this with a book sitting before me on my desk: Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor, the just-released family memoir by Tad Friend, the New Yorker staff writer. When Americans look in the mirror, they must forever see a manipulated image of themselves as outsiders who triumphed over embedded prejudice-never as integrated citizens who succeeded organically, thanks to a deep-rooted tradition of impartiality, generosity and decency evolved through centuries of self-improvement-in short, through the core values of the Wasp system. The educated whites of this country have so deeply internalized this "reification" of themselves as the "other" (to use the cant terms of leftist social engineers) that they now choose the likes of Sarah Palin as their avatars-anything to dispel the whiff of social advantage. Any misconduct or malfeasance, though, is quickly attributed in that direction, usually with code words such as "privilege" or "elitism" conveying the required meaning. Nobody, apparently, does great things as Wasps qua Wasps, as an outgrowth of the glories of their traditions. ![]() (Sonia Sotomayor and the "wise Latina" please stand up.) When it comes to Wasps or their ethnic continuum, the reverse holds true. They do great things, and the ethnicity plays a central role in their talent. We are all familiar with the rules: Anyone of minority background behaving badly-the ethnicity must not be mentioned.
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