Democratizing Snobbery
Matt Yglesias and Megan McArdle, who both earned their coastal elite cred the old-fashioned way, by growing up in New York City, have both taken positions against newly urbanized snobs who grew up in Podunk USA. Megan says that “if there’s anything sadder than people who act like having grown up in New York makes them the apex of the social universe, it’s people who act like this when they grew up in Shaker Heights.”
And here’s Yglesias:
Most of New York City’s elitists grew up in very conventional middle class suburbs and then moved to the city sometime after college. They may look like — indeed, be — Greenpoint hipsters now, but they come from the same places as all the other college educated white people in this country.
This is most certainly true, but I’m not sure why it invalidates their snobbery. Why should New York-based urban elitism be so exclusionary?
Now, I’m by no means a city-snob, but I do generally prefer urban living, and I grew up in a small town on the Florida panhandle, so let me say a few words in defense of those who, like me, are newly urbanized and enjoy it. I think both Matt and Megan are missing something crucial, which is that quite a few of the people who end up living in big cities and reacting with disdain to the trappings of suburbia and small-town life did so before they moved to the city. It’s not that they were all affable Midwesterners who adopted a pose upon moving to Brooklyn. Growing up in flyover country, whether it’s a generic, green-grass exurb or a genuine small town, you meet a lot of people, many of whom have relatively little experience with what Matt and Megan would understand urban life, who genuinely don’t like their surroundings. Not surprisingly, many of them end up heading off to big cities after college. This doesn’t make these people any less insufferable, at their worst, but it at the very least means that their sentiments are authentic, and I don’t see why they ought to be excluded from participating in the ritual sneering of urban snobbery. Just because they ate at Outback and Chilli’s for twenty years doesn’t mean they wanted to—just that they had no other choice.
There’s a weird super-snobbery to McArdle and Yglesias’s comments: if you so much as came into contact with the ordinary parts of America, that disqualifies you from ever becoming a snob. That they’re employing that notion in an attempt to skewer snobs doesn’t make it any less peculiar.
— Justin · May 6, 07:04 PM · #
As a Barack Obama-voting, Dostoevsky-reading, lifelong citizen of North Carolina – I endorse this post.
— Derek · May 6, 07:09 PM · #
The problem here is that snobbery is a vulgar middle-class affectation. People who are secure in their social position don’t need to be snobs.
— Brendan · May 6, 07:17 PM · #
McCardle and Yglesias seem to be criticizing the fact that while snobbery based on confidence is of-putting, snobbery based on insecurity is ridiculous. I think Christopher Caldwell wrote something for the NY Times magazine a few years ago (regarding Rathergate?) about how, generally speaking, the most vitriolic leftists that he knew in NY were those who grew up in conservative environments. Both the restaurant condescension and the vitriolic leftism seem to spring from an unnatractive and adolescent urge dissociate oneself from one’s parents.
— Ross G. · May 6, 08:43 PM · #
Maybe it’s a question of supply-side economics? I don’t know what it means, but anyone who is anyone uses the phrase, don’t they? I’m not sure whether that makes me a successful practitioner of snobbery or not; are snobs those who understand what other people don’t or those who don’t understand and like it that way? So many questions, so little time.
Anyway, New York is famous for its snobbery. Everyone who wants to be a successful snob feels that moving to New York is essential to their success. Thus there is an excess of snobs in New York and in order to sustain snobbery as a way of life it must keep the field of practitioners small, so there is a draconian selection process in which only the fittest survive. Being born in New York, growing up in the middle of so much snobbery, gives the native-born access to resources conspicuously lacking elsewhere.
Self selective snobbery at least in its own eyes reigns supreme.
— felix culpa · May 6, 08:44 PM · #
As Brendan states, snobbery is a tedious affectation, no matter who’s employing it. It may seem more “genuine” among those who have never known anything else for their entire lives, but it’s no less a ridiculous pose.
I think if I had to choose between the two sorts outlined here, I might make my decision based on which group is more likely to take the ironic turn and acknowledge the silliness of their manner. But while it may be amusing to choose favorites between Tom Buchannan and Jay Gatsby, I prefer Nick.
— Ethan C. · May 6, 09:15 PM · #
Hear, hear! As a former (very unhappy) resident of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and current (very happy) resident of Washington, D.C., I agree wholeheartedly with you.
— Mark · May 6, 09:18 PM · #
It can be a real relief for a lot of young people to leave the small-town life behind. Sometimes listening to arriviste snobbery can be a little tedious, but often it is a sign of real gratitude at having left a profoundly stifling or even painful past behind. It manifests itself in annoying tics about chain restaurants and such, but I think underneath it all many of these people are saying, “I was really unhappy [in my small town/exurb], and wow, I’m happy now.” If that’s the case, I’m happy for them.
But at a certain point, it’s time to move on. Snobbery is a character defect. The true cosmopolitan – the citizen of the world – can see the good in any place, be it a diner in rural Wisconsin, an Applebee’s in suburban Texas, or a high-end sushi place in downtown Vancouver.
— Tim · May 7, 12:04 AM · #
I think the point, particularly of Matt’s post, was not that you couldn’t be a snob if you grew up in Ohio, but that you would not find the existence of of an Outback steakhouse to be surprising or exotic. The correspondent acts as though New Jersey is some far away land where things are done differently and, frankly, not as well. But the writer—and many of the Times’ readers—grew up in places like New Jersey, and are familiar with these chains. Matt and Megan, I think, find the tone of disbelief that people could live like this, rather than the snobbery, to be false.
— Jeff Hughes · May 7, 04:02 PM · #