I spent my Columbus Day (fuck you, you revisionist whiners – you fought the white man and the white man won) chilling with the guys at this place:
The SWPL idolization of European culture that they do as a way of making themselves feel superior to the rest of us becomes hilarious when you realize that the aspects of Continental culture they usually appropriate are prole ones. Take for example, their faux love of soccer, which is basically the European equivalent of NASCAR in terms of demographics. Now, they’ve taken the beer garden, a staple of German peasant commiseration, and remade it into a place where they can all have a great big public circle jerk. Where do the Capital District’s few SWPLs gather after work? Wolff’s Biergarten (Und Wurst Haus!).
Take a look at their website to get a feel for the place. Wolff’s is no different then any other American beer garden, but the pretentious posers who run the place felt the need to write everything in German. It doesn’t matter whether you spell it “beer” or “bier”, it’s still a peasant alcohol designed to give dirt-poor serfs a way of dulling the pain of their daily existence. Beer snobbery should be an unending source of comedy for the historically literate, because beer is and always will be the hot dog of alcoholic beverages. And all of the Eszetts in the world won’t change the fact that your “weißwurst” is nothing more then a white hot dog without the bun. Doesn’t sound so fancy when you say it in English, huh? It shouldn’t surprise me though – the guy who runs the place (and also runs the best burrito-and-beer joint in the American Northeast – seriously, go there if you ever come here) is a squishy lefty.
As far as the restaurant itself goes, I don’t have many complaints. The spätzle sucked – it’s not supposed to taste burnt and dry – but the main dishes arrived on time and tasted fine. But it was the SWPL atmosphere that really made it worth the drive. Here we have the well-dressed, high-income, Obama-loving elite of the free world, believing themselves better then the rest of us “ugly Americans,” all the while eating renamed peasant food and drinking a peasant beverage. All this so they can brag to their friends about having devoured some dish they can’t pronounce. Spare me the pretension - I’ll be sticking with the great unwashed at the prole bars if I need my beer-and-hot-dog fix.
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Soccer is not just for the unwashed in Europe. It transcends class just like American football does in the US. And by all means slag on your local pub, but you go too far when you impugn beer categorically.
Regarding demographics and soccer: http://p3.focus.de/img/gen/j/G/HBjGndPO_Pxgen_r_467xA.jpg
that is German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish King Juan Carlos meeting at a soccer game. This is not an uncommon scene.
Ferdi,
I have to say, that this perpetual pissing contest among Whites is a sight to behold. What is up with that? What is that all about? Please explain?
Thanks.
O
There is a class bias to football in Europe although by no means is it absolute. I have met many of posh British people who look at me in disgust when I ask them which club they support. If they are into team sports at all it will be more cricket or rugby. But in England for example if there is a big international fixture then most if not all people from the office would go check it out at the pub; even the super posh guys.
In my upper middle class part of Brussels most of the boys play field hockey while in the rougher parts they all play football.
The philistine approach to beer seems a little strange though. I have a friend in California who is actually a beer sommelier. He organizes five course dinners for doctors with each course designed around different beers. Pharmaceutical companies sponsor these dinners and do give a presentation or two between courses. This guy is no lefty and the dinners are a big hit with the male doctors. He came to visit me here in Belgium and impressed the locals with his knowledge of their beers. I don’t see anything particularly effete about being knowledgably about beer.
robert61:
“Soccer is not just for the unwashed in Europe. It transcends class just like American football does in the US.”
I was thinking of England, where the primary audience of soccer is the lower classes. The term “soccer thug” didn’t come out of nowhere.
“And by all means slag on your local pub, but you go too far when you impugn beer categorically.”
I love beer, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a prole drink – which is part of the reason WHY I love it. The people who get all snobby about it are what annoys me. If you’re going to get pretentious about alcohol, stick to wine.
Soccer: A gamed played by gentlemen and watched by hooligans.
Rugby: A game played by hooligans and watched by gentlemen.
Obsidian:
“I have to say, that this perpetual pissing contest among Whites is a sight to behold. What is up with that? What is that all about? Please explain?”
SWPLism is, by its nature, a “perpetual pissing contest” – people with too much money and not enough intellect trying to one-up each other in increasingly retarded ways. I come from a working-class background, so the whole thing is damned funny to me. Scott Locklin explains it better in the Takimag essay I linked on Sunday:
“People will always form status hierarchies, and human beings will always have a strong desire to conform to moral codes. The question remains whether or not the present status hierarchy based on crossing the road into traffic will last long enough to see us all run over by a renewable energy hybrid bus, or if such behavior will be laughed into deserved oblivion. The latter is the only way out I can see. It worked on the American ruling class in the 1960s. Laughter is probably the best weapon we have against numskulls. It’s also a heck of a lot of fun. So, the next time some prune-faced lackwit in a hair shirt attempts to lecture you on their moral superiority to reality, keep the image in mind of some self-important bozo crossing the road into traffic, confident some white paint will protect them from two tons of steel piloted by a monkey. Laughing at their looney tunes ideas of reality is ultimately the only defense against modern insanity.”
kevin de bruxelles:
“The philistine approach to beer seems a little strange though.”
Beer IS philistine. No getting around it.
“I don’t see anything particularly effete about being knowledgably about beer.”
It’s not effete, just a waste of time.
Here are a couple of English adverts for rugby that make the case that football (soccer) really is a SWPL sport:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnQtw9kRgLA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvUIbqKyppY
I tend to think your typical SWPL is just a step away from white trash, hence the great need for affectation and appropriation of cultural status markers.
Ferdi,
Thanks for the explainer, but I think its fair to say that Class struggle is nothing new-the SWPLers didn’t invent it. That said, I would grant that they have definitely added a new twist on it to a degree.
I also take issue with your notion that they aren’t “smart enough”-I think its safe to say that an Idle Mind is the Devil’s Workshop, at least that’s what my Mama always told me. And from what I see, being idle in a solidly middle to upper middle class way, is really all that’s needed, not IQ power or the lack thereof.
Indeed, from what I’ve observed in the blogosphere, it seems the “best & brightest” delight in being able to idle away their leisure time on the Internet indulging their pet interests, among them being Game & HBD (a polite way of saying, Race). I find it all quite fascinating if not somewhat silly at various points.
Anyway, just sayin.
O
I was watcing some travel show about the Costa Smeralda (Sardinia?) and they showed some rich people. It was noted they usually gathered and partied at homes rather than nightclubs.
It occurs to me then that historically maybe American travellers have not had access to upper middle class to upper class European culture because it is private. Americans traveling for cultural enrichment (since this has become common, post Civil War) would have easy access to prole culture but no access to upper culture without personal introductions. So the European “culture” SWPLs are so proud of having experienced is something they would turn their noses up to at home.
I don’t see why beer snobbery is any more ridiculous than wine snobbery. The distinction may have made sense in the 18th-century, when grapes were rare and expensive, and wines couldn’t be grown in most climates. It doesn’t make sense now, when grapes are cheap and plentiful.
As for beer halls, they may be proletarian, but they’re fun places to hang out and play cards.
Welmer:
“I tend to think your typical SWPL is just a step away from white trash, hence the great need for affectation and appropriation of cultural status markers.”
It wouldn’t surprise me. “New money” types tend to be insecure – see “The Great Gatsby.”
Obsidian:
“I also take issue with your notion that they aren’t “smart enoughâ€-I think its safe to say that an Idle Mind is the Devil’s Workshop, at least that’s what my Mama always told me. And from what I see, being idle in a solidly middle to upper middle class way, is really all that’s needed, not IQ power or the lack thereof.”
The SWPLs ARE smart – the problem is that they are ignorant. The two tend to go together more often then they should. Treating a beer garden like a shrine of high culture is an example of “intelligent ignorance.”
I’m into microbrews, cask ales, Belgian beers, etc, and I’m not an SWPLer. However, based on the ‘beer geeks’ that I’ve met and magazines on beer I’d say a majority do fall into the SWPL category. (Portland, Colorado, and northern California are among the main microbrew parts of the US).
I’d drink Coke before drinking a Bud, not because of image but because the latter has a disgusting aftertaste – same with Miller. Even those of us who are not SWPLers like some of the things on Christian Lander’s list!
As to sticking with wine pretentiousness isn’t that another Anglo SWPL affectation? I’m no expert on France but I’ve been there enough times and met enough natives to notice that the French do NOT take wine all that seriously. It’s just something they wash down their food with. (Based on an interview I saw on PBS – speaking of SWPLers! – most of the world’s influential wine critics are Americans.)
I wouldn’t say soccer is the European NASCAR demographic but there are class differences in some countries.
For example a lot of French look down on soccer:
Stuff Parisians Like
(If you clicked on the link you will see that rugby is more acceptable to Parisians than lowly soccer).
In the UK there has been so much upward mobility in the past 30 years a lot of the middle class are now soccer fans.
But in Italy, Spain, and, I think, the Benelux countries, all classes follow soccer.
Interestingly, motorsports, especially F1, often have an upper class image in Europe, unlike in the US where SWPLers are often hostile to motorsports. (Recently in Madison SWPL legislators have been undermining attempts to help the Milwaukee Mile track).
“Even those of us who are not SWPLers like some of the things on Christian Lander’s list!”
I counted. I like 10 things on the list. One of my friends, who I immediately associated with SWPLism when I first read the site, liked 70 of them.
A lot of the music, movies, restaurants, and shops that swipples like are actually pretty cool and in making these things more popular they tend to be a force for good. This doesn’t mean one shouldn’t fault the swipples for their pretentiousness and insularity, but bad taste is not one of their faults.
Beer runs in my blood (both literally and figuratively). My grandpa was a brewmaster at Rainier beer back when the old brewery in Seattle was still running (now it’s used to roast coffee beans for Tully’s — how far Seattle has fallen…).
There was nothing pretentious about Rainier. Cheap, clean lager for the working man. I’ll never forget the scent of hops wafting across the dingy streets of Georgetown.
The high-class sport in the Commonwealth is actually cricket. This sport is hugely misunderstood by Americans. But it is the second most watched sport in the world (after soccer), as measured by television audience.
The fact that there’s no class, culture, or sophistication present generally in North America is manifested in these sick yearnings to appropriate anything and everything that speaks to a richer culture.
Sofia,
Indeed. The SWPL tendency to vastly overrate anything foreign or exotic is laughable (and profitable).
I can’t believe SWPLs spend $5 for a ‘chai’, and $60/hour for group Yoga classes. But they do, and these are huge business opportunities for savvy immigrants who realize who dumb some of these SWPLs are.
I have, in the past, paid $30 for paintings made in India by some poor but talented schmoe, brought them back in my suitcase, and sold them for $2000 or more to some SWPL here after weaving some ‘exotic Indian story’ about it. If I had more time, I’d scale that up. But it shows how easy it is to take some foreign crap and dupe them into thinking it is exotic.
The fact that there’s no class, culture, or sophistication present generally in North America
As a proud North American, I don’t mind being part of the uncultured, classless, and unsophisticated with lots of money.
Don’t paint all Americans with the same brush Sofia, because not everyone is uncultured here. There’s a lot of people in Europe too who are not cultured as well, and we both know who they are.
As a proud North American, I don’t mind being part of the uncultured, classless, and unsophisticated with lots of money.
Yeah, that’s the thing. The culture is “capitalism,” and no that’s not an inherent criticism. I just think we could do with some more substance.
There’s a lot of people in Europe too who are not cultured as well, and we both know who they are.
Low class in Europe is different from low class in America because of the respective income disparities. Education aside, there’s more longstanding tradition and history with what we deem “occupations”. Here, job = money, there job = craft.
Also, it’s just aesthetically more beautiful in the major cities. And even in the small towns. I’m disregarding England.
I think the notion of Class is a very uncomfortable one for Americans period, because it rubs up against our notions of an egalitarian society; basically, the American Experiment was an excerise in controlling our collective human impulses, of which lording it over another is one, and hooking up our friends and family, while pissing on those we deem inferior, is another.
And to be sure, there is a HUGE Class divide in Black America, and was at the core of the Bill Cosby debate some years back. As some of you may recall, during the NAACP Gala event, commenorating the 50th anniversary of the historic Brown v Board of Education decision, Cosby told the audience that he was disappointed w/Black America’s lower classes, etc. Now known as the “Poundcake Speech” it was the shot heard around the world.
While many applauded Cosby for his candor, others so it as yet another instance of the Black Aristocracy taking shots on a group that had no means to fight back, the Black Working and/or Underclass. Many books have been written about this dynamic, going all the way back t the intellectual giant WEB DuBois himself, starting with his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk.
Sofia makes a powerful point-in Europe, and other areas of the world, notions of Class came with them one’s circumstances of birth. Here in America, our crude measure of “Class” is a purely economic one, which for my money, is as wrong as two left shoes. Plenty of drug dealers outearn white collar professionals I know-does that mean the former is of a higher “Class” than the latter?
I also think there’s a curious guilt tripping at work here wrt the socalled “SWPL” Class-many of thse folk know they got over lik a fat rat, and also know that there are many folk who are being screwed over bigtime, and the Mind has a way of coping with that. Actually, a lot of ways. The SWPL thing is but one.
As a kind of “alien observer”, its always a treat to watch.
Holla back
The Obsidian
Obsidian has the half of it.
I do enjoy the classlessness (in both senses of the word) of North America. There’s something romantic about a country where the wealthiest financiers and the poorest laborers sat next to each other in the bleachers at the games and fought shoulder to shoulder in the trenches.
This is the one of the few places on earth where a kid from nowhere can make great wealth, and perhaps the only place where making your wealth from nothing is more respected than inheriting it.
This is not merely a great story, it is my father’s story – the story of a man who came from a dirt poor country, came here with nothing. He had little “culture” of the high-brow sort, and never cared much for it. He loved the prole legends of the old country, and he loved Coca-Cola.
it is not perfect, not by half. But half of it works, and that’s more than anywhere else in this world.
—
But what is the other half? The other half are those who try to destroy it.
SWPLs who want “class” and “substance” are merely those who wish to be our aristocracy attempting to insert social barriers between the rich and the poor. Those are most SWPL are the ones with the greatest status anxiety – neither plutocrats nor working men are SWPL.
It is those who transplant to cities, those with wealthy parents but little skill, and urban white women desperate to reassure themselves of high social position, who most fear slipping in status. They fear men like my father, blue-collar men with funny accents, will overtake them. Thus, they throw up barriers, they use their obscure indie bands and their useless diplomas to give them a reason to feel superior.
For in a world where some kid writing software in garage, some high school dropout driving a front-loader in Fort Mac, some Indian immigrant who borrows money from his family to buy a gas station, all can gain entry to the middle class, how do those born into privilege set themselves apart? SWPLism, the ersatz Europhilia, the smugness about foreign travel, the obsession with obscure bands, all this is an attempt to set hard class boundaries. Thus, they create these SWPL shibboleths to set themselves apart.
Make no mistake, this is a dagger aimed at the heart of the American Dream and the middle class.
It is attempt to create a hereditary aristocracy.
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