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Edited on Sat Aug-15-09 04:19 PM by smalll
In the old days, not so long ago in America, a generally WASP elite was recognized and deferred to as some sort of Society. They were in the Social Register, alums of the top prep schools, members of the DAR, or even better, the Sons of Cincinnatus. And of course THE event to be present at the birth of was that first voyage of the Mayflower over here in 1620. Now not all of the old elite of the North-East came over on that particular vessel -- but to be able to trace one's people back to that particular voyage was particularly auspicious.
Earlier in history, in the Middle Ages, at the Battle of Crecy, the finest flower of French nobility was cut down by the English long-bow. And so because the sons of so many great old French families served there and died there, as the centuries rolled on, even though it had been a defeat, the battle became a favored marker of fine noble status amongst Frenchmen -- it mattered, in a good way, if your ancestors had ridden into battle on that fateful day.
And so this is what Woodstock is becoming and will become over time: it is a Mayflower, a Crecy of today's emerging American elite: wealthy, powerful, well-educated, culturally very "left" if not so in terms of actual politics. In many ways better than the old elite, in some ways worse. (And of course some of the old elite, if not most of it at this point, has come to terms with the new ascendancy, and have traded in their white shoes for Birkenstocks, and have settled comfortably into the new class structure.) For this new elite, being able to say I, or my parents, or now, my grandparents were at Woodstock is to say that they were present at the creation.
Is all this a good thing? This new class is far more Democratic than the old one used to be. Is it a bad thing? Class privilege seems to be powerfully strong, although adaptable. I don't really know where the score comes down, positive or negative. But either way, as the kids say, "it is what it is." And one thing it is, for sure, is that it matters.
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