[BITList] Charles Murray's 'Coming Apart - The State of White America' - NYTimes.com

[Malcolm]

Hugh,

 

Every time I hear talk about "blue collars" I cringe. My only time I had a
blue shirt and obviously attached collar was when I was in my early
thirty's. In that era we all had our hair at least shoulder length or
longer. We did not wear our dinner suits for dinner dances we had velvet
jackets. Mine was a midnight blue one. Ena decided that I should have a silk
light blue shirt and so bought me one with the biggest frill right down the
front I had ever seen. Topped off with a dark blue bow tie. I wore this rig
out for 2 years of dancing dinners. I always felt a complete prick dressed
like that so I never ever left the house until I had got a couple of beers
and two large whiskeys down me. My only comfort was that most of the men
looked more pansy than me. NO I am not including a photo.

 

Malcolm.

 

  _____  

From: bitlist-bounces at lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com
[mailto:bitlist-bounces at lists.bcn.mythic-beasts.com] On Behalf Of HUGH
Sent: 06 February 2012 18:53
To: BitList
Subject: Re: [BITList]Charles Murray's 'Coming Apart - The State of White
America' - NYTimes.com

 

Mike,

 

I read : "I did not want my children to grow up only knowing other
upper-middle-class kids like themselves," said Mr. Murray, who has two
children with Ms. Cox and two from his first marriage. "That was a very
conscious worry shared by my work." 

Life in Burkittsville, as he described it, approximates the small-town
virtues he enjoyed growing up in Newton, Iowa, where, as the son of a
manager at Maytag, he could mingle easily with the children of assembly-line
workers. 

In Burkittsville, he said, he and his wife attend Quaker meetings and enjoy
friendships with both other professionals and blue-collar tradespeople,
whose travails he cited to counter the suggestion that the problems
described in "Coming Apart" might have something to do with the
disappearance of working-class jobs. 

Until the recession
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/recession_an
d_depression/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  hit, Mr. Murray insisted,
his blue-collar friends were eager to hire apprentices at good wages but
struggled to find anyone willing to do the work. "They are looking at a
marked deterioration in industriousness that is real and palpable," he
said."

Professionals; blue-collar tradespeople; mingle easily with children of
assembly line workers; blue-collar friends hiring apprentices? What a
patronising bunch - I can't relate to that world - little wonder the USA is
in a mess.  In the Port Glasgow of my childhood there were still signs of a
less egalitarian past - the big houses on the hills, though at most two
still occupied as private homes - the smaller villas along Lilybank, still
some of them occupied by lawyers, shopkeepers, teachers and shipyard
managers.  But my father said of one of Lithgow's directors,  "I used to
kick his arse when he was young,"  and that was probably true, for they grew
up on the same short street down by the river, and both started in the
shipyards as boys.  There was no sense of social class, and we all spoke the
same language, all that is, bar the girls who had been to elocution lessons.
None of us mingled with assembly-line workers, there being no assembly
lines, and blue collars were never in fashion, even at work. James Lithgow
was on first name terms with half his workforce, and his draughtsman father
lived on the same short working class street (Port Glasgow had no long
streets) as my riveter great grandfather.

Hugh.

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