Posted 1:52 PM by Gene

We did not know how to work Charles Murray's article on the Effete Snobs in, as it speaks for itself, but count on AHTSJournal to discover that Oscar Hammerstein II's grandson has a lesson for them, from the master himself:

"He was quoted as saying you learn much more from a flop than a hit because it's hard to learn anything when everyone is praising you to the skies on those opening nights when everything is going well."

Our ruling superiors have never known anything but success, anything but praise to the skies. That's how they can lord it over the rest of us and screw up America big-time.

I might add I think our whiz kids destroyed our manufacturing base to affirm their power, and I profoundly detest EDS-'n'-MEDS talk as it's cover for that and as the effete snobs are precisely the biggest beneficiaries; and Murray has his finger on the right hot button when he mentions, quite prominently, THE FIRST AND SECOND GREATEST POP-CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE LAST QUARTER CENTURY. I'd also add what I wrote three months beforehand: "These obsessions speak to the disconnect of the ruling class as much as a love for His Omnipotence -- and they know no political bounds." [Emphasis in the original]

One of these days I'm going to get Hammerstein's quote from Hugh Fordin's excellent biography about how playwrights like Tennessee Williams got on his nerves thanks to their trendy nihilism. Our ruling class was a long time being born.

P. S. If you want a better picture of Hammerstein -- this is surely from his last decade, when he took up the crew cut -- look at the cover of this lyric anthology and you may not wonder that he won for his second wife a beauty named Dorothy with a strong resemblance to Lynda Carter. I think of his face as an eternal reassurance; but it's clear he had sex appeal too.

(First link via, oh well, NRO)