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Replace adverse snobmanship with green harrumphing
JACK ZIMMERMAN

Back in the '60s there used to be something called "adverse snobmanship." Say you were really rich, lived on the interest of your interest and never had an unpaid balance on your Visa or MasterCard. The car of choice for the super rich back then was a Rolls-Royce. With no unpaid balances on your charge cards and lots of old money coming to you from previous generations of robber barons, you could easily afford a Rolls-in fact, everybody expected you to drive a Rolls.
But here's where things got tricky. You didn't bother with a Rolls. Instead you opted for a Bentley-an identical car to the Rolls, with the same leather seats and burled-walnut dashboard. Of course it didn't have the prestigious Rolls-Royce hood ornament. In other words, it was a Rolls, but it didn't scream that it was a Rolls.
The whole idea of adverse snobmanship was that you were not only rich enough to drive a Rolls, you were so rich that you didn't have to drive a Rolls-a Bentley was good enough.
At first, adverse snobmanship was slow to catch on. That's because this is America, where conspicuous consumption is a way of life. Rich people love to show others that they're rich. That's the whole point of having a couple of gazillion dollars. If you can't flaunt it, why have it?
But soon enough some of the rich and famous hopped on board. Hollywood's Steve McQueen pulled up to the Oscars in the late '60s driving a VW Beetle. Back then it wasn't unusual to run across somebody worth millions who pitched the whole idea of an affluent lifestyle and took to living on a commune.
By the 1970s, adverse snobmanship trickled down to guys like me. Of course, we're talking about the lowest rungs of the snobmanship ladder. I could afford a used Volkswagen but instead bought a used Renault. Back then, my life's accoutrements were a collection of Timex watches, Bic pens, cheap cars and really cheap clothes. And thanks to adverse snobmanship, I felt good about all the cheap crap that filled up my life.
Things would have remained that way except in the presidential election of 1980 Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter like a rented mule. It was as if Studs Terkel got run over by Donald Trump's limo. Ideas like "it doesn't matter how much you make or what you do" were replaced by "greed is good." Suddenly St. Francis of Assisi was out and Milton Friedman was in. Back in the '80s it was good to be rich and even better to let others know you were rich. By the 1990s, America had drifted into, "I got mine, so screw
everybody else."
Those were rough years for the non-rich. By the time Reagan's second term rolled around, my Timex watch looked really pathetic, and so did my 15-year-old Renault. Luckily, though, I discovered the green movement, which allowed me to feel good about my life and my flat-lined finances while using all the moral harrumphing I had perfected in my years of adverse snobmanship.
Presently, there's a guy in my building who drives a Hummer. What he needs a military assault vehicle for in the West Loop is anybody's guess-maybe in case there's a fire fight in Ina's parking lot? "How pathetic," I say to my wife whenever the Hummer drives by. While saying it I feel that wonderful rush of moral superiority. The Hummer driver may have a net worth 12 times greater than mine, but deep down he's just a big yahoo who doesn't give a hoot about the environment, the Amazon rain forest or St. Francis.
May he get run over by a used Renault.

http://www.chicagojournal.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=169&ArticleID=41 58&TM=58419.89

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