Today my car share partner and I thought we had invented a new word. In fact, a quick Google shows a precedent. It appears in this match report. I misheard her saying “travesty”. I am, however, going to post the first formal definition:
“chavesty n hopelessly naff attempt at grandness, made by members or graduates of the post-Thatcher* British lower classes in an effort to impress their peers, characterized by the aping of the very worst qualities associated with the aristocratic, rich, and/or famous; from ‘chav‘ qv
‘Posh and Becks’ wedding was a complete chavesty.'”
With your help I hope this word will take over Britain by the end of the year. Let’s do it together, people.
*”A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.” (1986)
Is that line about buses and failure a quotation from La Thatch herself? It seems too elegant somehow, as if she’d been reading Oscar Wilde and come over all aphoristic for a moment.
By the way, what’s a “URI”, and can it bend spoons?
It is indeed a quote from Thatcher and a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is just a politically correct name for a URL or Web address.
Posh & Becks’s wedding was a joke. A pretty good one, at that. Why so many people insist that they were deadly serious is beyond me.
(By “so many people”, I don’t mean you, by the way.)
“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count on not spending 3/4 of an hour going in circles looking for a parking slot.” Idiot chauffeur-driven cow.
My god-daughter, then aged fifteen, on being refused a lift to some
social gathering or other, announced to the assembled company that “Buses
are for schemies”. Scottish readers will know what this means.
A wish for PooterGeek: that I could send a magic carpet to bring you to L.A. or maybe Palm Springs where you could kick back, get some sun, and be brought glasses of nice, fresh-squeezed orange juice by a young person who thinks that “class” is what you skip when you want to hang out by the pool.
Indeed, I just love Beverly Hills. Such class, such style, such refinement. Cor! Even the hookers (what hookers? everyone is happily married) look like Julia Roberts.
I just loved LA. When I asked what happened to the street people or the “bums” as you affectionately called them, I was told they were gassed humanely.
Is this true? I would hate it if they were gassed inhumanely.
Even the hookers…look like Julia Roberts.
They look like ducks with dental work by HR Giger? Who’d a thunk that!?
Hey, Jon, I’ve done my share of poolside parties in L.A.
Maybe it’s time for a return visit. Lose some words. You English have more words for “class” than the Eskimo have for snow. The mere mention of it sets the British nose aquiver like hounds off to the hunt. But many thanks to siaw for the expression “La Thatch.” Now that’s a nice addition. Original with you?
Jon: Not original, exactly, just a variation on the UK media habit (e.g. Julie Burchill, now at The Times) of mocking pompous and pretentious women by calling them “La …” + part of their surname. Arguably sexist, but still funny.
The Canadian here at SIAW is snarling about your use of “Eskimos” rather than “Inuit”, and the thing about their numerous words for snow is a myth, by the way.
As for “class”, isn’t it better to recognise it, even at the risk of obsession, than to deny that it exists, or obsess about “race” instead? But then, given our URL (or URI, or whatever), we would say that, wouldn’t we?
Sorry about the Eskimo/snow thing. I think somewhere I knew it wasn’t right but nothing else came to mind. And I’m familiar with “La” — I believe the Germans do the same thing with “Die” — it was combining it with “Thatch” that tickled me so. As for the words about class, what bothers me is all the slangy put-downs. The meanness and snootiness of it all, or reverse snootiness, like “ponce.” It’s like paying overly-close attention to a person’s clothes or vowels: it doesn’t advance economic justice, and it smacks of an ignoble obsession with the social pecking order. Maybe I’m blind, but I really think North Americans are less petty that way. Exhibit one: the easy manner of the American waiter. On the other hand, the British are so beautifully dexterous with the language (on take-off a BA flight attendant announced that we had “loosed the surly bonds of earth” — when have you heard an American flight attendant quote poetry at all, much less with dry humor?) that I guess I musn’t mind when they turn their talents in a dark direction.
“It’s like paying overly-close attention to a person’s clothes or vowels: it doesn’t advance economic justice, and it smacks of an ignoble obsession with the social pecking order.”
As you rightly imply, Jon, class in Britain is only loosely about money. However, in this country, class affects profoundly how long you live, what job you do, who you marry, your health and medical treatment, and the level and quality of your education.
There was a time when the British working classes, racist as many of them were, had a lot going for them. The ideological crimes of the Left and Right—the elevation of the free market from a description to a prescription, comprehensivisation of our schools, the absent-minded cultivation of welfare dependency—have created an ugly tabloid under-culture that deserves to be mocked here as much as the smug groupthink of the affluent Guardian and Mail readers who helped to create it.
As a Daily Mail reader (oh all right then, Daily Mail skimmer), I take exception, PG, to your accusation that *we* were responsible for comprehensive schools and/or welfare dependancy! (You should go and ‘epurate’ you mouth straight away!) And threatened as we are on all sides, I can tell you that “smug” is not the word to describe us – more like terrified and looking for the exit.
Also, whilst I’m at it, I have a sneaking suspicion concerning the alleged quote from ‘that woman’ on the subject of young men and buses. A quick google only produced il-Liberals and Socialists *saying* that she she said it. Perhaps someone can give a reference to the original speech. It sounds like another ‘rejoice, rejoice’ misquote, but I might be wrong.
Finally, Jon should stop worrying about “economic justice”, it doesn’t exist, although various rascals and poltroons masquerading as socialists and Marxists keep trying to invent it, usually by nicking my money and giving it to someone else – it’s called ‘robbery with violence’!
“Economic justice” exists as a concept, no? So it bears thinking about, especially on a blog that sports the red rose of Labor. But it’s money, not “class,” that gets you medical care, a nice place to live, agreeable food and the rest of it. Have “the working classes” really degenerated to an ugly tabloid under-culture that deserves to be mocked? By the Oxbridge Professoriat? There was a time when, at least in Europe, it was widely thought that class-consciousness was to be cultivated in order to promote the workings of a progressive dialectic. (I don’t believe the idea ever got much traction here.) Anyhow, that view of “class consciousness” may once have served as a fig leaf for a lot of snobbery, but seems rather dated now. I agree with David that her Ladyship probably never said the line about the young man on the bus. By the way, David, on your advice I got the Skeptical Environmentalist but I haven’t started it yet.
“But it’s money, not “class,” that gets you medical care, a nice place to live, agreeable food and the rest of it.”
Interestingly, not in Britain it ain’t. The articulate and educated tend to be much better at exploiting the health and education services, for example, than the plain rich. They also tend to choose better diets and go to better universities.
“Have “the working classes” really degenerated to an ugly tabloid under-culture that deserves to be mocked? By the Oxbridge Professoriat?”
I used to gaze in wonder at the Imperial College library walls where there were framed copies of posters advertising public lectures in science at working men’s clubs. Ordinary manual labourers would spend a day down a pit and then pack out a beer hall to learn about the latest scientific research from a member the socially minded professoriat of, say, the Royal College of Mines. (Imperial is an amalgamation of several higher education institutions in London, combined to form the third/second best university in Britain, depending on who you believe.) The industrial revolution in Britain came out of the work of self-taught plebs like Faraday. At most of the scientific/engineering establishments I’ve worked at the only working class accents I hear are those of the ancillary staff. The majority of the black people working at the Institute of Cancer Research, for example, were there to clean the place. (Though I have to admit that the director of the Breast Cancer unit is “commoner” than me.)
I have a friend whose uncle is an Oxbridge professor. He has a habit of driving off garage forecourts without paying. He genuinely doesn’t mean to steal petrol and, despite not earning much by City standards, he can afford the stuff. When the police track him down by his registration number they just have a nice chat with the scatterbrained geezer, collect the payment and tootle off in their squad car; he’s just that absent-minded old professor after all. If he didn’t have the vowels and appearance and status that he does (not the money) he would be treated completely differently by the authorities.
These days, sure, the offspring of the “working” man might tune into Shark Week on the Discovery Channel occasionally, but the whole family would be far more likely to gather round a soap opera in the evening. The workers are all going to hell in a handcart, I tell you.
“There was a time when, at least in Europe, it was widely thought that class-consciousness was to be cultivated in order to promote the workings of a progressive dialectic. (I don’t believe the idea ever got much traction here.)”
It certainly doesn’t get any traction with me. I’m interested in practical outcomes. Ideological guff is for the intellectually insecure.
Bloody Faraday. Work in one of his cages. Bastard. Gold windows, EMP hardened. It’s a bugger picking up cricket commentary in summer. Hope he’s pleased with himself.
Accents: yes, a friend told me he once visited a boyfriend in London. They decided to go someplace swank to eat. My friend: “But will they let us in dressed like this?” His boyfriend: “They will when they hear me speak.”
“The only working class accents I hear are those of the ancillary staff.” I know what you mean. The law school I went to was very proud that more than 10 percent of the students were African-American. But if you shut your eyes they vanished; I can remember only two students with ghetto accents. But these days class, race, and gender issues seem like a distraction. Can we put them aside for now? All people of good will who value reason and liberty should band together agaist the self-feeding scourges of militarism, terror, and faith.
Jon, I know you probably didn’t mean this, but just for the sake of the literal-minded (though I doubt they read PG): faith itself is not prima facie, a scourge. It’s those durned fundamentalists I tell you.
But I did mean it. The American bible belt, the West Bank settlers, the suicide bombers: they’re given ideological cover by their less-flamboyantly bonkers fellow travelers.