I’m snobby. I’d bet you are too.
I don’t want to get into whether being snobby makes you a snob because if in explaining it I make a point that you disagree with you’re going to think your opinion is better than mine and we’ll get meta about whether deeming an opinion as inferior is evidence of snobbery (it isn’t) and down we go. I do want to discuss when people get snobby.
Differences of opinion are fine. I can like apples more than oranges and you can like both or neither or oranges more than apples. Most people can abide such things. What they can’t tolerate is people who like Billy Ocean’s music. That’s not a matter of taste so much as a celebration of mediocrity. Fans of such should be ashamed.
We all allow judgment of other’s tastes to flavor our view of their worth. I love to spend time in the kitchen cooking. I bake only when necessary. If someone tells me they love to bake they’re announcing that they allow themselves to be the extension of a set of instructions. I like to experiment with a pinch of cayenne here or a dash of lemon there. Bakers measure and do what they’re told. “Oh, but you adjust for altitude and humidity. There’s so much more to it.” They confess that they get bossed around by the barometer too. I didn’t make them an affront to the first syllable in artisan. If they put themselves in an inferior position, I won’t feel bad for noticing.
Snobbery’s a spectrum. At the high-frequency end are people enamored of pedigree and at the low-frequency end are people who proudly do whatever latest slang replaced “keeping it real.” They’re snobby towards each other and the symbiotic disdain is fantastic and fitting because those we now call snobs used to be snobby about those they once called snobs.
Snob means shoemaker. No foolin’. I looked it up in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary N-Z, Fifth Edition. Not to brag, but I’ve got A-Mtoo. Per the fifth edition:
snob… 1 a A shoemaker, a cobbler; a cobbler’s apprentice. dial.or colloq…b= COBBLER
2Hist. A person who was not a university member; a townsman as opp. to a student. Cambridge Univ. slang.
3 aA person belonging to the ordinary or lower classes of society.arch…bA person of low breeding or poor taste; a vulgar person. arch.
4Orig., a person seeking to imitate or associate with those of superior rank or wealth. Now usu., a person with an exaggerated respect for social position, who looks down on those of lower rank; a person who despises people considered inferior in (usu. specified) attainments or tastes.
The “Orig.” in 4 seems in conflict with the “Hist.” in 2. I’m not sure what to make of that, but otherwise there’s the progression from artisan to cutter and then to a broader generalization fitting in the nouveau riche (can’t have the burghers putting on airs) and finally to our familiar caricature of a country-clubbing nanny tormentor and their wannabees, unclear on why the valet, indicative of societal rot, respects first-come-first-served.
If you’re a fan of poetry you may have come across “Oread” by H.D. [https://ordinary-times.com/2023/03/31/poets-day-hd-as-in-hilda-doolittle/] Its six lines appear either about pine trees swaying like a rolling wave or a wave rolling like swaying pine trees. Actually, the poem is about the metaphor and how we conceive of comparison. H.D. tries to capture the moment where we blur pine trees and waves; before we say one is like the other and they share the same mental space.
Snob had the same moment. It was reviled until it morphed into reviling. At one point, it was both. I think our high- and low-frequency snobs are careering towards each other right now.
In the 1976 BBC television movie Rogue Male, Peter O’Toole gets caught after maybe/kinda trying to assassinate Hitler. Germany and Britain weren’t yet at war so after interrogating and torturing him O’Toole’s Nazi captor decides throwing him off a cliff would be the best way to make his prisoner’s death look like a diplomatic incident avoiding accident. The SS officer is played by Michael Byrne who most would know, coincidently, from his role as the Nazi in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusadewho rides a tank off a cliff at the end.
Before throwing O’Toole over the edge, he mealy-mouths the tried-and-true bad guy “Vee are not so different, you unt I,” gambit by revealing he was educated in England.
Byrne: Believe me. “It hurts me as much as it hurts you,” as we used to say at Charterhouse.
O’Toole: Did you really? Mousy little middle-class school.
Byrne: We can’t all go to Eton.
O’Toole: Thank God! Oh, chuck me over and have done with it.
That’s some pretty good snobbery. Immutable in the face of defeat. “I am better than you.” Full stop.
That our current high-frequency snobs went to the right schools, had the proper parentage, and mouth the proper pieties is enough. No litany of failed policies, false crusades, or downward spiraling cities as a result of their leadership will dissuade them from their rightful place astride. That’s because the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary N-Z, Fifth Editiongot it wrong. Snobs despise people they know are inferior in (usu. specified) attainment or tastes. It’s a surety.
Someone wrote that people are willing to put up with self-appointed high priests, but the clergy is getting a lot of big things wrong and the rabble has noticed. All those credentials are having an Oread moment of their own.
