"I don't play golf."

Dear Dr. Bones,

Hidden here amidst the weekly (daily, hourly, minutely, ... ) neo-re-standardizin’ for purposes of Party and AEIdeology lurks an Eternal Truth: "I don’t play golf."

A golfless Neocomrade & Kiddiemaster Prof. Dr. Rear-Colonel Victor D. H. Blimp? Egad!

’Tis easy to see how His Serenity may find it difficult to get out to the links much lately, for, obviously from this neosabbath morning’s sermonette alone, he must spend many hours aloft workin’ away at the paradigm that goes ego - mei - mihi - me - me. [1] Pluggin’ things into holes on the ground (or out at sea) would only be a distraction from more geistlich concerns, after all. [2] [3].

Nothing is more suitable, surely, than that V. D. H. Blimp should abstain from golf. After all, he has not properly earned the right to it. The gold stand of such right, politically considered, must of course be Dwight David XXXIV, who was a real militarist before he became a real golfer. Blimp bein’ only a virtual militarist [4], let His Serenity autowaft no farther afield than virtual golf; seemliness demands it.

Though Blimp does not do (what I believe the gamesters in question call) ‘slice,’ he is a dab hand at ‘spin’. Thorougly wrapped up in his own neoself [5], His Serenity does not mention the Great Game as mere gossip. Naturally not! He mentions it because "in the spirit of live and let live, I also never cared much for deconstructing the game in terms of culture and sociology."

Far more interesting than golf is that little self-exuberance. Prescinding straightaway from the part that features the good rear-colonel pattin’ himself on His Serenity’s own back [6], I rush to suggest that probably he does not much care for the deconstruction products generally available, which run, more or less, to the tune of malefactors of great wealth accompanied by cigars (possibly even by Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh -- talk about "a great way to wreck a walk"! ) as they make their conspicuously consumptive rounds. All that is largely out of date, to be sure.

On the other hand, it is by no means completely out of date. At a time when the War against the Wetbacks rages furiously, golf will still do as being an example of the sort of activity that one does not, with some confidence, expect to find the Bad Poor engaged in. Or that José and Juanita violate the sacred perimeter of the holy Homeland™ in desperate quest of opportunity to pursue.

Perhaps a year ago, as General Motors was succumbing to the impact of the Crawford Crash in particular and the vast sweep of G.O.P. economic genius more broadly, I recall certain wingnutettes and wingnuts raisin’ a howl about certain Union thugs™ setting up a country club for their members. One may take for granted that, had the shameless boondoggle been a bowling alley, not even the most militant and extreme of Republican Party class warriors would have bothered about it.

And the moral of that is, I guess, that there is still some mileage to be gotten out of golf as culture and deconstruction and sociology, perhaps especially if deployed on behalf of TopPercenterdom and the Blimpoid Classes rather than against them as hitherto.

Golf is doubtless not the best such weapon of Party and AEIdeology. Neocomrade R. H. Limbaugh, who after all is no mere idiot, brandishes the Sports Utility Vehicle for essentially the same polemical and symbolic purpose, and (from outside the monkey house, of course) I think the Doctor of Demoplutocracy is wise to prefer it to golf. Though the Bad Poor do not actually possess, as I conjecture, more SUV's than mashies and niblicks, it is far, far easier to imagine them wishing to possess the former. An angry mob of B.P. breaking into an automobile dealership and helping themselves is a topos that a Kiddiemaster V. D. H. Blimp could work up rhetorically and present to readers and cruisemates in a fashion so plausible as to be heart-chillin’ and even wallet-threatenin’.

The idea of José and Juanita, and the Revs Wright and Sharpeton, and the superintendant ghost of Mr. Saul Alinsky, summoning Roxbury and Dorchester and Everett and Framingham [7] to sack THE Country Club is a good deal less plausible.

At the opposite extreme from SUV’s (and much remoter from them than golf) stand artefacts of culture and deconstruction and sociology like Attic Greek and classical music. Blimp is known to retain traces of his Greek, at least, but it has been a long time since that attainment made him (or anybody else) gentry eo ipso. The likener who likened it to lace was right on, for if His Serenity were to dress up like this tomorrow, his kiddies and his kruisemates would only wonder if their neoguru supposes Memorial Day to be identical with Halloween. [8] Mobile vulgars demolishing (or perhaps squatting on, sitting in at) THE County Club is conceivable, though hardly likely. The Loeb Library, by contrast, may be pronounced perfectly safe.

Josquin and Boccherini and Dvorak would make an even better example, since a taste for such antiques is much easier to simulate than a reading knowledge of Thucydides and Pindar. Unfortunately, our good rear-colonel and Coriolanus wannabe has not yet exhibited that particular war (?) wound in the Forum: I have no idea whether he cares, or professes to care, for so-called classical music.

In any case, the chances that any particular specimen of the Bad Poor cares can be estimated at zero, despite the product being vastly easier to get at than Greek. If, however, the specimen should happen to found Microsoft (or win some other similar lottery), it would be odd, almost an impropriety, if it did not feel obligated to start faking an enjoyment of Mozart. [9]

***

To generalize, perhaps idiotically, Dr. Bones: it looks as if Neocomrade Rear-Col. Blimp has managed to dumb himself down into a tolerable facsimile of the pre-1929 North American college professor, the sort of "genteel" target Mr. Mencken and Prof. Veblen loved to bang away at.

Healthy days.

___
[1] The vernacular body count is EYE (‘I’) 26, ME 8, MY 1 in appoximately 1,265 words of autoblimpification.


[2] Furthermore, that magisterial Serenity one always admires as Blimp drifts by overhead, borne on the Winds (wings? wingnuts? windnuts?) of Faction, may take a bit of a beatin’ when this or that particular hole fails to get plugged. But Ike knows best, golfwise.


[3] As you know, Bones, this coarse and illiterate keyboard tries to stay as far away from idols and icons and cartoons and Planet MacL@@han as possible. That means that its judgments about the visual may be worthless. Nevertheless: would not a literal blimp, weapon of War and Hucksterism , trying to emulate Charles I Stuart or Mr. Woods of Tigergate defeat almost any crayon or pencil?

The notion reminds one of a certain bicycle-mad fish, nicht wahr?


[4] And a former virtual militarist as well, for practical purposes. But hush! Mr. McCloskey’s general theory of V. D. H. Blimp has already been expounded rather too frequently. Let us take it for granted and attempt to move on.


[5] The eyeball-locked-on-omphalus business that His Serenity is so good at may explain why the kiddies and neokiddies and Conservative Tours pseudogentry put up with Blimp so readily.


[6] Also a bit tricky to picture this scene with a literal blimp. (( Remember Mr. Scarisbrick’s "exquisite anatomical tautology," sir? ))


[7] Pardon my Boston, sir, but in pscenariomongering one should stick to the concrete and avoid flabbinesses about nameless ghettoes and barrios and other dark corners of the realm where the B.P. hang out.


[8] I should myself assume that VDHB had just encountered the expression "Decoration Day" and made a very natural mistake about hermeneutics. (( The Goodyear blimp decked in lace makes another good unpicture, no? ))


[9] The culture / deconstruction / sociology gets a little complicated at this point, however. A lottery winner like Mr. Warren Buffet can cash in backhandedly by NOT pretending any fancy pretence about Wolfgangus & Co.

Possibly His Serenity’s "I don't play golf" was aimin’ at thet sort of effect?

Veblen knows best.