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The people praising it aren’t the ones paying for it.
In a 1955 essay titled “The English Aristocracy,” novelist Nancy Mitford suggested that as goods became more affordable, England’s upper classes could no longer rely on material possessions to distinguish themselves from the masses. Instead, Mitford wrote, “it is solely by their language that the upper classes nowadays are distinguished.”
Jia Tolentino and Hasan Piker proved this point last week in a conversation hosted by Nadja Spiegelman at the New York Times. It unfolded in a carefully staged loft that signaled taste and status. Ms. Spiegelman proposed a new word for shoplifting: “microlooting.” Mr. Piker later remarked that “many Americans, I think, are totally oblivious to this political language.”
“Stealing” sounds so tawdry. Microlooting is cleaner—a minor offense laundered into a boutique act of political protest. Indeed, much of upper middle class life is about rebranding disreputable behaviors to retain one’s position in the social hierarchy. The pattern is familiar. Mitford sorted vocabulary into “U” (upper class) and “non-U.” U-speakers said “vegetables” and “spectacles” and “lavatory.” Non-U speakers said “greens” and “glasses” and “toilet.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal
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Rob Henderson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.