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Americans have a great deal of repressed anger and not-so-repressed sense of entitlement and class envy. They will not remain passive forever and since they cannot attack the true source of their misery they will point their anger elsewhere.
Aristocrats are beyond reproach and consequences until they aren't.
17 comments:
... n'oblige pas.
I must admit that I am a big fan of woo scotch.
I get the feeling that the taste of a truly fine scotch would be lost on a poser tw*t like Megan. She wants to be seen at these things, Tweet about them, tell people about it at dinner parties, but she's lacking in the palate and curiosity it takes to make a $75 night out worth the pennies.
I'm tempted to reply that real Rich People visit Scotland to sample different types of Scotch. The Koch's wouldn't be caught dead at a $75 "tasting party". Unless Megan paid, and she probably would.
I don't have a very good palate but I like great scotches very much too. I'd love to try some of those very expensive scotches made by the people who make Glenlivit. But I won't tell everyone else that the middle class and poor must share in the suffering that the rich are only pretending to experience while I'm drinking that scotch.
CP, I bet you are right. KWillow, heh, she just might.
Woo Scotch.
Made in China.
Megan, the patriotic free-marketeer of Rand, drinks Commie scotch.
File under: Worth Noting
Alouette! Alouette! Jaunte Plumerie!
My French spelling may not be 100% but then not every Parisian singing as the 1789 Megans rode in the tumbrills to a meeting with Prof Guillotine's 'humane' invention was literate.
And I say that as a now prole who can spell Laphroiag from the days I could afford it.
Words fail. Except certain Anglo-Saxon ones. Anyone but me learn in grad school that there is a common root between the words 'queen' 'country' and the one I would apply to Megan if I was less well-bred? And more misogynistic? McAddled would tempt a Saint. Unfortunately that temptation might involve certain instruments used by the Spanish Inquisition. ARGGHH! Somewhere during that Ivy League education you would expect M M'A to have at least run across the word 'self-awareness'
Except I misspelled Laphroaig even though it is right in front of me on the top shelf of the back bar along with the Aberlour, Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie and Oban with the rest of the ones I can't afford these days.
On the other hand the well rum is surprisingly drinkable. Effective anyway.
Woo! Guillotine demonstrations!
Bring a friend and toast the aristos! All the cake you can eat!
The fact that she chose to give the exact price of entry speaks volumes.
Or, what CP said.
Alas, a bottle in front of me labeled "Laphroaig" has nothing to do with the frontal lobotomy that I never actually had, but I still remember that earthy peaty drink-it-with-a-spoon flavor. The last time I bought a bottle of Laphroaig scotch, I bought three, because the liquor store I bought them from had to honor the price offered by a competitor who advertised it as a fake loss-leader (which McM doesn't understand, as I recall) even though they probably didn't have three bottles in stock when they ran the ad.
This was not an example of consumer savvitude on my part. But I admit that before I went to the store that sold me the three cheap bottles, I had gone to the advertising store and been told they were out of stock. I did not mean to victimize the victim store, although I suspect they did not suffer greatly because of me. I only figured out that nefarious advertising squirmishes were transpiring because of the victim store's manager's anger - totally not directed at me; he was a perfect gentleperson....
OMG, see what happens when you are a DFH liberal? You splain and splain and splain about the Laphroaig and how you love it, and what sort of exploitation was involved in you tasting its fine vivid flavor.
So who wants to buy me a wee dram?
I agree with all of you--who tweets the price of these things? If its your friends and you want to let them that you, also, will be there then you don't need to include the price just the time and location. If its strangers what kind of strangers will be impressed with the 75 dollar price tag? I hate to say it but 75 dollars is a lot for a tasting of stuff you ought to be able to just buy if you had enough money and its also not a lot of money given the cost of things. Its like going to a caviar tasting--you either have enough money to just live off the stuff or you don't eat it very often and you probably shouldnt bother going to a tasting at all. What is your discriminating palate supposed to be learning? That on the few occasions you can afford to splurge you should be ordering X instead of Y?
I read a great book recently but I'm blanking out the name--maybe it was predictably irrational--in which the econ/psych professor did an experiment with people ordering beers in a microbrewery. He demonstrates conclusively that most people are acting out social insecurities when they order beer in front of other people. That is, their choices are more constrained by the choices of the people before them than by their own interior "tastes."
That isn't to say that I wouldn't go to a wine tasting, or even host one for fun. But expensive scotch? Give me a fucking break. Megan's a social climber in the foothills of the himalayas and she thinks by bragging about it on twitter she will be mistaken for having climbed everest.
aimai
love it
aimai - I get the whole taste vs looking good thing, but beer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i5k4I1AOEI
She is just vulgar. To continue Susan's point, she's Mr. Collins, unable to shut up about the cost of the chimney piece at Rosings because she lacks the breeding to know that decent people do not discuss the cost of their possessions.
AIMAI says:
Downpuppy,
Well, social insecurities might be putting it a little high. The problem with Predictably Irrational is that the original propositions are not always that well thought out, or rather the notion (in this case) that people *ever* choose anything for pure taste sensation/personal desire rather than out of a mixture of social things is absurd. The experiment was conducted by the researcher as waiter and in several instances he asked each person to choose in turn, out loud, the normal way and in other cases he asked each person to indicate the preferred drink without letting the others at the table know what the choice was. So in the second case one's choice could neither influence, nor be influenced by, the choice of others. The end result was that there was a greater distribution of choices in the first case--as though people were attempting not to repeat choices that had already been made (premium thus being placed on individuality of choice and the width of the selection) and in the second there was more clustering of choices around ordinary or typical beers (so, when the chooser consults only his own taste he chose differently than when choosing in public).
The take home conclusion is simply that people are influenced, even in food choices, by social imperatives. Not really surprising. Some societies you can imagine everyone being forced to choose the same thing by social pressure (Japan) while in others everyone might choose differently in order to fully express individuality (the US). Also, public ordering makes it possible for people's status anxieties, competitions, and deferences to come into play as when a lower ranked individual chooses not to order the most expensive thing on the menu in deference to their boss. Or when men or women choose not to order the thing they want because of gender sterotyping and fear of ridicule.
aimai
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