We have some fun here, from time to time, chatting about the dyed-in-the-wool conservative chops of Wick Allison, publisher of The American Conservative. Which, in the same manner that a roundtable is neither round nor a table, is neither "American" nor "Conservative". (For a refresher, here's Allison's Cub Reporter discussing the boss's renewed support for Obama in 2012, and chiming in his view that Obama was better choice than Romney on foreign policy and economic issues -- quite the oracle, given recent events.)
Anyhoo, Wick Allison's other vehicle is D Magazine, which is one of those print and online rags about what is trendy and cool in a particular city. D is of course about Dallas. In the recent issue, D published an online ranking (don't know if it's in the print version) of the various suburbs in the Dallas area. The city of Rockwall, TX was ranked #16 out of 63 (yes, we have a lot of suburbs here). But it is the six-paragraph story accompanying the ranking that raised a bit of a foo-fraw on local AM talk radio today. The story noted that Rockwall is the hometown of US Congressman Ralph Hall, who is 91 years young and who was recently beaten in the GOP primary by a Tea Partier, and then quoted a local barber thusly:
“I’ve been cutting Ralph Hall’s hair for 20 years, his kinfolk’s even longer,” he says, pointing to a framed picture of the congressman. “He’s a gentleman. That guy who beat him? He’s an asshole. All these assholes have moved in here. I had a better clientele 20 years ago, no assholes.”
So there you go. According to D Magazine, a city loaded with Tea Party "assholes" makes it into the top quartile of suburbs.
And yes, they're hiding behind the "we're not saying that, it's just what we heard" defense. But it seems an odd paragraph for the publisher of The American Conservative to have in a six-paragraph blurb.
So old money=gentleman, new money=asshole. Yeah...
ReplyDeleteThese people need to watch Caddy Shack again to remind them of what everybody else thinks of their "gentlemen".
So old money=gentleman, new money=asshole.
ReplyDeleteBingo.
A guy who goes by the monicker "Wick" is a social snob? I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you.
DeleteThat's "Wick" as in "Lodowick Brodie Cobb Allison", I'll have you know.
DeleteP.S. "Wick's" full name, together with his endorsement of Obama, reminds me of a similar endorsement of Obama in 2008 from T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII.
If you look at the range of things Wick markets, the way he changes his local political positions like his underwear, and consider the way he uses his employees to build market shares for him, then sics his yappy dogs on them after he dumps them (see real estate blogger Candy Evans for example), there are at least three conclusions we can draw:
Delete1. If the kids like it, there might be money in it, so Wick believes in it as long as there appears to be (goofy FrontBurner liberal bloggers, freeway in river basin, Dreher, new urbanist highway teardown, etc.)
2. He's prepared to endorse Miley Cyrus for President as soon as she's ready, but only if her comeback numbers are high enough.
3. Once that butt starts sagging, she's outa there. Maybe the cute penguin who picks the next World Cup winner instead.
What I think is just so wonderful and convincing about the barber's attribution of assholishness to John Ratcliffe (notice that they don't print his name in the mag) is that he explains exactly why Ratcliffe is an asshole, giving so many examples to further bolster his verdict.
ReplyDelete