Word: brahmins
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These petty squabbles take on significance beyond good gossip, though, if you consider the roots and the history of the immigrant, anti-Brahmin Boston from which they spring. Why, when parents from Southie, Eastie, Hyde Park and Charlestown hold a summit conference to discuss how to undermine the uppity "niggers" and, increasingly, "spics", are they also kicking each other under the table? Why, for example, does a once outspoken liberal like Mayor Kevin White have to uncommittedly walk a tightrope on the busing issue, protecting himself with a net of double-talking and triple-talking aides below...
These petty squabbles take on significance beyond good gossip, though, if you consider the roots and the history of the immigrant, anti-Brahmin Boston from which they spring. Why, when parents from Southie, Eastie, Hyde Park and Charlestown hold a summit conference to discuss how to undermine the uppity "niggers" and, increasingly, "spics", are they also kicking each other under the table? Why, for example, does a once outspoken liberal like Mayor Kevin White have to uncommittedly walk a tightrope on the busing issue, protecting himself with a net of double-talking and triple-talking aides below...
...fascination with it, Hailey himself is an outsider to the world he writes about--he was born in England and is a Canadian citizen--and understandably he does not have a perfect grasp of the social relations of the American ruling class. Making Roscoe Heyward a Boston Brahmin, an aristocrat, with an only son who is a certified public accountant, may seem to Harvard sensibilities to be ever so slightly off, but it is the kind of minor point that doesn't mean a great deal. Though life in general and Hailey's obsession, class, in particular, are infinitely subtle...
Gangacharan (Soumitra Chatterji) is a Brahmin and pundit, part doctor, part spiritual adviser to the villagers from whom he holds himself gently aloof. Merchants at first spare him a littie rice as an act of deference. But soon, Gangacharan becomes like everyone else, hungry and helpless to do much about it. "There is no rice," a merchant swears to him. "I would not lie to a Brahmin." He would, of course, and does; the villagers all suspect it. There are food riots. Ananga (Babita), Gangacharan's wife, lowers herself to work grinding rice while some still remains. When that...
...television to depict an Irish family in the middle of brahmin-land as having to be biting and aggressive would be an admission by one of America's largest corporations that this is indeed a closed society with a rigid class structure. It is much more politic for CBS to push forward the benign version of the American dream now found in Beacon Hill. It makes for a pretty show, an optimistic show, one that shows off little but the talents of the costume designer...