Word: parvenus
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Wolfe reverts to his Ph.D. (in American Studies, Yale) to explain what Radical Chic is all about. Publicity, he says, has been the traditional short cut for "New York's social parvenus" on their way to Society. And nowadays there's no publicity like social-conscience publicity, especially if it is black and beautiful. "What a relief it was socially in New York," writes Wolfe, "when the leadership seemed to shift from middle class to . . . funky I From A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King and James Farmer . . . to Stokely, Rap, LeRoi and Eldridge...
...York society," declared Colonel William d'Alton Mann, "is inhabited by jackasses, libertines and parvenus." Not that he minded. For one thing, they made sensational copy for his scurrilous, scandalous Town Topics. For another, the publicity-shy Four Hundred provided him with a lucrative sideline: Publisher Mann was the nation's most notorious blackmailer. He was also a Civil War hero, a talented inventor and a bon vivant. Nearly forgotten since his death in 1920, he re-emerges in this witty, engaging biography by The New Yorker's Andy Logan as a prize addition to the gang...
...husband's family owned two), antifeminists, the cult of the Common Man. It was idealism, not malice, that propelled her bricks and bons mots. She scolded Stalin for "shooting your enemies, and that sort of thing," scorned the late Joe McCarthy to his face, belittled the Vanderbilts as parvenus: "The Astors skinned skunks a century before the Vanderbilts worked ferries...
...became Sir Bernard in time for the 17th edition), the book is a kind of Who Was Who that lists more than 150,000 names, and traces each lordly family back to its earliest noble ancestor, thus clearly differentiating survivors of the old, landowning aristocracy from the plebeian parvenus whose titles, created in the past half-century, now represent more than 50% of the peerage...
Ideally, the charity ball provides a useful social ladder for the rising and able newcomer to enter Society. If the parvenus seldom wangle invitations for the intimate little dinners of the inner circle, it scarcely matters; their daughters will be asked to the right deb parties and meet the right boys. And when they are married, they can give intimate little dinners of their...