The Upper Middle Archive

SUBJECT LINE

DATE

PULL QUOTE

Trash Panda Elite → Gilded Burgers → Workplace Fetish

January 2, 2025

In 2025, members of the Upper Middle – most of whom either work in the “culture” industry or have better dressed friends who do – largely eschew cultural hierarchy (the clear and classist distinction between 2001 as art and Wild in the Streets as commerce) in favor of eclecticism. It’s not only normal to like Oppenheimer and Venom or Tar and Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s weird not to. Kael’s case for cultural omnivorousness (radical at the time) became accepted wisdom.

Vampire Weeknight → Muniball → Dinghycore

December 31, 2024

Craft beer made taste refinement socially acceptable – desirably, even – by mashing together a high-status activity (connoisseurship) with a low status activity (slamming brews). This may not have been the original intent of craft brewers, but it was certainly reflected in the high-brow dirtbag aesthetic of brands. Ass Clown Brewing, Evil Genius Brewing, and the Belching Beaver brewery sell extravagantly crafted packaged for sniggering 12-year-olds.

Pottersville Blues → Against Hanukkah* → Diamond Dogs

December 29, 2024

The movie’s weird mixture of overt Marxism with faith in the free market is a product of its production. Director Frank Capra, an anti-FDR reactionary, rewrote previous drafts of the film by by, among other, Dalton Trumbo and Clifford Odets. Victims of the Red Scare Trumbo and Odets had authored a “Commie Draft” including the Pottersville alternate reality sequence. Capra didn’t want to toss great work by great writers – Trumbo wrote Spartacus, Odets wrote Sweet Smell of Success – so he instead attempted to obscure their message.

Pisted Off → Profician → Chandelirious

December 27, 2024

Skiing’s pandemic resurgence melted because few beginners had access to low-cost “municipal mountains.” In New York, which invests more than any other state in publicly owned slopes, there are only three major muni mounts: Gore, Whiteface, and Belleayre. Colorado has a handful, but most are laughable: Lee's Ski Hill in Ouray has a 75-foot vertical drop, making it just over 2% as vertical as of Vail.

The Venal Position → J&J&FML

December 12, 2024

For most of European history, wealthy people did buy public offices. Treasury appointments were as popular and pricey in 18th-century London as big stupid hats and the sale of British Army commissions persisted until the late 19th century. Under the Ancien Regime in France, the Louis XIV oversaw the sale of thousands upon thousands of “venal offices” to wealthy bourgeoisie in order to finance his lavish lifestyle and foreign entanglements.

Pisted Off → Profician → Chandelirious

December 10, 2024

Ski season will be longer this year than last courtesy of the November storms that dumped feet of snow on Colorado and Vermont, but fewer Americans will go skiing. The numbers have been headed downhill since 2004. Many blame exorbitant lift ticket prices – and that’s part of it – but the real reason that no one skis (except people who ski) is the Cold War on casual skiers.

Hot Class War → Grey Gardening → Majority Illusion

December 5, 2024

“I’ll never work again.” It’s what lottery winners and post-IPO founders crow in triumph and what laid off performance marketing managers and financial ops specialists wail in defeat. It can be great or existential. The desire to exit the office is coupled with the fear that doing so means leaving polite society.

Hot Class War → Grey Gardening → Majority Illusion

December 5, 2024

“I’ll never work again.” It’s what lottery winners and post-IPO founders crow in triumph and what laid off performance marketing managers and financial ops specialists wail in defeat. It can be great or existential. The desire to exit the office is coupled with the fear that doing so means leaving polite society.

#StingyTuesday → Against the Rulebook

December 3, 2024

In 2024, it may be best to think about charity as two different activities. The first is an act of benevolent complicity designed to steer money toward the most critical causes. The second is an act of rebellion against the status quo the first reinforces.

Lord of Misrule → The Trouble With Bondage

November 27, 2024

Four years after the Plymouth colonists hosted their famous meal for the Wampanoag and two years after Mayflower mercenary Myles Standish murdered seven Wampanoag men in cold blood, Thomas Morton started throwing ragers in the woods south of Boston.

Class War Pincer Move → Cambridge Blue

November 21, 2024

James Burnham is not a household name nor is he, as a dead person, likely to become one. Paul Gottried, a regular on the Conservative conference circuit – that perennial boon to gay sex workers – isn’t well known either. But these men’s ideas have moved to the center of the radical social and economic agenda currently cosplaying as small-government conservatism.

Punching Up → Diderot → Bro-conomics

November 19, 2024

Promotion has always been a big part of boxing – not just a necessary evil, part of the gamesmanship. But B2B influencer’s reactions to the bout (example: ”Marketing isn’t about lying; it’s about shaping a narrative that highlights the product’s best qualities without creating a disconnect between expectation and reality.”) betrayed a genuine disinterest in sports as anything but a metaphor for business.

Mr. Market → The Scatterplot Against America

November 14, 2024

One way to understand habitus is as emergent tribalism produced by taste. Atkinson’s scatterplot suggests not only that exclusivity and wealth are decoupled in America, but that ostentation is poorly received by those with a taste for the exclusive and the highbrow.

The Frozen Chosen → WWJND → Medievalization

November 12, 2024

Episcopalians have reached out to immigrants, homosexuals, the tired, the poor, the Unitarian, and everyone in Connecticut. Inclusivity became the focus of church work to such a degree that doctrine got fuzzy around the edges. The results speak for themselves. The average Episcopalian is 60+. Some 90% of Episcopalians are white. Most are Democrats. Education levels are stupid high.

Lipstick on a Cig → Too Dumb To Fai l→

November 7, 2024

The argument contained in the image – a few Wojacks (sketchy strawman sub-memes) arrayed against an IQ bell curve – is that morons and geniuses gravitate toward simplicity while “midwits,” particularly status conscious midwits, fetishize complexity and thereby create big, dumb unwieldy systems.

Huge Imposition → Market Pop → Kornackikhaki

November 5, 2024

“Economic data is often collected at the household level, which obscures some of these bargaining dynamics, but what we find is that financial decisions incorporate 60% of husbands’ preferences and 40% of wives’ preferences. Couples’ money is invested in a manner at odds with women’s risk preferences.”

5-Sec Costumes → Office Parkour →

October 31, 2024

“The Greenwich American Center, a 589,784-square-foot brutalist semi-masterpiece by Gordon Bunshaft, sits on an unraked campus of dredged lakes and graded hills across the highway from a cluster of four-bedroom colonials. It has been a bit empty since Disney folded Blue Sky Studios (the animators behind Scrat the sisyphean squirrel). Quiet? Sure. Depressing? No. Practical.“

Quarter-Zip Foul → Marthello →

October 29, 2024

“Martha Stewart sold the place for $6.7M – money she didn’t particularly need. No museum. No marker. There’s now a Lexus dealership around the corner not far from the Crate and Barrel and a bit of a hike from the HomeGoods.“

Radical Chic 2.0 → The Kerhamptons →

October 24, 2024

“Tom Wolfe’s work rankled Bernstein to the end – largely because the writer embarrassed his wife, which was kind of his whole thing – but when a hearse schlepped his still-warm body from Manhattan to Green-Wood Cemetery in 1990, the city stopped to say goodbye. Famously, construction workers took off their helmets. They knew the difference between a bad look and a bad person.“

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