In The "Middle" Distance

It's just an observation, but our beloved Senator Robert Menendez (surely one of the least prepossessing political figures to ever arise out of the dismal swamp that is Hudson County politics, he's always struck me as a sort of haplessly unbalanced hobbit who desperately needs the guiding boss-like hand of a Gandalf) has a TV ad out in which he attempts to paint himself as an authentic champion for the "middle class."

So when did it suddenly become popular to adopt the mantle of middle classness? I'm of a generation, after all, which remembers when whatever constitutes the "middle class" (and who really knows what it is?) was viewed as a mere agglomeration of losers by those who saw themselves as more socially and sociologically advanced and hence deservedly advantaged. When the phrase "middle-class values" only ever indicated sneering contempt for such a presumed mindset, the sort of thing Gore Vidal and the sort of people who took him seriously (BlueWaveNJ-style "progressives," I do so mean thee) might utter with some regularity. But nobody else. Anyway, NJ liberals now have to at least act nice towards the rest of us. They may all secretly think that our sole real role in life is, to borrow from George Orwell, to keep our aspidistras "flying," but they have to be nice to us in public. Until the day after the upcoming election, anyway.

I certainly suspect this: that there isn't a single "name" Jersey politician out there (and this also includes the all-purpose, preening whatever he is Steve Adubato Jr.), and from either major party, who sincerely, deep in his/her heart, believes himself/herself to be, well, middle class. That, alas, never stops a single blessed one of them from attempting either to "save" or defend (in the oddest fashion - just try to imagine Lautenberg,  who's far feistier than Menendez, especially when he awakes from his nice daily nap on the Senate floor, saying in an interview with a straight face that he himself hails from the middle class and thus "understands" its wants, needs and particular socio-economic status) whomever out there they imagine to be that lesser strain of ignorant humanity.

(But then, neither do we commonly produce authentic voices up from the actual working class in this country. Possibly because claiming to be one entails losing far more than, a la Marx's famous remark, one's "chains."  And it would challenge the typically smug imaginings of successful American politicians at  all levels that the offices they hold somehow magically bestow "class" upon them. As per the Kennedys, who can never either live up to or justify their perennial presumption that being from the family is something special other than, anyway on the male side, a sort of Cardinal-bestowed indulgence with which to practice adultery while otherwise remaining safely tethered to the bosom of American Catholicism. Or as per Bill Clinton, who is revered today by so many despite that he was caught enjoying from an intern a certain sexual practice which back in the day of dynast "Honey Fitz" Kennedy would probably have been the sort of thing Kennedy males would only have dared  ask for from the family maids.)

Frankly, I miss the days when to be branded as, say, "hopelessly middle class" was to be hit with the worst sort of epithet to some folks' way of thinking.