How We Know George W. Bush To Be a Hipster
by John Flowers
Just a drink into the date and the woman part of the equation posed a tough one to me: Did I know a good definition for the term "hipster"?
"Their mark is everywhere," she said, "From IPOD commercials to $200 'vintage' T-shirts. And yet I couldn't tell you what one is."
I said, "Well, they have a predilection for Elvis Costello frames and asymmetrical haircuts." And then I made a joke about how they also like to feign ignorance of the term to throw trackers off the scent.
She laughed (thank God) but pointed out that "Hipsters are wearing Izod nowadays."
And that's when it hit me.
"Follow me here," I told her. "But George W. Bush: Yalie, Skull & Bonesman, and 43rd President of the United States," and I paused for dramatic effect, "is a hipster":
* Both define themselves counter to popular opinion and conventional wisdom.
* Both are trustafarians who have cultivated an attitude and look that are completely antithetical to their upbringing, and both have the hats (cowboy or trucker, take your pick) to prove it. There's also a question about how much work either does on a typical weekday. Regardless, it's their permanent addresses in out-of-the-way, working class environs that help emphasize their fetish for someone else's blue-collar roots.
* Both tend to have grandiose visions (be it for a country or a band/novel) that barely work as theory. Moreover, both tend to rely on their parents and their parents' connections for an inordinate amount of support to get started in this world. And yet, if you point out that debt to them, they're quick to tell those to whom they are closest that, really, they fundamentally disagree with how their parents view the world.
* However, as the results of these visions start to pile up in circles, we come to realize that their parents weren't such bad people after all. On a related topic, the people picking up the tab for both are starting to get tired of their act and want to see results. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know.
* To be fair, any outsider who's met them, one-on-one, claims them to be affable and quite personable, and not the conceited jerks he or she assumed them to be.
* Their parties used to be the talk of the town, too. In fact, their parties used to be the only game in town. If you wanted to play, that's where you went. Nowadays, the parties still earn the occasional page one copy, but they're shells of their former selves.
* Both talk a loud game on politics but don't really seem either a) to understand or b) to care much about the details. They talk a big, loud game when Talk is all you need. But at the end of the day, when there's a ditch to dig and a shovel to do it with, they're about as far away in mind as they are in body from the trenches where battles are won.
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* Their critics, incidentally, keep wondering why the media at large is still buying into their act and why no one is exposing them for the frauds these critics claim them to be. The media, meanwhile, can't decide what their role should be here. Some in their ranks think they should pursue these charges; others believe they're just being baited and that this baiting has, itself, been played out. Thus, they compromise: The media ignores any controversy other than tacit acknowledgement of its existence, with the excuse that what's important here is to keep focus on whom or whatever is the Next Big Thing for 2008.
* Finally, neither is a stranger to the booger sugar.
She was impressed enough with that list to buy the next few rounds. And I thanked her, but demurred as to whether we had a finished product in front of us.
"If we could just find a picture of the President with a crocodile stitched over where a left breast pocket should be," I said, " we'd have our smoking gun."
E-mail John Flowers at johnflowers at gmail dot com.
— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)
