Dr. Fleming on the Jerk (not Steve Martin) and what conservatives should wear

Dr. Fleming has this post, Liberty and Justice–For Jerks, which has spawned a new series: Jerks I.
In the comments section to the first post, he talks about clothing:

A few small clarifications. While the Jerk does have affinities with the busybody and the Puritan, he can also exist without any Yankee influence. The phenomenon is not at all confined to New England. South Carolina specializes in producing an analogous figure, the would-be patrician who makes himself and his family the standard for all kinds of excellence. In my days as board member of the League of the South, I was forever running into men who had adopted rustic costumes–overalls, flannel shirts, etc–to show their Southern identity. When I pointed out to them that their grandfathers would have never gone to town without wearing a suit, they simply shrugged without taking the hayseed out of their mouths. What was important to them was feeling good about themselves and not living up to the code of dress and behavior adhered to by the very ancestors they claimed to revere. Were they Jerks? No, not most of them. Indeed, most were kind and polite, but using clothes as a kind of statement-making costume is a big first step. Today, according to the WSJ, middle class men who wear hats refuse to take them off in bars and restaurants because the hat is part of their identity. Perhaps, said the author of the article, we need a new hat etiquette. Perhaps, says I, the WSJ should give up publishing stupid articles designed to strip us of the last tattered garments that hide our moral and social nakedness.


It is not simply a question of manners: a goodhearted and well-meaning person may unintentionally offend others without knowing he is giving offense, while a cultivated gentleman may go through life without giving much offense but act like a total bastard when it suits him. Neither one can be precisely called a Jerk. All Jerks are rude, but not all rude people are Jerks; all Jerks are self-important, but not all self-important people are Jerks. Many crude and badly dressed people are amenable to instruction. The Jerk by contrast is a law unto himself. I distinguish between the man who wears blue jeans and sweatshirt to Church, because he does not know better, from the man who knows what is expected but argues back, “God does not really care how I dress.” I remind such people of the fate of the wedding guest who came without the right clothing. It starts early, even before the high school dances for which the girls spend days in preparation and their loutish dates are hard pressed to wear clean bluejeans. The louts know, at least dimly, but they don’t care. Now let us hear from the Mens Movement louts about how it is all the girl’s fault for being immoral, how men are really the victims, or how it is manly to grope women and address them with slimy language. Not to beat a dead horse, but most people who join identity movements–female, male, Gay, White, Black–are Jerks with a capital J, because they roam the world seeking the ruin, if not of souls, then at least of parties and conversations and domestic tranquility.

He adds:

PS Dressing like a slob is simply a way of making a statement. It is vulgar cultural Marxism and would have developed with or without Einstein. Men who wear jeans to work or to Church or to restaurants are making an anti-social statement, whether they know it or not. I don’t own a pair of jeans because I am neither a worker nor a Marxist. Middle class professional men who do wear them, except for gardening etc., are not Jerks but they are fools, and this goes for many of my friends who claim to be working to save civilization when they cannot take the five minute it requires to dress the part.

And he further elaborates:

My point against jeans is not that the wearer knows what he is doing but that he is making a statement, knowingly or not. Imagine the world before 1960, when, for example, my father rarely left the house without a jacket and tie and hat. As a merchant seaman and cowboy, he had learned the use of jeans, but he never wore them even for hunting and fishing. Now, you can say that times have changed and we have a right to change with them, and I shall cheerfully say, go your way and do as you like, my progressive friend. But do not, in the same instant as you are jettisoning all the forms of civilized life, tell my you are conserving anything. A supermarket is a place of business, a baseball park a place of entertainment. It is true that a market is not a bank and a baseball park not a ballroom or symphony hall, but neither is a proper place for work clothes. The terminology, by the way, is interesting. The historically normal word is trousers, though pants–derided by Ambrose Bierce–was common in America. I don’t know when slacks came in, but it did not used to be used, generally, for anything but rather informal trousers. These things tend to be regional in America. Pants tend to be East Coast, slacks more Middle American.


Jeans in themselves have obvious subversive qualities: they are not creased an need no ironing; they are better when aged and slightly frayed; dirty or clean–it hardly makes a difference. Thus the man putting on his jeans does not stop to ask himself if they are clean, pressed, in decent condition, appropriate to the occasion. So without being a Jerk, he is acting like one. At our Randolph Club meetings we tried to make the banquet and debate Black Tie obligatory and had to settle for Black Tie recommended or optional, because Boobus Americanus, even as a principled conservative, cannot be take the trouble to dress properly for a semi-formal occasion.


If you do not like the world the revolutionaries made, quit dressing like a revolutionary.

I think Dr. Fleming would be rather content with the efforts of Art of Manliness to promote the old dress code.

The following is just a quick defense of my own vesturing habits, and it will undoubtedly turn out to be a rather poor justification... but I'm not defending the use of blue jeans.

Regarding the requisite jacket and shirt and tie, I've talked about them before... I've also written on business casual and clothing in general, plus following fashion. Am I too much of a rationalist rather than a traditionalist when it comes to clothing? Do conservatives really need to conserve even that which has been imposed upon the lower classes by the elites of society? Imposed may not be the correct word. It appears to be the case that those who seek entry into higher classes must adopt the dress of those classes. Did members of the working class wear less expensive versions of the cravat, coat, and shirt on formal occasions? They may have made a distinction between everyday/work clothing and clothing for formal occasions, but they did not wear the same formal clothing as the upper classes? (Because they could not afford the material, tailoring, and so on?)

It seems proper to make a distinction between work and leisure/festivity and to dress accordingly -- is it enough that the clothes one is wearing for a festive occasion are clean? Or do they have to be of different design and material? Festive occasions are rare occasions, but periods of leisure might be more frequent. Even a festive garment cannot be completely useless/decorative -- one must be able to move around in it, eat, and dance.

(Then there is the aesthetic issue -- I think the modern Western suit is rather ugly in comparison to its 19th ce predecessors.)

My justification regarding my choice of pants boils down to what is durable and what can one afford? A set of nice clothes, and a set of clothes that is more sturdy and can be used for work. Or at least won't be worn out through a lot of walking. Maybe my dress slacks are made of the wrong material, or it is a problem with the size of my body, but I find that the thin material of my dress slacks (fine wool?) does not last very long, even if they are not being used very often.

I prefer the tougher material of khakis (cotton twill) and chinos. If there were dress slacks that tough, I'd be willing to wear them everyday. I need to go shopping (an activity I detest) and see what is available. I haven't really worn blue jeans recently, except during that period of time when I was wearing them for taking walks.
Should one sacrifice money to purchase nice(r) clothes for the sake of the occasion? Is one being too pragmatic or utilitarian in not doing this?

It is difficult to know what one should do and how one should dress when one does not have a role model. A meager knowledge of some of the standards does not suffice, but reading about etiquette from a book seems odd, when one's community does not observe those standards and live them out in daily life.

Even if one tries to fill a role despite not having a proper role model, for example that of father or mentor, upon self-reflection one might think that one is making things up as he goes, relying too much upon (or feeling) imagination  and not enough upon reason.

"Really? You're such a jerk."
In connection with the lament on the decline in manners -- I have to mention the the use of "Really?" as the latest catch-word/phrase -- it has been popping up in commercials and television shows and movies. What is its origin? Joss Whedon? The latest instance of it that led to this addendum was in an episode of Chase -- of course it is said by the tough female US marshal. What does it convey besides a sarcastic attitude? (Is sarcastic the correct word to describe it?) It sounds  adolescent.