Fred Siegel of St. Francis College in Brooklyn argues that the highbrow class has killed culture.

Mencken and Huxley shared an aristocratic ideal based on an idyllic past. They romanticized a time before the age of machinery and mass production, when the lower orders lived in happy subordination and when intellectual eccentricity was encouraged among the elites. In this beautiful world, alienation was as unknown as bearbaiting and cockfighting, “and those who wanted to amuse themselves were,” in Huxley’s words, “compelled, in their humble way, to be artists.”

They considered the egalitarianism of American democracy a degraded form of government which, in Ortega’s words, discouraged “respect or esteem for superior individuals.” Intellectuals, they complained, weren’t given their due by the human detritus of this new world. Huxley, a member of the Eugenics Society, saw mass literacy, mass education, and popular newspapers as having “created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid.” He proposed the British government raise the price of newsprint ten or twentyfold because “the new stupid,” manipulated by newspaper plutocrats, were imposing a soul-crushing conformity on humanity. The masses, so his argument went, needed to be curtailed for their own good and for the greater good of high culture.

If I’ve seemed more preoccupied lately than just a trip to Missouri would warrant, there’s a reason for that. I, along with other members of the Viking Age Club and Society of the Sons of Norway, have been slogging through the logistics of a television audition. I didn’t want to talk about it until I actually understood what was going on, but now I think I can. Because it’s probably nothing.

Our club president was contacted a while back by a representative from a Hollywood production company that specializes in reality programs, among them several I’m sure you’ve heard of. They wanted to arrange to meet with us and do some filming, intrigued by the fact that we have whole families (three generations in one case) involved, and by the “live steel combat” we do.

It took some time and some scheduling, but we finally met with one of the executives, a camera man, and a sound man, yesterday afternoon at one of our members’ homes. They interviewed us on camera and filmed our combats and drills.

Does this mean we’re going to be celebrities? Probably not.

As I understand it, what they’re doing is blitzkrieging the genre. They’ve located a large number of people and activities across the country which they think they might conceivably make a show out of (tomorrow, the executive told us, he’d be filming the biggest strawberry shortcake in the world). Then they’ll cut the footage into teasers, and submit them to the networks in batches. Most, obviously, will be rejected. I have no reason to think we’re likely to make the cut.

But it was a fun experience, and the executive was not at all what I expected a TV producer to be like.

I’ll tell you if anything more happens.

Which I doubt.

Photo credit: Philip Patton.

I’m heading this post with the picture above, because I’m kind of proud of it. Not that I took it, of course, but I think it catches the tragedy and grandeur of its subject as no photo ever has before. A Viking with a secret sorrow. A plunderer with dyspepsia. Credit to Philip Patton, a talented young man who came along with me to Missouri, and returned with many splendid pictures.

But none of them as splendid as this one, I think. Subject matter is all.

As you may recall, I left Thursday morning for Knox City, Missouri, home of Sam Shoults’s Ravensborg Longphort. All went swimmingly, and Mrs. Hermanson, my Chevy Tracker, was running at her best, when we suddenly rolled to a stop just outside Ottumwa, Iowa. Then followed a call to AAA, a wait for a tow, and a short hop to a nearby auto mechanic, who I must say proved to be both honest and skillful, so far as I could detect (I have it now as a principle never to go to the shop the tow driver recommends. I disregarded his advice on this occasion, and did not regret it). I’ll say the shop’s name, Superior Automotive.

Turned out it was the clutch, the same thing that stranded me on the road a couple years ago, and got fixed then (apparently only temporarily). They named me a price I thought fair (I had experience with this repair, after all), and said they could get it done by 4:00 the next day. Since that would allow us to still make most of the Viking weekend, I readily agreed. They gave us a lift to a nearby motel. The next day they actually finished the job about 2 ½ hours ahead of the estimated time. So I’ve got no complaints.

We finished the trip, and still arrived ahead of several people. This is Ravensborg:

Continue reading Viking weekend, Viking weakened →

“An archaeological investigation at Furness Abbey in northwest England has uncovered the grave of an abbot, which includes an extremely rare medieval silver-gilt crozier and bejewelled ring.” (via Brad Day)