We hear a lot about self-hating Jews and self-loathing homosexuals. I myself was accused in the Herald Tribune a while back of being a self-loathing Canadian. Well, there’s a lot of it about—self-loathing, I mean, not self-loathing Canadianism, which would seem to be a more specialized craft.

Take, for example, many of the men and women who leave their humble precincts to make it big in the artistic world. Swanning about backstage, they quickly discover that the world in which they grew up is regarded by their peers as rather déclassé. Not because they’re “working class.” Au contraire, if they’d come from generations of horny-handed sons of toil, they’d be all the rage. If they were the first in their line not to be working down the coal mine from the age of twelve, they would be doted on like newborn puppies at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But, alas, socioeconomic reality in...

 

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