University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

Obscene Affluence: Rebirth
Of The Gilded Age

"What Kind of a Man Reads
Playboy?" asks the ad.

He's a man, Playboy would have
us believe, who's aggressive,
ambitious - in fact, greedy and
selfish - who, in any case, has an
incredible, insatiable and
enormously expensive lusting for
sports cars, booze, lotsa clothes and
all the rest.

And if he runs out of ideas of
things to send his money on, the
magazine helps him: It runs articles
every month about food bashes,
pages of pictures for gifts for every
occasion, interminable looks at the
Playboy "dream house" and the
Playboy's cars.

Once, as I recall, there was even
a photo piece on the Playboy orgy
- fully equipped with statues,
grapes, women - the works.

And this is how Playboy is,
indeed, as some people still say,
"obscene."

It isn't the sex or the
debauchery or the big boobs. It's
the rebirth of the Gilded Age -
affluence which is obscene not
because it is mindless, but because
it leaves little left over for charity
or good works. For what, after all,
does a decent orgy cost? What does
the barest fraction of the goodies
pandered or advertised in Playboy
cost?

More than even the most
well-heeled Playboy reader can
afford to pay.

But the difficulty is that many
of the men who read Playboy are
determined to play the magazine's
role to their last dollar.

And haven't you seen the
Playboy types?

If not, go to a cocktail party of,
say, the bright young junior
executive types who worked at the
Nixon Agnew Presidential campaign
headquarters in Washington.

And there they are, in their crew
cuts and new suits, prowling
around. You look at their cold
eyes, and when you talk to them,
you don't quite talk to them - they
won't let you. You talk to that
shell which is as cold and opaque as
their eyes.

These men seem to be in a kind
of combat with the world,
Hobbesian men, many from small
towns in the Midwest, who have
come East to Get Theirs - their
cars and "dreamhouses" and the
status: the Success of which these
things are the essence.

And what is so disturbing about
these men is not that they are bores
(Washington has other parties). It is
rather, that they already have
"Theirs" - or as much as they
deserve when other people have
even less. Theirs is the selfishness of
the rich and spoiled brat.

And what is worse, these men
are determined that they will get
theirs. That is why they are
working for Ronald Reagan,
Richard Nixon, Bill Brock or any
other conservative of either party
whose election will help them get
and keep theirs - and keep others
from getting theirs.

I bring this all up because the
Playboy man is much in debate
now. He is the man from Charles
Reich's "Consciousness I" in The
Greening of America - the man
as Wolf von Eckardt has written,
who has "the virtues of small-town
America - the rugged, self-reliant
individualism." He is Andrew
Carnegie, Horatio Alger or Wendell
Willkie, unreconstructed.

He is also Ralph Tyler Smith,
and some of the Ohio National
Guard, and many of the citizens of
Kent, Ohio, who thought that the
Guard "did the right thing."

Which is to say that the enemies
of "Consciousness III" - the"
youth culture, "and the rest, which
reject the pragmatism of liberal
democracy and the values of
welfare capitalism - are not the
men of "Consciousness II," who
support those values, but the men
of Consciousness I, which Reich
seems to think has all but passed
away, the victim of the
Consciousness II.

But let it be very clear that it
was Consciousness I - and not
Consciousness II, pragmatic and
above all lawful Consciousness II,
that hates and would kill the freaks
and the long hairs.

And let it be clear that it is
Consciousness I - and not
Consciousness II - that is the
driving force behind the Nixon
administration, and which would
make it impossible the economic
distribution necessary to make
Consciousness III even a possibility
among more than a fortunate few.

And so, I would protest that the
rise of Consciousness III is not a
wholly good thing.

First, of course, because it is so
often simplistic, arrogant and,
worse, just banal. "Is acid rock
ecstasy so different from revival
meeting ecstasy?" Wolfe von
Eckhardt asks, and one must
answer, no. They are both equally
dull when they do not offend the
car and the mind.

Second, because its mad,
nihilistic belief in absolutes which
as Rob Buford noted on this page,
so often and so easily drives it to
violence.

Third, and most important,
because Consciousness III is
impotent.

It's enemy is not only the
benign - the intelligent and
benevolent liberals of
Consciousness II.

It is the tough men who read
Playboy and are out to Get Theirs.

And they will be beaten, if they
are at all, not by Consciousness I
but by Consciousness II.