302. "Classy" "Tacky"

There are no classes in America but we do categorize people as classy, commonly drawing our illustrations from the British upper class.  Class is a London gentleman accepting undeserved blame in order to save a lady's reputation.  We draw our illustrations of tacky from the same class.  James Hewitt, cavalry officer (Life Guards) sleeping with Princess Diana, blabbing about it, and then trying to sell his letters from her, is irresistibly the exemplar.  Expectations of classiness probably give you a better chance of standing for its opposite, and it's clear we have opposites here.

But tacky has to be distinguished from dishonorable, with which it competes in the Hewitt case.  A military officer charged in court with embezzlement dishonors himself and, worse, brings dishonor on the corps.  His peers (in the old days) show their expectations by leaving a revolver on his dresser, the only stop to dishonor.  Hewitt's peers in the hunt club returned his dues check.  The severity of the judgment shows the severity of the offense.

Tacky must also be distinguished from villainous.  Polonius is tacky; Iago is villainous.  But how about Linda Tripp, that "villain of Shakespearean proportions," as one columnist called her?  Recording on secret tape all the intimacies a friend reveals in girlie talk with you is tacky.  But intending to use what you record to bring down a President (the frolicking Clinton, you remember) is villainous.  We gag at tackiness, we gasp at villainy.  What are we doing here?

Opposites become more distinct if we can find poles, and sports supply polar opposites by the bundle.  For class we've got Baron von Cramm, going over to the Wimbledon judge to tell him that his racket touched the ball (losing him the point that would otherwise have won the match) and for tack we've got Jimmy Connors going over and rubbing out the ball mark before the judge can see it.  But you've got to be careful locating poles.  A penthouse owner who puts plastic flamingos on his lawn plot has made a polar switch.  Tacky played with becomes classy.

Our minds won't give up polarizing, though.  There will always be Muhammad Ali after his TKO of Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title, shouting, "I am the greatest! I'm the greatest thing that ever lived."  We line up a hundred champions opposite that one, the most recent champ, I suppose, being Manny Pacquaio with his "He gave me a good fight" after clubbing Tim Bradley for the welterweight title.

Old professors like to think that the past is full of class and the present full of tack.  Ancient Greece is loaded with class.  And then some kid asks, "What's the difference between Muhammad Ali and that braggart Odysseus in Homer?"  Like the kid who wanted to know the difference between the posse comitatus in Beowulf and a Los Angeles street gang.  Class and tack vary with time.  Everything's a social construction.  (You  can see it's hard to argue against social construction, or social relativism, when a category like this is at issue.  Classy and tacky so steadily pronounce judgments on behavior within the tribe.)

Class would seem to have little to do with morality.  The philanderer John Kennedy was immoral but was thought to have a lot of class.  That's by the standards of his time.  Knowledge that he shared a mistress with a gangster would probably deprive him of the compliment now.   Is it classy of a reporter to cover up the mistress thing?  Then but not now?   Do you believe in journalistic relativism?

Is incitement to tack tacky?  College men shouting "Show us your boobs!" at a college woman at a party window are in the dean's eyes clearly tacky, as is the woman when she obliges them, everybody maxing out.  Is Howard Cosell tacky for encouraging, and profiting from, Muhammad Ali's tackiness?  If he's already tacky?  If he's in the tackiness-selling business?

Does tackiness rub off?  Is Princess Diana stained by her association with Simone Simmons, the "natural healer and clairvoyant... a global psychic and personality" (according to her agent, Tony Clayman Promotions) with whom the princess spent eight hours at a time on the phone, and with whom in 2005 she was, said Simmons, "still communicating"?  Had Diana already been tacky?  In an early interview (Bashir) I'd say she holds to class but defaults to tack; in a late one (Simmons) tack keeps coming up on its own.  But that's just my judgment.  Whoever judges now, though, has that movie Queen Elizabeth standing  before them, offering her yardstick.

"Yes, the royal yardstick," say the constructionists, and down goes another eternal standard.  In their midst you hunger for signs of permanent value, anything to throw up against relativism.  Is it a sign that on the net, though there are debates about the tackiness of  70's and 80's and 90's music, there's no debate about posting on Facebook "I know 97% of you won’t repost this, but my real friends will”?  Wearing a translucent blouse and a black bra goes unchallenged as tacky.

To satisfy our lingering essentialism there doesn't have to be any eternal, absolute Idea of Tack, there just has to be in human nature something consistent, some sense of class that persists.  There's this on one of the teen forums:  "Classy is not about clothes, makeup, hairstyles, accessories.  It is not about being posh, or wealthy.....A classy girl is kind, gentle, sweet, empathetic, caring.  She is giving, loving... she is a good person. She has good manners and is a very pleasant person to know. She is a good friend."  Where did that sixteen-year-old get that?  It got more approval than any of the other offerings.