From The Seven Deadly Virtues, political satirist and author P.J. O’Rourke assesses the vices found on the pages of The New York Times Sunday Styles section. — [Ed.]
Before we consider what virtue has been up to lately, we should take a look at how vice is faring.
The conceit of every era is that people are more inclined to vice than they used to be. In The Clouds, first performed in 423 BC, Aristophanes has the personification of “Just Discourse” recount how vicious children are nowadays, compared to the youngsters of yore who “would not have dared, before those older than themselves, to have taken a radish, an aniseed, or a leaf of parsley, and much less eat fish or thrushes or cross their legs.”
What Aristophanes said is true to this day. I’ve seen a child, sprung from my own loins, munch a radish. With crossed legs. And before I’ve even mixed a pre-dinner martini. (Although, in fairness to our kids, we have trouble getting them to eat fish at all, or aniseed, or parsley—never mind thrushes. Their penchant for vice does not extend to calling first dibs on gobbling roast songbirds.)
The long-lost “Golden Age”—a time when people and things once were better—is a myth in every mythos. I’m willing to bet that Australopithecus shamed its biped brats with stories of noble hominids brandishing proper tails and blissfully living in trees.
That said, vice is doing very well these days. Note, for example, how practically everything featured in The New York Times Sunday Styles section is one of the seven deadly sins.
For starters, envy might as well be the section’s title. There’s not a person in the Styles section who isn’t leading a life that’s more celebrated, glamorous, rich, exciting, dramatic—or, at the least, more stylish—than our own. Every advertisement is a promotion of avarice. You could, I suppose, be charitable (charity is one of the seven virtues) and believe that the baubles being hawked are all meant to be given away as gifts to the poor—a Coach bag for the bag lady, a Montblanc pen for a homeless man to letter “Will Work 4 Food” on a piece of cardboard. But even if that were the case, a remarkable degree of avarice would have had to be practiced by the givers in order to afford such gifts in the first place. As for pride? Pride goeth before a New York Times wedding announcement.
Fashion, of course, is the handmaiden (excuse me, handperson) of lust. You might not think that, given some of the fashions you see in the Times. But then again, everything according to taste. The presentation of purple hindquarters excites the mandrill. And who am I to presume that Times readers are less sensuous than this noble primate? Then there’s the sloth evident in just having enough time on your hands to bother reading the Styles section. But whatever else you want to say about the Styles section, you can’t accuse it of gluttony. The people you see pictured are always beautiful and terribly thin. No, for gluttony you have to go over to the paper’s “Dining Out” section. The portions may be small, but the prices are voracious. And as for wrath, well, just consult the Times editorial page. Or consult me after I’ve read it.
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To read more from P.J. O’Rourke and other great conservative writers on why the virtuous life is funny as hell, purchase a copy of The Seven Deadly Virtues on Amazon. Dad doesn’t need another tie; it’s the perfect holiday gift!
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