Newstalk 970 WBLF, I’m Wes Richards with some thoughts on lessons from a student.
The student in question is Vance Packard. The name doesn’t mean much these days. But in the late 1950s and on, he was a best selling author.
He attended public school in State College, graduated from Penn State in 1936 and later the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He worked for the Centre Daily Times for awhile, then national magazines the kept failing and finally wrote books that made all the best seller lists.
He’s best known for “The Hidden Persuaders,” about advertising, “The Naked Society” about spying on citizens… something that could have been written or at least updated yesterday, and my own favorite, “The Status Seekers,” which is about the social climbing that is even more rampant today than it was in 1959 when it was first published.
Packard’s message in that one is how we try to climb all over each other for the sheer glory of climbing all over each other to be what he described as Bessy, the most brazen cow on his family’s farm, always pushing to be at the head of the line.
He punctures the phony, self-important nobodies who become phony, self-important somebodies who push their way to the front of the line.
We have those a-plenty around here. Some of them have been here since Packard was a boy. Some of them are apples that fell right under the tree. Some just moved here and found to their delight that this is a welcoming community for the big fish/small pond crowd.
By all accounts, Packard was a regular guy. No airs, no fanciness… certainly none of the hallmarks of the artificial snooties he wrote about and cautioned against.
“The Status Seekers” should be in every welcome wagon gift basket of every new arrival in these parts. And it should be regular reading for the natives here… restless to run the pond.
It appears to be out of print. But it shouldn’t be.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
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