Kneel Before Izod

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Ned Lamont's sudden rise to national fame and glory is not what it says about the antiwar movement, or the liberal blogosphere, or even Joe Lieberman, but what it says about the American preppy. Consider for a moment what an incredibly unlikely hero Lamont is for the antiwar, antiestablishment, anti-Bush left. A millionaire scion of the old J.P. Morgan aristocracy. A Greenwich native and, until politics beckoned, an elite country club member. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University, where a library bears his family name. It's a wonder Lamont didn't run his campaign from the bow of a 30-foot yacht. Lamont also looks and acts the part--the L.L. Bean style, the Steve Forbes haircut, the slightly awkward air of reserve. Last month, The New York Times spoke to Lamont "from his vacation home in Maine"; everyone knows that, while arrivistes spend the summers social-climbing on the Vineyard and Nantucket, the real wasps decamp for the tranquility of Bar Harbor and places so exclusive you've never heard of them. So the left has found its savior, and he is Bertie Wooster.Can this be it? The thing they've long whispered of--from the dorms of Choate Rosemary Hall to the Yale Club in Manhattan? The Great Preppy Revival? If so, I confess to feeling a secret thrill. You see, I am a prep myself. I grew up in New Haven (which is not Greenwich, yes, but it is not Bridgeport either). I've spent many summers on "the Cape." I even boarded at Exeter, home to a girls' dormitory named Lamont Hall ("Lamonsters," we crudely dubbed its occupants). I've never much wanted to be known as a preppy or a wasp. But others insist on applying those labels like a kick me sign on my back. It doesn't help that I stand out in the Semitic halls of The New Republic, where, during the Jewish holidays, I feel a "Twilight Zone"-like sense of aloneness. But it's the same everywhere. For one recent birthday, an Irish-Catholic friend gave me a t-shirt bearing the image of a Sunfish and the slogan i bet you can't even sail. (Well, can you?) Several years ago, Maureen Dowd aptly observed that wasps had become "the only group it was safe to belittle." I trace this development to the year 1980, when two major events occurred. One was the publication of Lisa Birnbach's The Preppy Handbook, whose cataloguing of preppy customs and habits-- Nantucket red pants, "Locust Valley lockjaw," breaking in your topsiders--transformed the prep from authority figure to figure of ridicule. (The prep image would take a downright sinister turn six years later, with the arrest of Manhattan's infamous "Preppy Killer.") The year 1980 also brought us the election of Ronald Reagan, the moment Goldwater conservatism finally conquered the GOP's moderate Northeastern Protestant establishment. Preps weren't just losing their dignity; they were losing their power. But, as in Newport Harbor, the cultural winds shift fast. New figures of social ridicule are displacing preps. A few years ago, for instance, The Preppy Handbook was ripped off and updated in the form of The Hipster Handbook. Preppy fashion, once the signifier of jerkdom in '80s movies (think of the bullying Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid or any jock from a John Hughes film), has come roaring back. Young women are donning pink-and-green ribbon belts--the same seen on the cover of that best-selling novel called, yes, Prep. Meanwhile, the guys are all "popping" (or turning up) their collars--thanks in part to hip- hop stars, of all people, who have somehow managed to equate preppiness with coolness. ("Pop Ya Collar," was an improbably named hit by Usher a few years ago.) Averell Harriman might gag on his gin and tonic. But I prefer imitation to ridicule. And now, the political comeback. On the Democratic side, Ned Lamont was foreshadowed by Howard Dean. Though less overtly preppy than Lamont, Dean is of the same world: born in East Hampton to a Wall Street man and an art appraiser; Rhode Island prep school attendee; Yale grad. Yet Dean is adored by the bohemians of Burlington and Berkeley. And what about the Republicans? After years of being routed by uncouth Texans and nutty evangelicals, the old Protestant establishment is roaring back. The George Bush who summers in Crawford is a discredited lame duck. The George Bush who summers in Kennebunkport has been vindicated on matters of foreign policy and fiscal responsibility. Why, perhaps this calls for a regatta! Maybe the clearest evidence that preps are enjoying a social amnesty was the failure of Lieberman's summer attack on Lamont for his membership in Greenwich's Round Hill Country Club--"not known for its diversity," as a Lieberman flyer coyly put it. This plotline presented the press with an ideal wasp- bashing opportunity. ("We'd jump at the chance to accept a black member," one local told The Stamford Advocate. "It's just they don't come live in Greenwich.") But the prep-haters never pounced, and even black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson defended Lamont. Nothing drove the new dynamic home, however, quite like the admiration for Lamont showed by msnbc's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who casts himself as the ultimate street-smart anti-snob. In an August 8 segment of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Matthews called Lamont "very waspy, ... very St. Paul's, almost, in a prep school sense. ... But he's not that bad. I have seen worse. He's OK." When even Matthews won't bash an old- school wasp, the rules have clearly changed. Or perhaps I'm just engaged in the sort of wishful thinking that led the wasps to think they'd be in charge forever. "I suppose there's a vague nostalgia for waspy statesman types," says Newsweek Editor Evan Thomas, who has chronicled the species. "But all the things people hate about wasps they still hate: that they're know-it-alls and superior. And, frankly, I think Lieberman might beat [Lamont] by pointing out that he is a privileged rich kid." Well, either way. As a fellow New Havener, I have warm feelings for Lieberman. But, if Lamont becomes the U.S. Senate's newest rock star--and America's most popular preppy--pardon me if I pour myself a gimlet and set sail for Wellfleet.