Good taste, high culture, higher education in “good schools,” a high moral tone, high seriousness, good manners, all that seems so antique in America today.

I wonder if in Paris they are not more like the old days in Boston and New York where you really could talk of a high society or high culture with highbrows and the tips of the various pyramids kind of converged over time, as new money became old money by being strained through certain schools, institutions, and private clubs.

You might be interested in a book called Old Money by Nelson Aldrich about that bygone world, (or Max Veblen on the Leisure Class?

High class with good taste makes you in America just another pointy head, an object of scorn, like Kerry educated at St Pauls and Yale, who never learned to pass for a man of the people. Nascar now that is the right taste for a man who would be King.