Mountain of Judgment

Via Steve Gilliard, The New Republic's culture writer Lee Siegel, fresh off his battle with the "hard fascism" of the left-wing blogosphere, has found a new enemy:

Siegel V. Baseball Caps

Oh how I hate these things. I didn't mind them when a few people wore them. Then it served as the rudimentary expression of taste, or as the vague outline of identity. But soon everyone began putting them on their heads. It's gotten so black kids from the ghetto have to wear them with the bill pulled down over their eyes just so they won't be mistaken for yuppie bankers.

The baseball cap's insinuation that life is a game with transparent rules gets to me. Also the insinuation that by wearing a baseball cap in inappropriate situations--like indoors--you have what it takes to break the rules and win the game. And I'm bothered by the herdlike nature of the baseball-cap trend mixed with its affectation of insouciance. The baseball-cap people want to have the lofty cool indifference of an aristocrat, yet their need to have it in the standard approved way makes them anything but cool and indifferent.

But the baseball cap signifies, most of all, a lazily defiant casualness. It's less insouciant than I-don't-give-a-shit. I have an inborn antagonism toward any type of hierarchy, but I think natural elegance is the best reply to assigned status, not sloppy rebellion. Wearing your standard-issue baseball cap in a restaurant isn't a blow for egalitarianism; it's a hopelessness about the possibility of originality ever to fly in the face of hierarchy. It also gives the impression of someone whose ego is angrily planted on his head. NO, I won't take it off!When I see someone wearing a baseball cap in a movie theater, I want them to bring back the guillotine.

Next in TNR:

Lee Siegel Wishes Someone Would Take These Damnable Beatniks And Flay Them Alive. Seriously.

Lee Siegel Vs. The Punk Kids Who Won't Get Off My Lawn

Lee Siegel Hates Women Who Wear Dungaerees Like They Think They're Working Men

Lee Siegel: "Rock and Roll has got to go!"

Lee Siegel Takes On "Casual Fridays". With A Flamethrower.

Lee Siegel Wants To Know Why Anyone Would Take A Baby On An Airplane, And Will Someone Please Kill Them With A Chainsaw?

Lee Siegel Thinks Tattoos Are Horrid, And Only For Tribesmen

Lee Siegel: You Know What Was Really Sexy? When Women's Clothing Left Something to The Imagination! A Well-Turned Ankle Is Far Sexier Than Some Strumpet Parading Around In Her Bathing Outfit!

Lee Siegel Asks, "quesadilla"? Is that Mexican for grilled cheese sandwich? Why not just call it a Mexican grilled cheese? Who are they trying to kid? (Kill...Kill...)

Lee Siegel's 25 Favorite Lawrence Welk LPs.

Lee Siegel's Jihad Against Ketchup

Lee Siegel thinks the NBA playoffs are too long, and they should just give the medal to the team with the best record at the end of the season. The game has gone downhill anyway since they replaced guys like Bob Cousy with this current crop of baggy pants-wearing jokers. You know what I mean.

Lee Siegel's "Hipper Hopper" Problem...And Yours

Lee Siegel Vs. The Ringtone Of Doom

Lee Siegel On The Prime Example Of Declining Societal Standards, Stanley Crouch

Lee Siegel Saw This Thing On TV The Other Night That He Hated. Not That He Has A TV.

Why I Don't Fart, By Lee Siegel

Lee Siegel Wants These Motherfucking Baseball Caps Out Of This Motherfucking Restaurant.