Good Old Boys

I ran across this over at the Junk Yard Blog.

Lyon was an old-school Texas Democrat politician, former cop turned lawyer, a conservative on most issues but basically a good old boy (and I don't mean that in a pejorative sense at all--in Texas, "good old boy" is generally a complement).

Exactly. Twenty years ago, to call someone a good old boy was a compliment. And yet the phrase is now taking on a pejorative connotation.

William Safire blamed the stock market bubble and crash on "the lax good-ol-boy stock exchanges" (7-15-02). The publisher of my local paper describes a "'me-little woman, you good-ol-boy' syndrome that somehow keeps women out of the ultimate top job in the Oval Office." (3-16-03) When Thomas Wyman resigned from Augusta National during the Martha Burk contretemps, he laid the problem at the feet of "some red neck, old-boy types down there."

What we have here is a mixing of two useful terms: "good old boy" and "old boy network". Good old boy suggests someone who is successful but is without pretension or airs, someone down to earth and comfortable with those who are not of his professional or financial status. A good old boy politician will not embarrass himself at a stock auction or tractor pull. He can josh with the crowd in the bleachers at a high school football game. He won't look uncomfortable eating funnel cakes with his fingers at a fair.

(I'm not sure you can call yourself a good old boy. It seems to me that it is an honor that can be bestowed, but not claimed. Someone who calls himself a good old boy is probably similar to all those self-described "caring" individuals who are really the most selfish of narcissists.)

An old boy is an entirely different critter. He was originally a graduate of an English public school. The old boy network was elitist to the extreme. It was the sinew of Establishment power. Old boys helped each other enter prestigious institutions, advanced each other's careers and covered up each others peccadillos. Blunt, Burgess, and the other Cambridge spies owed much of there success to their membership in the old boy network.

I first heard of the "good old boy network" in diversity training sessions. The GOBN was the cause of all the problems-- glass ceiling, discrimination, sexual harassment. I almost laughed when the diversity trainer laid that on us at First Chicago. There were no good old boys in senior management-- our chairman lived in New York-- so how could the GOBN prevent women from advancing to the EVP and SVP level?

Yet the term keeps showing up in that context. See here for example.

The "Good Old Boy" Factor

There’s no way around it,” explains Dr. Anna Duran, founder and director of Columbia University’s Executive Program on Managing Cultural Diversity, “as a result of any diversity efforts, white males will be required to share valuable resources, rewards, incentives and promotions with a wider range of people than ever before. For some, the reaction may be disappointment, for others, feelings of betrayal and even anger will color their opinions about the fact that the old rules are changing.

In terms of power, influence, and privilege, a tenured professor at Columbia is far better off than your typical good old boy. Similarly, Thomas Wyman-- graduate of Andover, Amherst, and Lausanne, executive at Pillsbury, Polaroid, CBS, and S. G. Warburg-- fits the old boy profile to a T. And i doubt that Wall Street has a lot of down to earth types doing IPOs or equity research: you certainly don't hear a lot of country accents on CNBC.

By focusing on good old boys, our elites can preach diversity and progress and never threaten their own position. As David Gelernter has noted (Drawing Life) affirmative action is not a threat to our cultural elites, it is a prescription that those elites force on the their fellow citizens. When you're trying to pull that off, it helps to have a whipping boy and that is what good old boys have become.