F. Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong; it’s not the rich who are different from you and me — it’s the posh. There is no social act so rude or outrageous that it cannot be explained and then excused on the grounds that the perpetrator was posh.
I was recently at a drinks party and saw a man scratching his bottom in front of the buffet table — a full, hand-down–trouser buttock-scratch. With the very same hand that he’d used on his bottom, he picked up a sausage, examined it and put it back in the pile. He then picked up another sausage and put it back. Then, after another quick bottom–scratch, he began to poke around the samosas.
Cosmo Landesman debates the posh with etiquette guru Liz Brewer:
The thought that maybe it was inconsiderate to indulge in bottom-scratching and sausage-hunting with the same hand never occurred to this man. When I confronted him with the antisocial nature of his actions, instead of reacting with acute embarrassment and a profusion of apologies, he just laughed and went off, no doubt, to fondle other bits of party food.
I informed our hostess about what I had witnessed, adding, ‘He must be totally pissed!’ But instead of sharing my sense of concern she shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Oh no, he’s not pissed. He’s just posh.’
It’s amazing the way middle-class society will make excuses for the bad behaviour of someone whom it believes to be posh. If a guest is drunk, makes a pass at your wife or your teenage daughter, vomits all over your sofa and passes out on your living room floor, it’s perfectly OK — as long as he’s posh.
I know this because I know a man who did just that at a dinner party a year ago — and not for the first time.
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