That piece about the custom-car world of Southern California, along with wildly entertaining takes by Wolfe on American culture,--such as "Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers and
Radical Chic"--showed me and a whole generation that--wow--this journalism can be fun!!!
An ingenious phrase maker, he branded such expressions as '
radical chic' for rich liberals' fascination with revolutionaries; and the 'Me' generation, defining the self-absorbed babyboomers of the 1970s.
He coined so many terms that are now part of the language: Social X-rays, masters of the universe,
radical chic, the right stuff, the Me Decade.
He described pretentious liberals as the "
radical chic" and the 1970s as "the me decade".
Thirty years ago this week, thousands of Filipinos amassed at EDSA - the squatters from the slums, the middle class and the
radical chic from the gated enclaves.
An ingenious phrase maker, he helped brand such expressions as "
radical chic" for rich liberals' fascination with revolutionaries; and the "Me" generation, defining the self-absorbed baby boomers of the 1970s.
With actresses Cara Delevingne and Isabelle Huppert in the front row, Chiuri went on a magical mystery tour of late 1960s
radical chic.
Today, there are shows featuring the extremists: the
radical chic, the white supremacists, the intolerant, the resentful, the nationalists, the Antifa, the Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, the politically correct, the vegans, the machine-gun lovers, the alt-right, the Christopher Columbus statue haters ...
Critics of
radical chic feminized the notion with the (admittedly clever) label "Prada Meinhof"--a play on the alternative appellation for RAF's first generation: the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
Museum-based appropriations of agitprop often come off as either deferential or exploitive--a seesaw with Sam Durant's championing of the Black Panthers' Emory Douglas at one end and Josephine Meckseper's peddling of RAF as
radical chic at the other.
Tom Wolfe memorably portrayed a later such development, an exploitative reaction to the Great Society, in his little gem
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970).