The More Things Change...Great Passage in Emma Lathen

In one of my favorite Emma Lathen mysteries, Sweet and Low, Thatcher unwillingly attends a shindig at a museum. He is on the board of a company that is handing over a priceless Etruscan vase to two Italian businessmen.

At the shindig is a pompous, full-of-himself photographer who eschews worldly motives (while discussing how to maximize profits with his followers). The photographer, Phibbs, wants to create a documentary called Greed. Thatcher, he determines, should star in the documentary as the indifferent, money-obsessed banker. 

"I see it all." Phibbs was gripped by creative ecstasy. "You're toying with [the vase] callously."

Thatcher stiffened at this preposterous statement. Say what you will about bankers, they do not toy carelessly with breakables having an insurance cover of over a million dollars.

"Then you hand the vase to Dr. Mercado here," Phibbs continued. "He accepts it reverently, almost humbly. It has no meaning for you. Instead, you're reading the check Dr. Mercado has given you, thanking him for the two hundred thousand dollars but--"

"Two hundred and twenty-five thousand," Dr. Mercado corrected amiably and added, "You don't catch me touching that thing. What if I break it?"

"It's a lucky thing that you speak English so well," Phibbs told him. "It would be a crying shame to have to dub on a masterpiece like this."

Even Italian amiability has it limits. "Why shouldn't I speak English well? I went to Rensselaer Polytech."

For an instant, Phibbs was shaken. He preferred his sensitive Continentals to have learned their English at Oxford. He made an immediate recovery. "We don't have to mention it," he said. 

"Why shouldn't we mention it? Rensselaer is a first-class engineering school."

"Look, we're pushing the fact that you're an artist, that you appreciate the intrinsic greatness of the vase, you respond instinctively. Why bring engineering into it?" Phibbs was almost shouting. 

"I'm not an artist. I'm a capitalist."

There was a shocked silence. Four-letter abuse was common in Phibbs' circles--and in his films--but there were still words that he reacted to like a maiden aunt. Of course, he didn't hear them often. 

"I thought you said you were Dr. Mercado," he said suspiciously. "What are you a doctor of?"

"I'm a doctor of electrical engineering. I make cathode ray tubes for television sets."

Phibbs' world was crashing around his ears. "I'm afraid you won't do for Greed."

Pigeonholing people with an undercurrent of reductionist bigotry, then reacting with shocked Victorian sensibilities: Phibbs is the perfect modern dogmatic academic progressive!

Sweet and Low was written in 1974.

The more things change...the more they stay the same.