They lived in a floating Ruritania losely bounded by L.L. But my family and their friends, as Wasps, were circumscribed less by skin tones and religion than by a set of traditions and expectations: a cast of mind. I’m too cheap to spring for a new acronym. Worse, the adjective is pejorative: “Waspy” is reserved for horse-faced women, tight-assed men, penny pinchers, and a capella groups. Elvis Presley was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, as is Bill Clinton, but they are not what anyone means by “Wasp.” Waspiness is an overlay on human character, like the porcelain veneer that protects the surface of a damaged tooth. The ACRONYM “Wasp,” from “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant,” is one many Wasps dislike, as it’s redundant – Anglo-Saxons are perforce white – and inexact. Given the frequency with which the term Wasp is bandied about by fashion bloggers, and particularly in light of the recent dust up between Ivy Style and Wasp 101, I thought it might be useful to let someone with some expertise on the matter cast some light. In the first chapter of Cheerful Money, Friend begins to unpack the meaning of Wasp and discusses why that term is not really accurate in describing old money families and their mores. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a graduate of Harvard University. The Night Listener went on to become a Times best-seller, and Tony, real or imagined, continued to haunt the people who believed they had known him.Tad Friend, in his 2009 memoir Cheerful Money: Me, My Family and the Last Days of Wasp Splendor, reveals in candid detail his complicated upbringing and emotionally insular life in an illustrious family, which includes a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a president of Swarthmore College and generations of Ivy League degrees. The expert's conclusion added to the mystery. However, some of what Tony said was said by an actual child. Writer consulted with a police expert on voices, who said that, for a large part of the conversation between himself, Tony and Vicki, that Vicki did most of the talking, even when 'Tony' was talking. The few who had met Tony, could not be sure they boy they met was the one with whom they had spoken. Monette began to investigate Vicki Johnson, and discovered she was a woman who was interested in creative writing, and had no credentials in social work. Her article, "The Author Nobody's Met" ran in May of 1993. After publication of his book, Tony became the subject of a number of feature stories, including one on the front page of USA Today and one in thePost, and Michele Ingrassia of Newsweek began to investigate. Anderson noticed that Vicki Johnson and Tony had the same voice, and several of his friend had noticed incongruities in Tony's stories about himself. A television documentary was made of Tony's life, using a child actor in his stead. John Phair of Northwestern medical school. Although he had lost a leg and been injured by a stroke, Tony continued his phone conversations with well-known writers and activists, including Jay Godby (whose name Tony adopted as his middle name), editor David Groff, Terry Anderson (Maupin's partner), and Dr. The book was extraordinarily sophisticated for a fifteen-year-old to have written, and Tony was heralded as a kind of abused prodigy and inspiration for everyone. Publishers at Crown books published Johnson's "A Rock and a Hard Place," Tony's memoir of his abuse and illness. He wrote to and befriended Paul Monette, the gay activist and author of "Love Alone," and "Borrowed Time." Monette’s view of Tony concurred with Maupin's. Maupin was not the first writer to whom Tony reached out. Although Maupin had never met Anthony Johnson, nicknamed Tony, he felt Tony was a close friend and one of the more inspirational people he had ever met, and their friendship was the basis of Maupin's book The Night Listener. For months Armistead Maupin had been talking on the phone with Anthony Godby Johnson, the adopted son of Vicki Johnson, a social worker whom he claimed had adopted him after his real parents were tried and sentenced for physical and sexual abuse. A REPORTER AT LARGE on how several writers were drawn in by the apparently fictitious story of a deeply talented, sexually abused boy who had contracted AIDS from one of his abusers.
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