{"id":106845,"date":"2015-09-20T08:42:50","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T12:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106845"},"modified":"2015-09-20T09:36:01","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T13:36:01","slug":"bling-alexander-hamilton-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=106845","title":{"rendered":"Bling, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alexander-hamilton41\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nEarlier this month, I wrote a post<\/a> in defense of and contextualizing “bling.” Some guy had said he had a “visceral” dislike of “bling,” in regards to Straight Outta Compton<\/i> on a Facebook thread and it bugged me. Bugged me BAD. <\/p>\n

It occurred to me, in the week following seeing Hamilton<\/i> on Broadway<\/a>, an experience from which I still have not recovered, that there is a connection to Alexander Hamilton. <\/p>\n

He loved finery. Only the best. He loved silk tailored suits, colors, shiny shoes. He insinuated himself, through his charm and smarts, into the Schuyler family, one of the wealthiest and most influential in New York. He knew he had to “marry up” and he did. His tastes ran towards the lush and ostentatious. Attention-getting. For this (and for many many other things), he was sneered at behind his back (and to his face). People made fun of his finery. Early America was in revolt against a lush over-the-top monarchy. Even if one was wealthy, one played it down, dressed plainly, did not make a show of one’s money. It just was not done. Even Thomas Jefferson, who also loved all the best things, like wine and gadgets and velvet and rare books, made a big show of being “one of the guys”. It was a political consideration. People were suspicious of you if you made a show of your wealth. <\/p>\n

So not only did Hamilton’s enemies hate his finery because he seemed to be “putting on” too much, especially since he had such humble beginnings, but they thought it was a dangerous sign of yearning for a return to monarchy. This was borne out (at least in their minds) by his belief in a strong central government. Abigail Adams warned her husband, “That man is another Bonaparte.” He wasn’t, though. But he went against the grain of his time. (And, as Chernow points out, and as is totally obvious, it is Hamilton’s world we are living in now – for better or for worse – not Jefferson’s, not Adams’.) <\/p>\n

But Alexander Hamilton’s “bling” came from the same place that pro-basketball players’ bling comes from, or rap stars, or guys like Elvis, or even nouveau riche folks who made their money the hard way, remembering being poor, and now reap the rewards, in gigantic homes, flashy cars, where success MUST MUST be visible. From poverty to millionaire in a matter of years? Hell yes to the bling. It means you SURVIVED.<\/p>\n

Hamilton was born illegitimate in St. Croix. His father abandoned the family. There was some modest wealth in his mother’s family, but because she had a baby out of wedlock she was thrust outside the circle of civilized society and she was not given a cent. Hamilton grew up poverty-struck, surrounded by absolute chaos. His mother kept a goat in her yard, and sold apothecary-type stuff out of her house. And soon after she was abandoned by her lover, she died of an unspecified but grotesque illness. Hamilton fell sick from the same thing at the same time, and the two of them lay together in a sick room, being given “cures” of the most horrible kind. They were given enemas, laxatives, purgatives, all to get the sickness OUT of them, by any orifice necessary. So one can only imagine what mother\/son experienced in that room. Hamilton recovered but his mother died (of the disease or the “cure” can’t be certain), in wracking pain and anguish, right next to him. He and his brother were not eligible for any kind of money from either his mother’s family or his father’s. They were bastards. “Whore-children” as one family member put it in a document. Nice. Hamilton’s cousin took him in, a cousin who “lived in sin” and total squalor with a black mistress. The cousin shot himself and stabbed himself multiple times, a suicide. Hamilton witnessed the aftermath of that also, a bloody horrific scene. He was 14 years old, remember. He had had almost no schooling, although tutoring from his mother. He was excellent at math, he was a voracious reader, he spoke French with ease, he wrote poetry (one poem, written at age 14, basically describes how to make a woman come. Boy was either putting on a big show of being grown-up or he was sexually precocious. I assume the latter, but who knows. He grew up FAST.) He had no prospects in life. He was destined to live a small narrow life, with financial disasters, physical frailness, and probably become some kind of scam artist like many of his relatives. Because of his clear mathematical abilities, Hamilton got a clerkship with a trading company. He managed the whole complicated and stressful operation. He was 15, 16 years old. There were multiple currencies in flow, and he had to manage all of those exchanges. He had to scold ship captains for bringing in faulty\/broken products. He did so with arrogance and panache. He had nothing to fall back on. He had no money, no family, and had already learned rejection, treachery, betrayal, sickness, poverty, trauma, chaos. But his mind was so fine, his writing so good, that it got the attention of a local influential pastor, who took up a collection to send Hamilton to college in the colonies. When Hamilton showed up at Princeton, he informed the admissions committee, that he would be going at his own pace in his studies (meaning: as quickly as possible.) They were like, “Who do you think you are? You’ll go at the pace of everyone else and graduate with everyone else.” Hamilton said, “Thanks but no thanks” and ended up going to King’s College (now Columbia) in Manhattan, which let him do whatever the hell he wanted and also put him smack-dab in the middle of the Revolution, where he belonged.<\/p>\n

So those are the bare-(ish) bones of his early life. Horrifying. <\/p>\n

Of course when he became a lawyer he would stock up on beautiful silk clothes, gleaming over-the-top carriages, and gorgeous ostentatious homes filled with expensive things. <\/p>\n

Poverty brings shame. Not just then, although it was more acute then, even though there were charities and churches designed to help the poor. But Hamilton’s shame about his past, filled with scandal and lawsuits and imprisonment (his mother was jailed for four months at one point, in a horrifically rough and unsanitary prison) was so strong that he never spoke of it, except in a vague way in letters to close friends. The bare-bones of his story was well-known to his political colleagues and enemies, who used it against him. (John Adams dismissed him, referring to him as “the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.”) <\/p>\n

The pain was so great he turned his back on it once he boarded the ship to the colonies and he never (seemingly, although there are exceptions) looked back. <\/p>\n

His eventual “bling” needed to be visible because of where he came from. It was a message, a warning, to those who underestimated him, sneered at him: I am not to be trifled with. I have come from a worse place than you ever could fucking imagine. I deserve every single good thing. I have EARNED it.<\/i><\/p>\n

It was also a visible reminder, to the world, to himself: I will never ever go back to such despair and impoverishment. I will never again be that poor. I will not only BE somebody. I already AM somebody. Look at me GLEAM. Watch me SHINE.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, I wrote a post in defense of and contextualizing “bling.” Some guy had said he had a “visceral” dislike of “bling,” in regards to Straight Outta Compton on a Facebook thread and it bugged me. Bugged me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106845"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106862,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106845\/revisions\/106862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}