A New York Times critic predicted that the mustache may be arriving as a widely-emulated feature on the American male face, that it may be “shaking off” its “ties with the sexy-yet-bufoonish machismo of the mid-1970s, epitomized by Burt Reynolds, Sam Elliott and the Village People.”

The commentator saw as emerging evidence of mustaches’ respectability their recent and auspicious appearance on film actors such as Brad Pitt and James Franco.

The “mustache-rising” concept is diverting but unconvincing. And, to me, it’s reminiscent of perennial claims by style publications of the possible return of the hat.

Women’s fashion magazines, for example, forever are showing models wearing Easter riggings, or ladies in elaborate sun hats at imagined summer parties.

For men, it’s clothing catalogs that imply demand for the fedora, homburg, porkpie and the old reliable tweed cap.

Such hats are worn. But they haven’t had broad social currency in a very long time. It’s hard to believe  that’s going to change.

And so it is with mustaches.

There is nothing wrong with mustaches, of course. Like hats (or bow ties or fountain pens) they are a matter of personal taste and style, and do, indeed, have a narrow, deeply-committed following.

Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan is among St. Louis’ most highly-visible mustache proponents. He scoffs at the premise that mustaches are anything but widely-respected,  even admired provided they are accompanied by proper sideburns.

(“A mustache without proper sideburns,” he argues, is like “tonic without gin.”)

The Post-Dispatch editorial page has had occasion to consider the mustache’s place in our culture through a few serendipitous but serious mentionings over the past 25 years.

In 1986, page commented on the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s right hand man, Vyacheslav Molotov, noting his distinctive black mustache, and how he seldom smiled.

The page criticized a Disney Company rule forbidding employees from wearing facial hear, in 1990, pointing out its hypocrisy in light of how the seven dwarfs, all but one of whom are richly bearded, were marketed.

The mustache made a metaphorical appearance in a satirical editorial comparing John Bolton (the loose-cannon former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) to Yosemite Sam, and was positively exalted in an editorial send off to the magnificently, if somewhat eccentrically, mustachioed Col. Leonard Griggs, upon his retirement as director of St. Louis- Lambert Airport.

I think this array of references still presents a balanced perspective of the mustache’s minor place in our culture, one that doesn’t call for reconsideration or even updating.

Simply put, I see little evidence that the mustache’s standing in American society is in transition.