The Sore Winners: Will America's Super Minority Sink Us All?
October 27, 2010 at 1:22PM
by Tom Junod
Esquire.com
Last summer — long before Bill O'Reilly reminded Whoopi Goldberg that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," well before Jan Brewer reminded the Arizona police what identity politics mean today, and certainly before an election that's less a referendum than a migration toward some irascible and irreconcilable extreme — I visited a friend I hadn't seen in a half-dozen years. He was doing well, and I was happy to see it. He had gotten into some trouble when we were in school — trouble that I had participated in, without paying much of a price — and he had never gotten a chance to graduate from college. Now he radiated the brusque confidence of the self-made man. He was making money and he was spending money. He had a 26-foot fishing boat in his driveway, and a 45-foot boat in a nearby harbor. His house was recently renovated and expanded, as was his swimming pool. And the oldest of his children — a son — was just about to go off to college, fulfilling his father's dream. The school was a Catholic university, and although it was expensive, the boy was able to get a partial scholarship and a job. It wasn't going to be easy, but he would probably make it through without bankrupting his parents.
I figured that my friend would be proud of his son and of himself. I figured that he would be pleased by how far he had come. And he was, stridently so. But he wasn't as happy for himself as I was for him. Indeed, he wasn't as happy for himself as he was pissed off at everybody else. He was pissed off at President Obama, for the health care bill and for the promise of higher taxes. But mostly he was pissed off at a system that he believed to be rigged, in favor of... well, President Obama, but also illegal immigrants. Those taxes he was paying? Illegals didn't pay any of them. That health-care bill he hated? Illegals were going to benefit from it. That school his son was going to attend in the fall? He'd be going to a better one, if his last name was Gonzalez. That trouble that he had gotten into when he was a kid? It would be enough to keep him out of politics, but if Obama had gotten into the same kind of fix, "the media" would have agreed to ignore it, the same way they agreed to ignore Jeremiah Wright. ("There's a memo!", he claimed.) And those four children who were doing so well in sports and in school? They were doing well because they worked hard, and they worked hard because their parents reminded them that they had to — "I tell my kids all the time, You're not going to get the breaks some other kids get," my friend's wife said. "They might be able to make mistakes, but you can't, because of who you are."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/sore-winners-102710
by Tom Junod
Esquire.com
Last summer — long before Bill O'Reilly reminded Whoopi Goldberg that "Muslims killed us on 9/11," well before Jan Brewer reminded the Arizona police what identity politics mean today, and certainly before an election that's less a referendum than a migration toward some irascible and irreconcilable extreme — I visited a friend I hadn't seen in a half-dozen years. He was doing well, and I was happy to see it. He had gotten into some trouble when we were in school — trouble that I had participated in, without paying much of a price — and he had never gotten a chance to graduate from college. Now he radiated the brusque confidence of the self-made man. He was making money and he was spending money. He had a 26-foot fishing boat in his driveway, and a 45-foot boat in a nearby harbor. His house was recently renovated and expanded, as was his swimming pool. And the oldest of his children — a son — was just about to go off to college, fulfilling his father's dream. The school was a Catholic university, and although it was expensive, the boy was able to get a partial scholarship and a job. It wasn't going to be easy, but he would probably make it through without bankrupting his parents.
I figured that my friend would be proud of his son and of himself. I figured that he would be pleased by how far he had come. And he was, stridently so. But he wasn't as happy for himself as I was for him. Indeed, he wasn't as happy for himself as he was pissed off at everybody else. He was pissed off at President Obama, for the health care bill and for the promise of higher taxes. But mostly he was pissed off at a system that he believed to be rigged, in favor of... well, President Obama, but also illegal immigrants. Those taxes he was paying? Illegals didn't pay any of them. That health-care bill he hated? Illegals were going to benefit from it. That school his son was going to attend in the fall? He'd be going to a better one, if his last name was Gonzalez. That trouble that he had gotten into when he was a kid? It would be enough to keep him out of politics, but if Obama had gotten into the same kind of fix, "the media" would have agreed to ignore it, the same way they agreed to ignore Jeremiah Wright. ("There's a memo!", he claimed.) And those four children who were doing so well in sports and in school? They were doing well because they worked hard, and they worked hard because their parents reminded them that they had to — "I tell my kids all the time, You're not going to get the breaks some other kids get," my friend's wife said. "They might be able to make mistakes, but you can't, because of who you are."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/sore-winners-102710
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