Rich people are being ‘demonized’ for flaunting their wealth. Poor dears!
By Barbara Ehrenreich,
WashPost
Published: September 30
The latest group to claim victim status is the rich. Actually the super-rich, whose wealth ordinarily exempts them from pity. While they are not yet subjected to airport profiling (except for early boarding and club access), they sense that the public is turning subtly against them — otherwise how could President Obama propose raising their taxes?
Admirers of the rich, led by pundits and politicians on the right — from Laura Ingraham to Larry Kudlow — have long derided the victimization claims of African Americans, women, gays and the unemployed, but now they’re raising their voices to defend the rich against what they see as an ugly tide of “demonization.”
At a time when poverty is soaring, unemployment hovers grimly above 9 percent and growing numbers of Americans suffer from “food insecurity” — the official euphemism for hunger — this concern may seem a tad esoteric. At a time when executive compensation is reaching dizzying new levels and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing as fast as the federal deficit, it may even seem a little perverse.
But even beyond the taxes-and-deficits debate, in which wealthy Americans have been routinely characterized as yacht owners and corporate-jet fliers, the rich have indeed suffered a few blows to their self-esteem. Last year’s film “The Social Network” was unflattering to exemplars of both new and old wealth, and now two new television series are being hyped by some in the media as incitements to class warfare. In “2 Broke Girls,” a couple of young women struggle to survive — not as runway models or high-maintenance housewives but, shockingly enough, as waitresses. And Time magazine titillatingly describes ABC’s “Revenge,” set in the Hamptons, as “a target-rich environment of polo players and stock traders” in which a young woman stalks the singularly overprivileged people who, years earlier, ruined her father. No less a social commentator than “Revenge” star Madeleine Stowe has observed that “we’re dealing in a particular time right now in American history where I think the average American is going to want to see a takedown of the rich.”
(More here.)
WashPost
Published: September 30
The latest group to claim victim status is the rich. Actually the super-rich, whose wealth ordinarily exempts them from pity. While they are not yet subjected to airport profiling (except for early boarding and club access), they sense that the public is turning subtly against them — otherwise how could President Obama propose raising their taxes?
Admirers of the rich, led by pundits and politicians on the right — from Laura Ingraham to Larry Kudlow — have long derided the victimization claims of African Americans, women, gays and the unemployed, but now they’re raising their voices to defend the rich against what they see as an ugly tide of “demonization.”
At a time when poverty is soaring, unemployment hovers grimly above 9 percent and growing numbers of Americans suffer from “food insecurity” — the official euphemism for hunger — this concern may seem a tad esoteric. At a time when executive compensation is reaching dizzying new levels and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing as fast as the federal deficit, it may even seem a little perverse.
But even beyond the taxes-and-deficits debate, in which wealthy Americans have been routinely characterized as yacht owners and corporate-jet fliers, the rich have indeed suffered a few blows to their self-esteem. Last year’s film “The Social Network” was unflattering to exemplars of both new and old wealth, and now two new television series are being hyped by some in the media as incitements to class warfare. In “2 Broke Girls,” a couple of young women struggle to survive — not as runway models or high-maintenance housewives but, shockingly enough, as waitresses. And Time magazine titillatingly describes ABC’s “Revenge,” set in the Hamptons, as “a target-rich environment of polo players and stock traders” in which a young woman stalks the singularly overprivileged people who, years earlier, ruined her father. No less a social commentator than “Revenge” star Madeleine Stowe has observed that “we’re dealing in a particular time right now in American history where I think the average American is going to want to see a takedown of the rich.”
(More here.)
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