February 28th 2009
Class Warfare
T
here’s a book excerpt in Salon today, a story by a Brooklyn woman of her quest to buy a home back before the bubble burst, driven by the common fear that if she didn’t get in, she would continue to pay landlords for the rest of her live, that her children would never play in their own backyard.
The excerpt ends abruptly after two pages, just as she’s talking with her Realtor about buying a place using a no-documentation loan. I know the rest. They get a crappy, expensive loan and buy a vastly overpriced home. They’re now upside down, and since they never really had the wherewithall to afford the place, they’re at risk of losing it and want The Gift-Giver in DC to bail them out using other people’s money.
Yawn. Not interested. But I am interested in the class hatred this woman exhibits as she watches more successful families move into the new condos that are being built in her new neighborhood:
Later, I’m in the park with my friend Geri and our spawn. I’m talking about the weekend and the million-dollar condos and the fancy new crop of families at the school when I find myself off on a rant against rich people and their designer diaper bags that starts from my toes and gushes forth like a Vesuvius of resentment. “These douchebags come in and ruin everything. What is it?” I ask. “Why do they make me so crazy?”
Geri, with all the wisdom of the Dalai Lama if he’d grown up over a bar in New Jersey, fixes her gaze on me. “Do you know any rich people?” she asks.
I ponder this. I have a suspicion a few of our friends are wealthier than they let on, but actual, three-kids-in-private-school, wheeeee-I-have-so-much-money rich? “A few,” I tell her.
“They’re all a**holes, right?” she replies. I have to admit she has a point there. “You don’t get rich enough to buy a house in this neighborhood today unless you’re f***ing people. So when you see somebody pushing one of those $800 strollers, you know it was paid for by f***ing people. That,” she says with a flourish, “is what you hate.”
That’s it? If you’re rich, you might as well have a tattoo on your forhead that says “I f*** people?”
Look, I live in Coto, where the nefarious “Real” Housewifes of Orange County folks live, so I know ruinous rich folks when I see them, but I also know plenty of amazingly decent people who happen to be rich – and they didn’t get there by hurting others. I know an amazingly giving and charitable family that owns a chain of restaurants that serve hearty meals and a fair price, and another that owns a chain of hotels and loses bookings every day because they refuse to put pay-for-view movies in the rooms since doing so would require carrying porn.
Rich folks like this are all over the place; it’s called success, achieving your dreams, filling a need. And if the author of the book gets bailed out, it will be these rich people who pay for her mistake. Obama will dig deep into their pockets so the Brooklynite doesn’t have to deal with her prejudices and her errors, so that she can go on with a grudge on her shoulder, hating anyone who does better than her, demanding a neutered and dying America so she can feel better.
She’s an Obama gal. No doubt.
