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The Etiquette of Class War
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So it's come to this then: war, class war. The House Republicans and their allies, who live at the best addresses on Earth, have a casus belli:
President Obama is assaulting their class by suggesting that they pay more tax.
The Good Lord alone knows where it will end or how many of the aristocrats, the oligarchs, will be forced into exile in hostile extremes like Liechtenstein, Monaco, Geneva and Bermuda.
Oh, the coming horror! Families torn apart as rich brother faces off against poor brother, taxpaying daughter in love with tax-exempt heir, children who have scored in Silicon Valley bitterly divided from their parents over Social Security and Medicare.
Even now, the battle lines are being drawn in Aspen, the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard and Palm Beach. Surreptitiously, Perrier and Champagne are being stockpiled. And priest-holes are being constructed for tax-shelter preparers, who fear the arrival of the middle-class mob — that frenzied and irrational mass who want the American Dream back. Fools! Why can’t they see that a higher power has chosen who should be rich and who should be in debt?
And, besides, it's the rich who create jobs. Who do the Democrats think hires the chauffeurs, private jet pilots, butlers, maids, caterers and house contractors (who tear down lovely homes and build big, ugly ones)?
It's the rich that are holding together what's left of the housing market.
What Keynesian, pinko Europhile can afford six houses? A middle-class wretch can hardly hold onto the house he or she has, let alone boost the economy by buying a $23-million triplex on Park Avenue.
The trouble is, I'm not sure we know how to run a class war. But as a Brit-American, I regard myself as something of an expert. So, fellow Americans, here are a few tips:
1. Sadly for House Speaker John Boehner, it's not just about money. Those who have “class” know what it is, and they censure those who don't.
2. Money is important, but only if it was stolen and/or made by an ancestor at least three generations ago. Money — even billions — made in your lifetime, or that of a parent, is a no-no. It will have you limited by the dreadful appellation “nouveau riche”: a state worse than being broke, in class terms.
3. To get into the upper class (assuming you don't have an hereditary title that is at least five generations old), you must have attended the right school: Eton for boys and Roedean for girls.
4. If neither of these desirable qualifications are yours, you must speak the Queen's English; affect a passion for cricket and polo; and revere the undefined qualities of breeding, refinement and the rituals of marriage. The latter means that you can sleep with almost anyone, just as long as you marry someone like you and raise children like you. Then you're ready for the ruling class, and to be ridiculed in the popular press as “bosses.”
Well, clearly that kind of class clash isn't for the Republicans.
Our class-war model is cleaner and simpler: Money is akin to divinity and shouldn’t be adulterated by taxation and the middle class, whose moral responsibility is to take up the tax burden and tug at a grateful forelock.
The working class, you say, where are they? Don't be silly, vote-hungry politicians promoted them into the middle class years ago. Anyway, now everyone thinks the workers all come from Mexico.
Prepare for the worst; secession by Martha's Vineyard and barricades on the Upper East Side, Michigan Avenue and Palm Beach.
Only in Malibu and Beverly Hills can we expect hand-to-hand fighting; Sockless actors in loafers standing with their bankers, while their wives fret about what to wear to the class war. They're tricky, class-war uniforms. – For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate
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Washington on Vacation: From Martha’s Vineyard to the Political Vineyards
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That great sucking sound you hear is the annual evacuation of Washingtonians. Tired and weary, but nonetheless self-important, they snatch a little beach time and act like other people.
The upper tier — including President Obama and his family — flock to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. A few — most notably storied editor Ben Bradlee and his fabled party giving-wife, Sally Quinn — enjoy the delights of Long Island and the Hamptons. Alas, Washington incomes aren’t commensurate with Washington egos; hence the Hamptons are only for the few, and those with super-rich friends.
A little pity, please, for members of Congress at this time of year. While bureaucrats, senior civil servants, lobbyists and journalists have boardwalk splinters in their feet and spilled beer on their T-shirts, legislators have to face the voters. Ugh!
This year, that’s an especially nasty experience.
All the polls say only about 11 percent of the country approve of the job Congress is doing. That’s tough enough, but this year there are the unemployed–the same unemployed as last year, but now they are more bitter and angry.
Legislators have forgotten the platitudes used to calm the unemployed last year. But the unemployed have not; and worse, the local TV stations can pull up clips as fast as a member of Congress can say “my record shows.”
If you’ve made a point of denouncing the deficit, it’s hard to explain why you haven’t been more diligent in bringing home the bacon to your constituency. If it’s your summer boondoggle, it’s hard to explain that it’s an entitlement.
You get a holiday in an election year? Get off it. When comfortably re-elected, you can contemplate a little time with you feet up. Unless you want to join the unemployed, better campaign; and campaign some more when fatigue has gripped you by the soft parts. Hit the phones and beg for money.
To stay in Washington, you need to be able to denounce Washington in brutal terms, while yearning for the members’ dining room, the simpering of the staff, and the adulation of the cable television network that agrees with you.
Every day you must praise the wonders of America and your fabulous constituency, while you long for a congressional fact-finding trip to London, Paris or Rome. After all, you’ve been stuffed with barbecue since you got back to the voters: the God-fearing, family-loving, hard-working, ignorant pain-in-the-butt hicks.
What do voters know of the burden of office?
What do they know of you being cajoled in the White House while the TV cameras are lining the driveway, waiting just for you? What do they know of representing our country at dinner at 10 Downing Street or the Elysee Palace? Have they ever had an audience with the Pope?
What do the voters know of the thrill of dropping in on our troops in Afghanistan with a TV crew? If you do that, you can almost book yourself on a Sunday morning talk show. Heck you can feel thrilled on “Meet the Press,” even if David Gregory reads aloud an encyclopedic list of your gaffes, votes, and friends of the opposite sex.
Actually, the worker bees of the nation’s capital just hate to be away. If you are a member of Congress, you’re reminded that there are nasty people with clever advertising agencies, trying to get into Washington and make you part of that unemployment statistic.
Even those who don’t have to run for office feel the burden of free-floating anxiety. Who’s after my job? I make out to be the most important job in the most important city in the world, even if I know in my heart I’m a clerk.
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The lost art of debate — and other wordy topics
February 6th, 2012
Guests: Aram Bakshian, author and critic; Atul Singh, Fair Observer
Obama’s strengths and weaknesses; the Internet
January 23rd, 2012
Guests: Tim Farley, Sirius XM Radio; Adam Clayton Powell III, University of Southern California; Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madsen Report
A discussion of Shirley’s book, “December 1941: 31 Days That Saved America and Changed the World”
January 16th, 2012
Guest Craig Shirley, author
World events as the U.S. elections get fully underway
January 9th, 2012
Guests Arnaud de Borchgrave, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Andrei Sitov, Itar-Tass; Al Leeds, The Washington Post
The Joys of Transportation
January 2nd, 2012
Guests Bill Gouse, Transportation Consultant – Originally Broadcast October 16, 2011