It is hard out here
Since you asked:
Anyone see “Wedding Crashers”?
That incredibly obnoxious boyfriend of the girl that Owen Wilson steals does a dead-on portrayal of rich, Ivy League arrogant preppies. Growing up outside of Chicago, I knew guys who went to Eastern prep schools but they were nothing like the characters I met while working on Wall Street.
The pompous arrogance of these privileged schmucks knows no limits. You simply cannot imagine the deepness of their smugness combined with their deep-rooted condescending distain for those of us not as fortunate.
This universally despised image of the snooty prep school stereotype is probably why the Duke Lacrosse team was rushed to judgment by so many in the press and in politics.
When you and I talk excitedly about going skiing at Mammoth or Lake Tahoe, they are talking about jetting to Val d ‘esire. When we say we want to save money and go to Maui or Las Vegas, they are taking about a yacht off the coast of a Greek Island or Nice, France, the Bahamas or Monte Carlo. And that is all happening while they are still in prep school.
These clowns live in an entirely different world than almost all other people, they even have their own lock-jaw language of slang, so, naturally, they cling to each other. Their powerful and wealthy parents were too busy partying to raise them so they were shipped off to boarding schools where they knew, no matter how drunk, stoned and coked-up they were, they would end up in the Ivy League school of their choice.
It’s the exact same thing when they get to Harvard and Yale; those of the elite know they will graduate so why bother to study? Not only that, no matter how much they don’t study, they also know they will land a huge high profile job on Wall Street or Madison Ave or in politics.
That is why we are seeing so many amazing people, like the Google guys, coming out of Stanford. Stanford’s mission statement has always been to not be like Harvard and actually make the students work for their degree.
But guess what? Does the preppies lifetime of no work and no education catch up to them like it would for you and me? Hell no, their amazing connections land them huge business deals and the unfair process begins all over again.
In Southern California this phenomenon is known as USC.
Do we despise these people? Of course we do. Why wouldn’t we? They are utterly loathsome. But do we also, deep down, greatly admire them and feel envy and inferiority? Yes, sadly, we do. It’s the same with Royalty in England. No matter how much Americans make fun of them and joke about them, we are still impressed by English Royalty. (Although I never got the Lady Di thing)
As we are, most of us, descendents of poor immigrants, slaves and red-headed step child colonists, we just can’t help but worship these blue bloods, it’s in our DNA. And the closest thing that resembles British royalty in our country are, sadly, these rich, arrogant spoiled preppie brats. Like it or not, these world-class jerks are our princes and princesses.
When I worked out at the Downtown Athletic Club after working on Wall Street in the eighties, more than a couple of times I shared the bench press with the closest thing our country has had to a real prince: John F. Kennedy Junior. Was I star struck? As I lifetime Kennedy-nut, you bet. Was he a nice guy? He sure was. Was he friendly? He sure was. Was he handsome and buffed? For fear of getting all Brokeback on your behind, yes, he was. His hair alone was amazing. Stop it, you savage.
But was he also a vain, mouth-breathing, gum-chomping, chucklehead? Hate to say it, but he kinda was. We didn’t become close buddies or anything, but I was around him more than long enough to gather a strong impression that, brain wise, this apple had not only fallen far from the tree, it had hit the ground running and then rolled down the hill. Nobody who spent any time around JFK Jr. was surprised to learn he flunked the New York bar a thousand times. It was a miracle that he ever passed it at all.
And yet I saw the media, with the help of his handlers and an adoring American public turn this – sorry to say – Himbo (Him plus Bimbo) into the personification of American royalty.
So we keep hiring them and electing them to office in spite of ourselves.
Think about that tonight when good ol’ pull-yourself-up-from-great-granddaddy’s-bootstraps George W. tells us all to cut down on our gas use. And then watch as he doesn’t blink to jump in his twenty car motorcade that speeds him to his helicopter that whisks him to Air Force One to fly all night to strike a sweetheart oil deal with the Saudis.
I’m not talking about right or left wing politics here. John Kerry is the exact same thing, so were and are all the Kennedys. I am talking about undeserved, unearned blinding arrogance that is getting more and more watered down with each generation. The kind of unqualified smugness you can only find in impossibly wealthy Ivy League graduates.
And the French.
But this same phenomenon of royalty hating/worshiping , when it happens in Hollywood, is hilarious. Come on, Detroit blue collar high school drop-out gutter-slut Madonna with an English accent? That is hysterical.
At least the preppies have some kind of lineage, history and precedent to go by. Movie stars and models, for the most part, come from unprivileged backgrounds. That is why rubes like Naomi Campbell and Russell Crowe throw phones at the help. They didn’t learn manners at the country club or the boarding school. They think that is how rich and famous people are supposed to act.
There are exceptions like George Clooney and Tom Hanks, but for the most part, anyone who would devote their life to being a famous movie star these days is simply is out of their freaking mind. (See: Barking mad Tom Cruise) These people not only have not been well educated, they are attention junkie kooks. Is there anyone in Hollywood right now who hasn’t been to or isn’t currently in rehab right now?
Despite all of their vast character and educational flaws, when the movie stars do hit it big, we, again, treat them like American royalty. The same goes with our athletes. We can’t help it. Not only that, these idiot movie stars then have the gall to lead these horrific examples of wretched excess and unexamined lives and then they have the balls to turn around and tell the rest of us how we should live and vote.
In the end I guess it comes down to the fact that we get the celebrities and the politicians that we deserve. Yes, in some dark and awful example of bad karma coming home to roost, we deserve Paris Hilton.
That doesn’t speak well of us, now does it?
Anyone see “Wedding Crashers”?
That incredibly obnoxious boyfriend of the girl that Owen Wilson steals does a dead-on portrayal of rich, Ivy League arrogant preppies. Growing up outside of Chicago, I knew guys who went to Eastern prep schools but they were nothing like the characters I met while working on Wall Street.
The pompous arrogance of these privileged schmucks knows no limits. You simply cannot imagine the deepness of their smugness combined with their deep-rooted condescending distain for those of us not as fortunate.
This universally despised image of the snooty prep school stereotype is probably why the Duke Lacrosse team was rushed to judgment by so many in the press and in politics.
When you and I talk excitedly about going skiing at Mammoth or Lake Tahoe, they are talking about jetting to Val d ‘esire. When we say we want to save money and go to Maui or Las Vegas, they are taking about a yacht off the coast of a Greek Island or Nice, France, the Bahamas or Monte Carlo. And that is all happening while they are still in prep school.
These clowns live in an entirely different world than almost all other people, they even have their own lock-jaw language of slang, so, naturally, they cling to each other. Their powerful and wealthy parents were too busy partying to raise them so they were shipped off to boarding schools where they knew, no matter how drunk, stoned and coked-up they were, they would end up in the Ivy League school of their choice.
It’s the exact same thing when they get to Harvard and Yale; those of the elite know they will graduate so why bother to study? Not only that, no matter how much they don’t study, they also know they will land a huge high profile job on Wall Street or Madison Ave or in politics.
That is why we are seeing so many amazing people, like the Google guys, coming out of Stanford. Stanford’s mission statement has always been to not be like Harvard and actually make the students work for their degree.
But guess what? Does the preppies lifetime of no work and no education catch up to them like it would for you and me? Hell no, their amazing connections land them huge business deals and the unfair process begins all over again.
In Southern California this phenomenon is known as USC.
Do we despise these people? Of course we do. Why wouldn’t we? They are utterly loathsome. But do we also, deep down, greatly admire them and feel envy and inferiority? Yes, sadly, we do. It’s the same with Royalty in England. No matter how much Americans make fun of them and joke about them, we are still impressed by English Royalty. (Although I never got the Lady Di thing)
As we are, most of us, descendents of poor immigrants, slaves and red-headed step child colonists, we just can’t help but worship these blue bloods, it’s in our DNA. And the closest thing that resembles British royalty in our country are, sadly, these rich, arrogant spoiled preppie brats. Like it or not, these world-class jerks are our princes and princesses.
When I worked out at the Downtown Athletic Club after working on Wall Street in the eighties, more than a couple of times I shared the bench press with the closest thing our country has had to a real prince: John F. Kennedy Junior. Was I star struck? As I lifetime Kennedy-nut, you bet. Was he a nice guy? He sure was. Was he friendly? He sure was. Was he handsome and buffed? For fear of getting all Brokeback on your behind, yes, he was. His hair alone was amazing. Stop it, you savage.
But was he also a vain, mouth-breathing, gum-chomping, chucklehead? Hate to say it, but he kinda was. We didn’t become close buddies or anything, but I was around him more than long enough to gather a strong impression that, brain wise, this apple had not only fallen far from the tree, it had hit the ground running and then rolled down the hill. Nobody who spent any time around JFK Jr. was surprised to learn he flunked the New York bar a thousand times. It was a miracle that he ever passed it at all.
And yet I saw the media, with the help of his handlers and an adoring American public turn this – sorry to say – Himbo (Him plus Bimbo) into the personification of American royalty.
So we keep hiring them and electing them to office in spite of ourselves.
Think about that tonight when good ol’ pull-yourself-up-from-great-granddaddy’s-bootstraps George W. tells us all to cut down on our gas use. And then watch as he doesn’t blink to jump in his twenty car motorcade that speeds him to his helicopter that whisks him to Air Force One to fly all night to strike a sweetheart oil deal with the Saudis.
I’m not talking about right or left wing politics here. John Kerry is the exact same thing, so were and are all the Kennedys. I am talking about undeserved, unearned blinding arrogance that is getting more and more watered down with each generation. The kind of unqualified smugness you can only find in impossibly wealthy Ivy League graduates.
And the French.
But this same phenomenon of royalty hating/worshiping , when it happens in Hollywood, is hilarious. Come on, Detroit blue collar high school drop-out gutter-slut Madonna with an English accent? That is hysterical.
At least the preppies have some kind of lineage, history and precedent to go by. Movie stars and models, for the most part, come from unprivileged backgrounds. That is why rubes like Naomi Campbell and Russell Crowe throw phones at the help. They didn’t learn manners at the country club or the boarding school. They think that is how rich and famous people are supposed to act.
There are exceptions like George Clooney and Tom Hanks, but for the most part, anyone who would devote their life to being a famous movie star these days is simply is out of their freaking mind. (See: Barking mad Tom Cruise) These people not only have not been well educated, they are attention junkie kooks. Is there anyone in Hollywood right now who hasn’t been to or isn’t currently in rehab right now?
Despite all of their vast character and educational flaws, when the movie stars do hit it big, we, again, treat them like American royalty. The same goes with our athletes. We can’t help it. Not only that, these idiot movie stars then have the gall to lead these horrific examples of wretched excess and unexamined lives and then they have the balls to turn around and tell the rest of us how we should live and vote.
In the end I guess it comes down to the fact that we get the celebrities and the politicians that we deserve. Yes, in some dark and awful example of bad karma coming home to roost, we deserve Paris Hilton.
That doesn’t speak well of us, now does it?
posted by Alex at
3:13 PM
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