April 18, 2009
April 28, 2009
When I was a student reading Thorstain Vebler’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, the phrase conspicuous consumption was the catalyst for such discussion and disagreement. I knew it existed…conspicuous consumption, that is. I had read of William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon…and as a kid in Teaneck, New Jersey we drove on Windson Avenue to look at the massive Tudor houses that suggested there were people in our midst who lived quite extravagantly, different from those families that were crawling out from the Depression. It was a small part of our existence, almost parenthetical. Mostly, we were amidst folks who sought security, comfort, a reasonable life…avoiding poverty and impressing no one.
That was before the Reagan years began to reshape our national values, morality and aspirations. Conspicuous consumption slowly became celebrated. It was first introduced to us on a national scale with a TV program called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, showing excess…enormous, nearly uninhabited mansions which seemed to exist for show rather than providing living space. It started with movie stars, whose glamorous lives we expected to be ostentatious…but gradually it moved away from Hollywood to athletes, corporate executives, bankers, chefs, designers and questionable characters who had amassed fortunes. East Hampton, on this coast, seemed to be an exercise in well…conspicuous consumption. Comfortable summer cottages were de classe, replaced by much publicized oceanfront palaces. Television programs emulated newspaper coverage. The New York Times cannot – to this day – report sufficiently on every nuance in the Hamptons. Their coverage of the South Bronx or Harlem is minuscule in comparison to every detail, every excess, every dowager that inhabits the multimillion dollar emporium in the Hamptons.
Ronald Reagan, that kindly old movie star liberal-turned-Republican god and savior, led the way. Though he is still mentioned in hushed tones amidst GOP acolytes…the nation’s values slowly began to change under his RKO banner…celebrating the wealthy and demonizing the neediest of Americans. His campaign against a fictional welfare mother became the symbol of contempt among our ruling class…as deregulation of banks and mining companies, firing of air traffic controllers and food inspectors were matched only by the slashing of funding sources for the poorest Americans. Along the way protectors of the conspicuous consumers developed a religious strategy that embraced the heartland…and folks began campaigning against their own best self-interest…establishing an economic ruling class that resembled France before Madame LeFarge learned how to knit amidst turmoil.
They fooled us for a while…too long, in fact. The newspapers and television covered their every excess as an example of patriotism. The New York Times, with all its self-proclaimed proud pretensions, established its Style section that rubbed shoulders with the new wave…twice a week Style prevailed and their once a week, one page Criminal Justice/Legal coverage was eliminated because of insufficient advertising. And the Times is the best of the lot, so you can imagine what Roger Ailes’ strategy meetings at Fox are like.
The bankers and hedge fund players and the overpaid athletes, movie stars and celebrity chefs are all getting their share, today, of public contempt…but the transformation of FDR’s all-inclusive America to Ronald Reagan’s palace mentality which led to the George W. Bush’s massive incompetence leading the nation to a near fiscal calamity.
As unemployment accelerates, the moral self-righteousness of the politically motivated religious right is falling on deaf ears. And the much publicized Tax Day teabag parties were more of a choreographed Fox TV event than any populist uprising. People living in tents and shelters are not worrying about tax increases since they have no income. They want to know where the jobs are…where the food is…where the home they lost might be. They are discovering that the only thing that trickles down in Reagonomics is the loss of jobs.
The excessive bonuses for bailed out bankers has created a cry across the land…what Maureen Dowd condescendingly refers to as the “flyover state”. She, too, is writing for the Wall Street oglers.
Social security, national health plans and government created jobs is not socialism…any more than liberals, public schools, the police force, fire department and armies are socialistic. The government must do efficiently what private companies cannot do. Profits cannot intercede with performance as the disastrous privatizing of prisons has revealed. If bailouts for billionaires is acceptable, then government intervention for the remainder of Americans cannot be derailed with name-calling. And if Rush Limbaugh’s annual $38 million dollar income cannot withstand a 2% tax increase, let him move elsewhere. Is he so little a patriot, with all the opportunities given him in this country – that he begrudges giving back a little so that the rest of American can live without hunger and homes. A tax increase of 2% would not alter his living style at all. If rush only has to pay so much for taxes as he had to for lawyers to beat his drug charges, the country might be helped getting back on its feet. It’s Obama Time and perhaps we can include an asterisk to Thorstein Vablan and call it conspicuous concern, a time when we attempt to recognize the dreams of all Americans. That doesn’t sound un-American or socialistic to me. If the religious politicians read some scripture, they might begin to understand the moral bottom line.
I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb!
That was before the Reagan years began to reshape our national values, morality and aspirations. Conspicuous consumption slowly became celebrated. It was first introduced to us on a national scale with a TV program called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, showing excess…enormous, nearly uninhabited mansions which seemed to exist for show rather than providing living space. It started with movie stars, whose glamorous lives we expected to be ostentatious…but gradually it moved away from Hollywood to athletes, corporate executives, bankers, chefs, designers and questionable characters who had amassed fortunes. East Hampton, on this coast, seemed to be an exercise in well…conspicuous consumption. Comfortable summer cottages were de classe, replaced by much publicized oceanfront palaces. Television programs emulated newspaper coverage. The New York Times cannot – to this day – report sufficiently on every nuance in the Hamptons. Their coverage of the South Bronx or Harlem is minuscule in comparison to every detail, every excess, every dowager that inhabits the multimillion dollar emporium in the Hamptons.
Ronald Reagan, that kindly old movie star liberal-turned-Republican god and savior, led the way. Though he is still mentioned in hushed tones amidst GOP acolytes…the nation’s values slowly began to change under his RKO banner…celebrating the wealthy and demonizing the neediest of Americans. His campaign against a fictional welfare mother became the symbol of contempt among our ruling class…as deregulation of banks and mining companies, firing of air traffic controllers and food inspectors were matched only by the slashing of funding sources for the poorest Americans. Along the way protectors of the conspicuous consumers developed a religious strategy that embraced the heartland…and folks began campaigning against their own best self-interest…establishing an economic ruling class that resembled France before Madame LeFarge learned how to knit amidst turmoil.
They fooled us for a while…too long, in fact. The newspapers and television covered their every excess as an example of patriotism. The New York Times, with all its self-proclaimed proud pretensions, established its Style section that rubbed shoulders with the new wave…twice a week Style prevailed and their once a week, one page Criminal Justice/Legal coverage was eliminated because of insufficient advertising. And the Times is the best of the lot, so you can imagine what Roger Ailes’ strategy meetings at Fox are like.
The bankers and hedge fund players and the overpaid athletes, movie stars and celebrity chefs are all getting their share, today, of public contempt…but the transformation of FDR’s all-inclusive America to Ronald Reagan’s palace mentality which led to the George W. Bush’s massive incompetence leading the nation to a near fiscal calamity.
As unemployment accelerates, the moral self-righteousness of the politically motivated religious right is falling on deaf ears. And the much publicized Tax Day teabag parties were more of a choreographed Fox TV event than any populist uprising. People living in tents and shelters are not worrying about tax increases since they have no income. They want to know where the jobs are…where the food is…where the home they lost might be. They are discovering that the only thing that trickles down in Reagonomics is the loss of jobs.
The excessive bonuses for bailed out bankers has created a cry across the land…what Maureen Dowd condescendingly refers to as the “flyover state”. She, too, is writing for the Wall Street oglers.
Social security, national health plans and government created jobs is not socialism…any more than liberals, public schools, the police force, fire department and armies are socialistic. The government must do efficiently what private companies cannot do. Profits cannot intercede with performance as the disastrous privatizing of prisons has revealed. If bailouts for billionaires is acceptable, then government intervention for the remainder of Americans cannot be derailed with name-calling. And if Rush Limbaugh’s annual $38 million dollar income cannot withstand a 2% tax increase, let him move elsewhere. Is he so little a patriot, with all the opportunities given him in this country – that he begrudges giving back a little so that the rest of American can live without hunger and homes. A tax increase of 2% would not alter his living style at all. If rush only has to pay so much for taxes as he had to for lawyers to beat his drug charges, the country might be helped getting back on its feet. It’s Obama Time and perhaps we can include an asterisk to Thorstein Vablan and call it conspicuous concern, a time when we attempt to recognize the dreams of all Americans. That doesn’t sound un-American or socialistic to me. If the religious politicians read some scripture, they might begin to understand the moral bottom line.
I’m David Rothenberg…out on a limb!
Posted by David Rothenberg
