I can't help but notice that there are lots of percentages being thrown around.
Ninety nine percent, one percent, fifty three percent. I have to let you all into a secret. So many percentages that the fifty three percent quite distracted one of our faithful Rescue Rangers last night .... I didn't even dare to mention the forty seven percent that went with it.
Anyway, I was moved to "Diary" by the one percent, or at least a vacuous example of that section of society.
Let's all jump the squiggle ..
Mrs Twigg is a sentient being. Indeed, she has a name, Jodie, and a Bachelors Degree, and three kids, three cats, a job as a High School teacher and one husband .... me.
She is, like many women, well educated, hard working and a loving member of the family.
Yet she still likes to watch "Housewives of Beverly Hills". I know, I have tried to tell her and the crazy part is that she rarely watches the show, because she records it and watches it in bed. Well the first ten minutes because that's generally about the time sleep comes along, and if I make the mistake of asking if she is asleep I get "no, I'm listening".
So I wonder would it not be better were this a radio show, but apparently I don't understand.
What all this means is that I too get the pleasure of watching these empty, shallow and often downright ugly people flaunt their wealth as if it actually matters.
Few of these folk appear to have any visible means of support. I guess I could Google them and find out where their money comes from, but that would be an inaccurate picture of a guy who cares. I don't care, and I don't want to know. Trust fund? Wealthy husband? Actual gainful employment? Don't know, don't care, but there is something I do care about.
I care that you are crass enough to flaunt your privilege in this manner. I care that the network is so facile that it broadcasts your pathetic, shallow existence, and I care that they do so because Americans watch this crap.
My wife watches it even though her head quite clearly tells her is it mindless drivel.
So my wife, the High School Special Education teacher, who earns maybe $35k had to sit and listen to this "person" brag on her sunglasses that cost TWENTYFIVETHOUSANDFUCKINGDOLLARS.
I guess the ones that were only fifteen grand just weren't good enough.
Twenty five thousand dollars for sunglasses and, just a short while ago, sixteen thousand dollars for a purse. Now let me see .... That would be forty one thousand dollars for a purse and sunglasses, more than my wife earns in a year, about twice the poverty income for a family of four; and this is okay? I mean, were I wealthy I might drop a few bucks on sunglasses too. I'd like to think that maybe I wouldn't be so crass, so ignorant, so useless to society (other than the manufacturers of sunglasses) that I would be seen on television bragging about it.
Am I alone in thinking that there is a deep malaise in a society that can allow one woman to spend so much on a fashion item, yet prefers to cure it's financial ills by reducing my wife's salary?
Who are the ninety nine percent?
They are those of us who generally spend ten bucks for sunglasses, or feel just a teensy bit guilty if we splash out and drop one hundred dollars on something fancy. We feel guilty, by the way, because we lack the sense of entitlement that those with no social conscience whatsoever posses.
If that is capitalism, then I am done with capitalism. Period.
It's about values, and it becoming increasingly clear that the one percent, even the ten percent don't have any. Well they don't have any that include any feeling whatsoever for the other ninety nine, or ninety percent, so why should I care about them?
You know what .... I'd take the ability to buy such gaudy crap away from those folk, and not even give it a second thought ... which is precisely the amount of thought they give me, or my wife.
They should watch the "Housewives of Owasso, Oklahoma" or "How the real "Real Americans" live".
I have no idea how to Tag this!