Cindy McCain, Aristocrat
Sep. 5th, 2008 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsIn a recent flurry of conversation, the question of whether or not Cindy McCain's calling Obama "elitist" was inappropriate while she wore $280,000 earrings and someone, during the conversation, said that there's a difference between "wealthy" and "elitist."
There certainly is. But in America, there's also a difference in the way wealth is perceived. As John McCain put it, echoing a Jonah Goldberg talking point, "Americans don't hate the rich. They want to be like them."
I think that statement is mostly true. Americans don't hate Warren Buffet or Bill Gates for their wealth. We may not love their products (in Buffet's case we may not even understand it), but we understand that these men have, more or less, earned their wealth. They've done something, they've run something to make themselves so wealthy. They have created wealth for others in their wake.
We can't say that about Cindy McCain. She's a trust fund recipient and an "absentee owner" of her own company. She's bankrolled her husband's campaigns and stood beside him, but we don't see her leaving a wake of prosperity. She is quintessentially the kind of rich person that Americans instinctively dislike: rich by inheritance, maintained by a parasitic infrastructure that moves money around, feeding off attention and acclamation for which she is completely without merit. Unlike Buffet or Gates, if she's not elitist she is aristocratic.
Putting her up in front of the Republican National Convention was a mistake. She belongs to Bush's people: "the haves and the have mores." With no demonstrable meritocratic story to advance, she only helps to turn the middle class against her husband.
There certainly is. But in America, there's also a difference in the way wealth is perceived. As John McCain put it, echoing a Jonah Goldberg talking point, "Americans don't hate the rich. They want to be like them."
I think that statement is mostly true. Americans don't hate Warren Buffet or Bill Gates for their wealth. We may not love their products (in Buffet's case we may not even understand it), but we understand that these men have, more or less, earned their wealth. They've done something, they've run something to make themselves so wealthy. They have created wealth for others in their wake.
We can't say that about Cindy McCain. She's a trust fund recipient and an "absentee owner" of her own company. She's bankrolled her husband's campaigns and stood beside him, but we don't see her leaving a wake of prosperity. She is quintessentially the kind of rich person that Americans instinctively dislike: rich by inheritance, maintained by a parasitic infrastructure that moves money around, feeding off attention and acclamation for which she is completely without merit. Unlike Buffet or Gates, if she's not elitist she is aristocratic.
Putting her up in front of the Republican National Convention was a mistake. She belongs to Bush's people: "the haves and the have mores." With no demonstrable meritocratic story to advance, she only helps to turn the middle class against her husband.
