Sunday Morning With The Usual Suspects

by Eileen McGuire-Mahony | 7:58 am, May 31, 2009 | 1 Comment

Once more, I, with my coffee and my bagel, am perched before the ol’ laptop and scrolling through the day’s news.

Two headline stories have caught my eye.  One details how Barry and Shelly spent last night, and my money, to jet up to New York City, shut down the bright boulevards, go to dinner, take in a show, and fly away home.

And they took two airplanes full of press along to cover date night.

Crows gathered along the closed off freeways to cheer the motorcade.

The other story details how Bonnie Prince Harry (the functioning alcoholic who thought it would be a clever idea to dress up like a Nazi) cut a wide swath across the Big Apple.

He stayed long enough to show up wearing jeans at a reception organized in his honor and then play a bit of polo.  Attendees gushed over the excitement of spying, in the flesh, a prince.

So, what we have is a city falling at the feet of men of questionable merit and character, at least one of whose life is spent doing remarkably little, both of whom live in staggering opulence off the backs of people who increasingly struggle to cover basic expenses.

Why are we so giddy to hail these creatures in such frightening economic climes?

Logically, shouldn’t we become less forgiving of such unearned excess as we all count our own pennies more and more severely?

And, oh, my word, the hypocrisy.  Not just them.  Us.

Mssr. O chomps and seethes at those private sector titans whose unpardonable sin has been to live well on their own labor.

No one, we are chastised, should be allowed to accumulate and enjoy such a private fortune.  In the harebrained economic schemes that rule the day, the thinking is that wealth can never be created – only shuffled around.  And so one man’s security and contentment requires that another suffers.

This Mercentalist claptrap is damn dangerous nonsense.  Taking capital away from those who would plough it back into the market and telling men the only reward for success will be to be called ‘evil’ hurts everyone.  Protectionism protects only the entrenched bastards.  The ingenuity and creation that is lost extends far beyond what is seen.

Instead, we replace well-earned luxury and the connection between work and reward with a bizarre system in which the chosen few (and they are – for we in our wisdom elect them) live awfully well, so well in fact that they have scant time for working.

This may not be an entirely bad thing.  Surveying what Congress hath wrought with four day work weeks, long recesses, and no attendance requirement, I shudder to think what would happen if these pin-stripped gents actually applied themselves.  Still, it’s the sheer laziness that galls me.

Some, older, polities have perfected this system.  They have progressed to the point where an even smaller elite – this time not chosen by anyone at all unless you believe Jehovah is a royalist – splits its time between more houses than Sen. McCain could even count.  Their lives consist of arriving late at events that are organized to give them something to do with their time.

And yet through their comings, their goings, their midnight tumblings off curbs in trendy Mayfair, the populace approves.

Is is glandular with us?   Do we need these puppets to be the subject of our wistful gaze in order to get through the day-to-day tedium of life as part of the vast middle class that does its own laundry?

Certainly, we do enjoy watching them.  And that, I think, reveals our guilt.

We’re a lazy lot of buggers.  We have no interest in working for our bread and honey.  We are transfixed by the life of near complete ease.

And, we derive private satisfaction from knowing we choose to succor these mongrels and could withdraw the teat at any moment.

This is a dangerous prospect.  When the crowds decides to dethrone its lord, the affair is not a gracious one.  A halo, so they say, need fall only a few inches to become a noose.   Or a guillotine.

Such dark thoughts.  I need to get into the sunlight.

I am going to spend this luscious Sunday at the pool and I’m going to enjoy my day of rest.  I’ve already accomplished more than Barry and Harry will in a week.

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