The Selfishness of Virtue
23rd March 2013
Jim Goad points out some inconvenient truth.
As a blinkered young leftist back in the late 1980s, I subscribed to The Nation magazine for a year or two. Since I was a plumber’s son who put myself through journalism school by driving a cab on weekends, I naively identified with any media outlet that claimed to speak on behalf of the working class.
Then, as life’s cruel realities slowly peeled the scales from my bleeding eyes, I began realizing that many such propaganda machines, despite their eternal claims of uplifting “the people” in a noble fight against “the elite,” were themselves the organs of a certain class of astronomically well-heeled elites. They didn’t represent all of the elite, mind you—only a weird segment that seemed to exist in a perpetual state of denial about their own elite status.
Almost all of those who claim to speak for the ‘working class’ (or, in the American euphemism, ‘working families) are not, themselves, working class, just as those who claim to speak for the poor are not, themselves, poor.
My disappointment mutated into a lingering resentment as it became clear that such elites’ showboating “populist” efforts never really seemed to help the poor and the working class. Years of observing the mystifying spectacle of people who were quantifiably and undeniably members of the “1%” blabber nonstop about how they represented the “99%”—all while lecturing me about my imaginary “privilege”—led me to believe that such types cared far more about sculpting a compassionate public persona for themselves than they did about actually helping anyone beneath them on the economic ladder. Their relentlessly ghastly hypocrisy suggested they were interested mainly in soothing their own wealth guilt.
I very much like the term ‘wealth guilt’, which applies especially to people (Gore, Kennedy, Rockefeller, what have you) who inherited their money rather than earned it. Those who actually earned their own money tend not to feel guilty about it — and why should they?
In a previous article about limousine liberals, I mentioned Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and part owner of The Nation. Although she never shuts the frick up about sticking it to “the wealthy” via higher taxes, this didn’t prevent the sanctimonious multimillionaire from reputedly engaging in a protracted legal battle with the IRS to skirt paying her own inheritance taxes. This icy and passive-aggressive child of stratospheric privilege, who’s never had to work a day in her life yet somehow has deluded herself into thinking she’s qualified to speak on behalf of the working class, is perhaps the most egregious example of a limousine liberal alive today.
She also comes out with some of the most seriously WTF statements on politics that you can find in print today. She’s a favorite punching bag for Rush Limbaugh, the gift that never stops giving.
Every year The Nation sponsors a cruise which liberal activist Jim Hightower once referred to, with apparently not a whit of irony, as “a floating palace of populism.” Never mind that 99% of “the people” would never be able to afford a cabin on this cruise. Nor that The Nation advertised that the cruise offered “a world of comfort and easy elegance” and “all manner of sophisticated amenities” such as “fine chocolates on your pillow at night,” “extra-fluffy Egyptian cotton towels,” and such resolutely bourgeois perks as “all-weather pools, fully-equipped gym, aerobics classes, personal trainers, court sports, jogging tracks, full-service salon, hydrotherapy pool, [and] yoga classes.”
Yup, that’s the 99%, alright.
So for all their grandstanding about fighting “the wealthy” and “the powerful,” the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the owners and writers of The Nation are inextricably entangled with power and wealth. In the relentless Texas Death Cage Match between corporate power and governmental power, they take the government’s side. So they’re not fighting power at all. They’re merely picking a team. Not that this is necessarily bad; I merely wish they’d have the honesty to admit it. Their behavior suggests that they know absolutely nothing about the poor and the working class and only use such people as chess pieces in a cynical game of moral status-jockeying against other elites.