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Paris Hilton: The Class War Armistice Begins to Crumble?
It is some kind of point of pride among conservatives that on the one hand, there is no such thing as "class" in American society since there is supposedly "equality of opportunity", yet at the same time, when liberals point out the glaring disparities in these opportunities, they are accused of "class warfare."
Anyone who has been paying attention, however, surely recognizes that the country was overrun in a class war that effectively ended in the first term of the Reagan administration, and afterwards the status quo was maintained and expanded in favor of the wealthy--and particularly the ultra-wealthy--by demonstrably specious rhetoric from the right wing and its ditto-head wannabe enablers, including much of the mainstream media.
Nowhere is this gap more obvious than with the current case of Paris Hilton: She gets arrested for drunk driving, has her license suspended and gets caught driving without a valid license; after much hemming and hawing, she goes to jail, only to leave three days later for reasons alternately described as "a medical condition", a "morbid fear of incarceration" and "a failure to eat and drink for three days for fear that a guard would take a picture of her on the toilet." She's immediately hauled back to court by prearrangement with the Sheriff's office, cries during the entire hearing and is dragged away screaming "It's not right!! It's not right!!" Virtually, the next day she has "come to Jesus" and tells some scribe that she's "through playing dumb" because "it's no longer cute." Then, when her parents come to visit, they are whisked into a private meeting room, bypassing the general public. The Sheriff's department blithely informs that this is standard procedure for "high profile" detainees.
Bottom line: money talks, even when it isn't spent. The "little people" in the Sheriff's office, so cowed by the spectre of great wealth, bend over backwards to lay out the red carpet for the gentry, while the po' folk are brushed aside with a sneer. It's the same mentality that makes people from poor neighborhoods grow up to be conservatives: having an orderly hierarchy of authority and privelege just makes some people comfortable, even if others are trampled underfoot.
Here's CNN's take on this recent event:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Paris Hilton's parents visited their daughter after breezing past others waiting to see loved ones -- an incident that raised new complaints that the heiress is receiving special treatment.
The visit came less than a week after Hilton was reassigned to house arrest days after being jailed for violating parole. The 26-year-old celebrity was later ordered back to jail.
Alvina Floyd, one visitor to the at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, waited more than four hours to visit her fiance. It normally takes two hours, and Floyd, 20, blamed the Hiltons for the delay. (Watch the Hiltons visit their daughter
)
"I have to be at work later," she said. "I can't wait here all day."
Shatani Alverson, 23, said she was hustled out of the jail's visiting room moments after her husband walked in because of the Hiltons. She was told to come back after lunch.
Steve Whitmore, a sheriff's spokesman, said it was routine for high-profile inmates to receive visitors during lunch, a time when the visiting room is normally cleared out and closed.
As any criminal defense attorney will tell you, doors open in the criminal justice system for the wealthy and powerful--for those of the "ruling class" that conservatives pretend doesn't exist. "Clearly," they exclaim, "the opportunities afforded Paris Hilton are equal to those born to a junkie mother in Appalachia or Watts! If these latter don't succeed, it's because they are simply lazy!"
It is events such as these that demonstrate the terms of the class war "armistice"--a social contract held in place by conservatives and those who call themselves "libertarians" and their litany of screwy talking points. The same contract that allowed The Dick Cheney to exclaim in the 2000 Vice Presidential debate with Lieberman that "the government had nothing to do with" the success of Halliburton: the media, stonemasons of this armistice, blithely ignored the clearly relevant and easily accessible facts showing Halliburton had earned some $5 billion (yes, billion) in government contracts during Cheney's tenure at Halliburton. Somehow, The Dick expected you to believe (or ignore, as oh so many did) that those $5 billion in tax dollars received had no effect whatsoever on the company's bottom line. If that's the case (a fairly hard conclusion to choke down), then it speaks devastatingly poorly of Cheney's management ability to let that revenue stream go to waste.
Of course, we know that's not what happened. Cheney simply lied and no one bothered to call him on it.
It's the same rhetoric that allows otherwise sensible people to claim that our country should do away with a progressive income tax, since it is "burdensome" on the wealthy. Some even go so far as to claim that a progressive income tax is somehow "immoral." Such bizarre thinking necessarily involves a wilfull blindness to the amount of tax dollars expended on courts to enforce capital transactions of all kinds, the detection, prosecution and incarceration of criminals that would otherwise threaten and harm the taxpayer individually and the taxpayer's business, the federal regulation of securities and the banking industry that keep the wealthy taxpayer's investments and savings safe from illicit manipulation, the roads and highways and transportation systems that allow the wealthy taxpayer's workers to commute, the health and safety regulations that ensure the works are not poisoned or otherwise harmed by tainted food and drugs, environmental regulations that ensure quality of life, safety and health of workers, the enormous subsidies paid to industry, whether outright or through research and development tax expenditures and government contracts, and on and on. While the workers for the wealthy taxpayer obtain some benefit from some of these governmental programs, the benefits to the wealthy taxpayer are comparatively immense and should be paid for by the beneficiaries pro rata. While a wealthy taxpayer may work hard and contribute to society, it is this governmental infrastructure in which our predecessors were not afraid to invest, that leverages the wealthy taxpayer's ability to create wealth.
If you doubt that, try to start a high tech manufacturing plant in Gabon using local currency, workers, laws, courts and infrastructure.
Of course, there are many wealthy taxpayers who do not work hard, if at all. Case in point: Paris Hilton. But still, the conservatives want to eliminate the tax on wealth the she is given by eliminating the estate tax.
The message wrought in stone from the Class War Armistice was repeated some time ago by the notable Leona Helmsley: "Only the little people pay taxes." If you inherit wealth or receive it from a rich uncle, they say, you shouldn't have to pay tax. If you dig a ditch, you do. Indeed, as the law currently stands, if you work for a living, your highest marginal rate is 35% (absent the effect of the AMT, which could mean more); but if you live off your investments, your rate is 15%.
In this topsy turvy world, work is penalized while idleness is lionized and rewarded by official governmental policy.
Will the Class War Armistice continue to hold? So long as people see the wealthy and powerful caught in the justice system as somehow "victims", I have little doubt.
I'm looking at you, Scooter Libby.
