Fear of money drives the current presidential scene, here and in France. Panicked flight from your hundreds of millions of dollars has taken hold of two leading politicians, each of whom has palmed the problem off to a surrogate – the Missus. Carla Sarkozy calls herself and her husband “modest simple folk,” and Ann Romney doesn’t consider herself wealthy. Their comments have set off a laff riot.
There are a couple of other ways of approaching this problem. One is to assert that any allusion to money is déclassé, vulgar, beneath one, beneath everyone. Refuse to talk about it.
Another – the Eric Cantor thing – is to assert that any allusion to money is a sign of petty envy on the part of the mentioner.
Both of these approaches are preferable to the business of pretending you’re not rich.
March 9th, 2012 at 6:16PM
Strangely enough, the progressive blogosphere seems remarkably unconcerned with the going-away present given to abysmal failure Janet Robinson of the NYT.
March 10th, 2012 at 8:50AM
Approximately 30 seconds of googling suggests that, to give just one example, Daily Kos has been criticizing her pay deal with the NYT for some time. So what was your point again?
March 10th, 2012 at 10:07AM
What I see is that a few aggregators like Huffpo have printed a neutral story. As of this writing, the Huffpo story has a grand total of 42 comments. At Kos, a good many of the comments are directed at defending Paul Krugman, who has not yet apparently signed the union’s entirely mild protest letter.
The outrage, hyperventilation, and tantrums that would attend the departure of a comparable high-profile business exec not committed to The One aren’t there, Alan. 30 seconds of googling would make that clear.
March 10th, 2012 at 10:24AM
Alan: Links? A search of the Daily Kos for “Janet Robinson” since the beginning of the year finds just one entry, an OWS-style fling at the NYT by “The Troubador”:
http://tinyurl.com/7jjd6zx
Is the story really older than that? Surely the leftwing media can muster more spittle over this obvious bit of one-percenter capitalism? Or is the NYT to be largely immune to criticism as the bulwark of progressivism?
March 10th, 2012 at 2:55PM
SS & TP: if you really think that the folks at Kos regard the NYT as a “bulwark of progressivism”, then your perspective is so utterly upgefucked that you might as well stop there.
March 10th, 2012 at 3:16PM
Oh, OK Alan. Vielen danke.
March 10th, 2012 at 7:58PM
For Janet Robinson as for football coaches as for various executives receiving severance payments, the question should be asked–but rarely is—***what does the contract say?
Obviously, if Robinson (or whoever) had a specific severance payment in her employment contract, then (outside of bankruptcy) it needs to be honored. If money is being paid *in addition to* that contractually required, then the question should be: how does this benefit shareholders and the continuation of the enterprise?
The other question that needs to be investigated in these cases, though, is: if a large severance payment was indeed included as part of the employment contract, why was it necessary? If someone being hired is making outsized demands for a termination package, it doesn’t send a very strong signal about their self-confidence and their confidence in whatever they are supposed to be running.