There’s a tendency amongst liberals to give rich right wingers too much credit, which shows that even as we decry classism, we still fall for some of the prejudicial fallacies, such as believing the rich to be more clever than ordinary people.
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Marc and I were having an interesting discussion on the subway yesterday, about “Mad Men”. (Which I’ll have to post about tomorrow, sorry!) We got to talking about their portrayal of Conrad Hilton, which actually softened the real life man’s uglier, harder edges, if you can believe it. And Marc said that, in his eyes, Paris Hilton is by far the better human being. After all, she knows what money is for, which is in service of living. (…) Once you start to see human beings as existing for money and not the other way around—-libertarianism, anti-environmentalism, and general hostility towards government and social services all follow. To call that a “work ethic” is to put a moralistic gloss on immoral behavior.
pandagon.net - it’s the eye of the panda, it’s the thrill of the bite (via lkm)
I’m still bummed that Scott Wilson turned down playing Conrad Hilton on Mad Men, but I wouldn’t cannonize either Conrad or Paris (though Conrad’s done a lot more to educate people in the hotel business, you know to get real productive jobs…look at Cornell & University of Houston for evidence of this).
