Friday, April 17, 2015

#WealthyLive$Matter (one in a continuing series)

ESPN personality Britt McHenry has taken one for the team, graciously accepting a one-week suspension from her job as sideline eye candy and tweeting out an apology after she got caught in the act of poor-shaming a towing company employee. It seems that Britt, who makes her living playing for the cameras, failed to recognize that she was live on CCTV when she spewed her invective. Actually, she just kind of drawled out her invective in Not-Everyday AmericanSpeak. She sounds like a cross between Thurston Howell III and a character in Heathers:




Not only was she miffed at having to personally appear at a "scumbag" of towing office to bail out her car, she was incensed that the little people had failed to recognize her innate VIP-ness.

Without so much as a script, Britt effortlessly recited the same litany that right-wing taxophobes dish out on the public airwaves and in the halls of Congress every single day. Her big mistake was that she chose to forgo both the dog-whistle subtlety and the invocation of God that normally would have granted her immunity. Some highlights of her strangely flat-affect spiel:
  • "That’s why I have a degree and you don’t.”
  • “That’s all you care about is just taking people’s money. With no education, no skill-set. Just wanted to clarify that.”
  • "I'm on television and you're in a fucking trailer."
  • “Do you feel good about your job? So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing?”
  • “Maybe if I was missing some teeth, they would hire me here, huh?”
  • “Lose some weight, baby girl.”
Granted, nobody likes towing companies, and the outfit that towed Britt's car from a restaurant lot while she ate in the restaurant is notorious for stealing vehicles and then extorting drivers for money. But typical towing victims -- or in HillarySpeak, "Everyday Americans" --  are not rich and famous. When elites'  rides are towed, there are typically "people" to clean up the mess. The Help pays the fines and the restaurant tabs so the bosses can avoid breathing common air and noticing the tip jars. Poor slobs like you or I have to appear in person and part with our last few bucks to bail out ourselves or our rides as we sob and plead for mercy. Our pathetic everyday rants on CCTV don't make international headlines.

Therefore, it's quite a change of pace to see how a rich person berates a towing company --  not mainly for its unfairness and probable criminality, but for the physical appearance and educational bona fides of its staff. Britt McHenry has got the aggrieved, entitled post-preppie agenda down pat. Even in the throes of elite extremis, she thought to mention the debunked "skills gap" theory of why the rich are so rich and the poor are so downtrodden.

Judging from this selfie posted on USA Today's Big Lead site, Britt McHenry and her male bosses at Bloodsport, Inc. think very highly of her own skill-set:




Just wanted to clarify that.

    5 comments:

    Richard Ohio said...

    Give her a break. Her apparent drunkenness tells us how she really feels. I doubt she worked her way through college either

    Will said...

    Britt sounds like a really sweet girl once you get to know her. Just kidding! She's a jerky jerk:

    http://deadspin.com/espn-reporter-britt-mchenry-has-a-history-of-being-rude-1698483713

    There are "upsides of a surveillance society"? Ewwwww:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/britt-mchenry-and-the-upsides-of-a-surveillance-society/390801/

    Cirze said...

    I always say a big "Thank You!" (to myself) when the nitwits lose control and let us know how truly uneducated they got at their institutions of "higher" learning.

    She's the remedial version of Tedi Cruz, Mario, Ricki P, Randi P, BoBo (otherwise known as DFB - see Driftglass' latest) and the rest of those highly qualified leader boys.

    You almost start feeling sorry for them.

    Until you remember the terrible effects their ignorance, stupidity and venality wreaks.

    Denis Neville said...

    Poor-shaming and ESPN personality Britt McHenry…

    “There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much about that. We dumb working folk were clubbed into submission long ago, and now require only … a 24/7 mind-numbing spectacle of titties, tabloid TV, and terrorist dramas. Throw in a couple of new flavors of XXL edible thongs, and you’ve got a nation of drowsing hippos who will never notice that our country has been looted, or even that we have become homeless ourselves.”

    “The combination of our poorly educated workforce and ruthless demagogic oligarchy are not a nationwide problem: they are a national tragedy. It’s one that’s getting worse and is not likely ever to be fixed. The Empire is collapsing inward upon its working base. The oligarchs have skipped town with the national treasury; many have multiple homes in other countries. The inherent natural resources upon which America was initially built by laboring men and women have been squandered. When empires die, they die broke.” - Joe Bageant, Rainbow Pie

    A reader once asked Bageant, “Did everything get so hopeless you just gave up?”

    “Rage fatigue eats up one's stamina and inner resources, without one bit affecting the autonomic predatory system in motion,” replied Bageant.

    “…being in a place where life is more fundamental and simple, if hard, goes a long way toward peace of mind and discovering human normalcy. It's the learning ground. And usually one learns that people who escape at least some of the ravages of our slow collapse, always seem to do it in cooperation with a community of some sort. Either an already existing one, or an intentional one they create between themselves.

    “There's nothing new in this, of course. Latin America and the world have countless communities hundreds of year old. Governments come and go, rivers dry up, but the people always have tortillas, one way or another. Americans and Europeans usually see these people as poor, thanks to our heavy social conditioning, industrialization and commoditized consciousness -- not to mention the denial of the effects of colonialism by Euro-American culture…

    “I have come to think the price of admission anywhere in the world … is service to others. We have been indoctrinated by an earth devouring capitalist system to believe otherwise. Believe that giving only depletes. And that mankind and civilization came about through kings and warriors and "great men." But the essential glue of man the social animal has always been on cooperation and sharing. That an endless stream of elite thieves have always managed to steal the fruits of that cooperation does not matter. And the best that is in man still rests on the same fundamentals -- cooperation for the greater good of all.

    “How can I best go about giving up the world as I have known it -- which, after all, is the root of our pain and of our catastrophe -- and serve others every day and in as many ways large and small as possible? In other words, sacrifice. In truth, the sacrifice will not be sacrifice, but liberation, because Americans are buried under so much material shit and petty notions as to entitlement that shedding such things is a blessing. A gift.

    “There is no escape, but there is freedom. And if our fellow Americans long ago forgot that, well, one can still get there alone. But it's not for the faint of heart.” - Joe Bageant, “There ain't no escape from collapse”

    http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/04/there-aint.html

    Richard Ohio said...

    I see the victim and her employers accept her apology and offer no threat of reprisal. What is overlooked is that this incivility offends he as an average human being and should have no place in our society. The forgiveness only leaves the door open for the next abuser to torment a victim and get a pass.