Tuesday, August 5, 2014

When the Depraved Get Depressed

Just when you thought the filthy rich couldn't get any more depraved, they get so mind-numbingly depraved that they don't even care what the deprived might think of them. From the New York Post:
A Manhattan corporate attorney is leading a group of wealthy Hamptonites who want to tear down a Water Mill road sign honoring a nun killed in a 2012 hit-and-run — because, he whines, he’s tired of repeating her depressing tale to guests.
“Every time someone visits, I am forced to recount this tragedy because they ask who Sister Jackie was,” John Carley, a former counsel to rental-car giant Avis, said in a January letter to Southampton Town officials.
“While I have no doubt Sister Jackie was a wonderful person and deserves to be remembered by those who knew her, her tragic death while visiting us is not an event residents wish to recall.”
Town highways boss Alex Gregor had installed a blue sign that reads “Sister Jackie’s Way” above the normal green street marker last summer to memorialize Sister Jacqueline Walsh, 59, who was killed walking near the Sisters of Mercy convent on Rose Hill Road in July 2012.

Sister Jackie

Since the majority of rich denizens of the road have now officially voted to remove the sign, town officials will comply with the request in order to lift all those heavy, unspiritual spirits.

Among those demanding that the memorial to the nun be torn down is Pia Lindstrom, who is married to Carley. A former NBC reporter, she is a daughter of late actress Ingrid Bergman, who famously starred as kindly Sister Mary Benedict opposite Bing Crosby in The Bells of St. Mary's

The Anti-Nun Nonentities
 
You might think that Lindstrom, the anti-nun, would be auditioning for the role of La Belle Dame Sans Merci. But she's really just a critic, and not only of street signs that interfere with the shallow chitchat at her garden parties. Here's one of her blurbs for New York Magazine's annoying "The Best of Everything" feature:
If you walk along Flying Point Beach in Water Mill, there's a warm inlet of water where children can play because it's shallow. Also, there's never anybody at all on Wyandanch beach in Southampton.
It's as quiet as a nun without a street sign memorial to spoil the ambience.

Right next to Lindstrom's beach blurb is an entry from one Lizzie Grubman, who raved, "Everybody goes to Gibson in Sagaponack, a sceney beach that feels public, even though it's private."

 You may remember Lizzie as the socialite who created quite a sceney scene when she mowed down 16 people with her Mercedes SUV at a Hamptons bar way back in 2001 and served all of a month in jail on multiple felony counts, including drunk driving, reckless endangerment and assault. (To be fair, she had nothing to do with the hit and run of the nun.) Lately, she has become notorious in the Hamptons for stiffing her servants out of their wages and bouncing checks. It must be like there is never anybody at all in the world except Lizzie Grubman and Pia Lindstrom.


One Too Many Days On A Shallow Beach: La Lizzie

Gregor, the Sister Jackie highwayman memorialist, is sanguine about the latest brouhaha:

“I guess rich people, especially around here, get annoyed pretty easily,” he said.

Easily annoyed.... and, it turns out, very easily depressed. Hoi polloi, both dead and alive, are causing the phone lines of Hamptons psychotherapists to light up  this summer. The New York Times, keen chronicler of  the crowd that "summers," is on the tragedy:
The East End of Long Island has long been one of the most sought-after summertime escapes, one generally out of reach for the average vacationer as fishing villages and farms have become playgrounds for the rich. But the democratizing power of the Internet has turned more Hamptonites into prospering landlords, given visitors many more options and brokers many fewer, and left local officials busy trying to keep a cork on all the new activity.
Websites like Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO and even Craigslist are vastly reshaping the seasonal market, letting renters and owners transact for as little as $75 a night in an area where six figures for one month is not extraordinary. But as in New York City, where some sites, notably Airbnb, have come under scrutiny, in the town of East Hampton, which includes the villages of Sag Harbor, Amagansett, Springs and Montauk, many listings blatantly violate local laws severely restricting short-term rentals.
Street signs honoring merciful nuns. And now Craigslist? Oh, the humanity. Somebody, call Pia Lindstrom's husband, pronto! Alert Lizzie to get the Merc out of the 10-car garage!
“If you’re staying for a month or two, you probably want to behave yourself and be a good neighbor, but if it’s just for a weekend, it’s probably just to party,” Fran Donovan, a local mental health therapist, said on Thursday while enjoying an iced tea at the Golden Pear Cafe on Newtown Lane. Ms. Donovan said one of her patients’ top anxieties these days was the explosion of short-term rentals.
A house down the block from hers has already been rented out online to large parties twice this season. “Does my business benefit from people coming out? Of course,” she said, referring to her seasonal clients. “But it seems like everyone’s trying to ride the gravy train, and if they’re not careful, it’s going to crash.”
 Somebody call Doctor Freud, before their pampered dispirited heads explode.

On second thought, somebody call a Hamptons yoga instructor named Erika Halweil, who infuriated New York Times readers when the "Vows" section ran a story last year recounting the "spiritual awakening" she herself experienced when she accidentally struck and killed a child with her car, resulting in a better life for Erika Halweil, who was changed for the better by the sight of the victim's spirit leaving the body. So don't get mad, rich people. It is absolutely possible to get even more self-fulfillment at an Ayn Rand Yoga Center in a tony neighborhood near you. 

On third thought, somebody call Doctor Piketty and have him give a lecture to these rich assholes. They need to be reminded that all this record wealth inequality is hazardous to their health, too. There's Affluenza, there's an epidemic of narcissism, but there's also TB and MERS and Ebola. So if they're not careful about reining in their greed, and sharing a little wealth with the teeming masses, they're liable to go crashing down just like Sister Jackie's sign.

And they will be shown no mercy. And nobody will ever dream of naming a street after them.

Not Intimidated by Depravity: Alex Gregor (photo, N.Y. Post)

10 comments:

  1. Most of us poor souls in Pooristan walk around just trying to survive, but the super- wealthy Richistani Hamptonites want to tear down the ‘depressing’ sign honoring a dead nun?

    Sister Jacqueline Walsh joined the Sisters of Mercy, whose mission focuses on aiding the sick, poor, and uneducated. Lives that were touched by Sister Jackie span different age groups and walks of life. From taking trips to Splish Splash water park with St. Edward's children to helping those in financial need to get food and clothing, Sister Jackie's life was lived as a model Sister of Mercy.

    “This concern for those left behind by the rise of what Pope Francis calls a “savage capitalism” is perhaps the defining mission of the church of the twentieth century, and our new millennium.” - Simone Campbell, order of the Sisters of Social Service, Catholic Social Justice Lobby, NETWORK, A Nun on the Bus: How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community

    That asshole whines about being forced to recount this tragedy to visitors, who always ask who Sister Jackie was, “Her tragic death while visiting us is not an event residents wish to recall.”

    Jesus H. Christ!!! These useless, morally bankrupt people represent the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless nation.

    “The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty?” - George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

    Given the massive bailouts of large banks by us Pooristanis, the failure to prosecute the banksters who brought us to our knees, and the growing income equality gap with our chances of social mobility disappearing into oblivion, - i.e., “savage capitalism,” who has more justification for tearing things down?

    “Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!” - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

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  2. And in other clueless output from the obscenely rich, it was reported that NBA player Paul George, recuperating in a hospital bed from a compound leg fracture, has taken delivery of a new Ferrari and has posted:

    “Shoutout my guy @roadstarrmotorsports for gettin me right again.. He hooked this one up! Although I can’t drive for a while I can still look at it!!! #FerrariBoyz #458 #OneofOne #CantWaitToGetBetter #AlwaysWantedOne #Italia #DreamCar #NowIGotIt #Blessed”.

    (http://www.foxsports.com.au/more-sports/basketball/paul-george-cheers-himself-up-from-broken-leg-with-new-ferrari-and-visit-from-boxing-legend-floyd-mayweather/story-e6frf3f3-1227014985548?nk=baf5f021c4d057692d8cfdbf48a3ef53)

    Note the obscene ending of George's post: "#NowIGotIt #Blessed"

    Apparently for at least some of the rich, even major physical injury isn't enough to make them take stock of their privileged lives, to note the contrast with the alternatives endured every single day by others --- and to understand what constitutes real blessings.

    Unfortunately, neither George nor the Hamptonites described by Karen demarcate the boundaries of cluelessness. Over the past three decades, that attitude has migrated down the economic ladder, until it gets parroted even by a substantial number in the lower middle class. And then it influences thinking, votes cast, and national priorities.

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  3. http://www.infowars.com/cop-if-obama-doesnt-follow-the-constitution-we-dont-have-to/

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  4. “And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.”
    ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

    Karen, thank you for another great piece of writing.

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  5. Hi Everybody! Karen, I have seen several of your concisely brilliant comments on various websites over these past months since I last posted; BRAVO!
    I had threatened to keep everyone posted as to my (mis)adventures with Obamacare, obviously my fingers wrote a check my ass couldn't cash! A brief synopsis;
    I tried using the site before, during and after the fix, overall it performed quite well, I had more problems with my computers, pathetic internet service and decrepit wiring than I did with healthcare.gov. Once I got my wiring etc. up and running I had ZERO problems with HC.gov. Long story short, Obamacare is saving me hundreds of dollars a month, my co-pays for EVERYTHING are lower, all my specialist doctors, oddball pharmacies, everything and everybody accepts my insurance. The only problems I have had have been with the insurance company (Florida Blue) itself. I won't bore you with the torrid details at this juncture...
    I am much more distressed by the continued blatant, disgusting over the top Conservative Media Bias that is pushing right wing propaganda of a tone that I never thought possible in this country!
    Apparently, the CBM has become so self assured they no longer fear any recrimination whatsoever... and why should they! It would seem that no right wing lie is too big for dissemination.


    I mean hey; Finally! Somebody on the right (Mo Brooks) had the guts to stand up and say what so many are afraid to say!
    {“This is a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the
    Democratic Party. And the way in which they’re launching this war is by
    claiming that whites hate everybody else,” Brooks told Ingraham.}

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/...

    This is great! Now we can start to have a real debate! ...of course Mr. Brooks is projecting his own insane hatred and racism onto those who are trying to cleanse our society of the scourge of racism, but that's what they (racists) do- but now that he's taken a public stance using his insane projection perhaps more racists will feel the need to expose themselves in a similar fashion and Americans will know once and for all who and where all the racists really are!
    Of course the only people who ever really pretended NOT to know who and where the racists in this country are and what political party they belong to has been the CBM (Conservatively Biased Media), because it is so blatantly obvious who and where the racists are it would take a massive, collective effort by a massive, totally biased media conglomerate to pull off such a massive propaganda effort... but now, Mr. Brooks - and his ilk - have become complacent and convinced of their lies and warped world view, and feeling safely protected by the CBM they truly believe that no one else will see through their lies and projections - the emperor truly has no clothes!
    Will America notice? Or have we become so brainwashed by the media that we will just allow this totally insane projection to go unchallenged, perhaps David Gregory will do a "Special Report" on the Democratic "War on Whites" with serious music and a gaudy graffic and a panel of propagandic pundits... I can see it now, Peggy Noonan, Bill Kristol, Mary Matalin and Reince Priebus will carefully explain to us all how bad it is for white people right now... white billionaires can hardly get a black person to serve them properly now... it's just terrible! Why can't we just go back to the good 'Ol days where everybody knew their place!?!

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  6. What many people bashing Obama forget is that he's a moderate...15 years ago he would have been considered a conservative! But as of late modern American conservatism has taken a turn for the insane- I have decided to refer to the people who suffer from fear driven belief systems and science denying extremists who can no longer discern the need for fact to supplant propaganda- and other phony beliefs- as Amygdalites; suffering from Amygdalitis; A common condition among right wing extremists the world over in which their Amygdala has become swollen and oversized due to repeated exposure to demagoguery, right wing conspiracy theories, hate speech, extreme propaganda- basically watching too much Al Jazeera or Fox News or Rossiya in Russia and frequenting right wing websites that engage in extreme right wing propaganda, and especially right wing hate radio. I'm not suggesting they shouldn't talk or listen to these things, that is their choice, just like smoking cigarettes, of being extremely promiscuous, or gambling too much or drinking too much etc. There are some left wing extremists who should be considered just as bad, but Vladimir Putin ain't no Lefty!
    It's kind of like getting an STD, or leprosy, if you engage in negative, risky behavior too often you get a disease... so of course I think all Americans should be tested for this particular disease because it renders the infected person incapable of rational decision making, and these sick people, these Amygdalites, should never be allowed into any public office and really shouldn't even be allowed to vote.

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  7. "It's kind of like getting an STD, or leprosy, if you engage in negative, risky behavior too often you get a disease"
    Damn straight. Those lepers have it coming to them.

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  8. The Both Sides Do It disease is a real plague, too. I'd also diagnose the dread off-topic syndrome, except for the fact that I referenced diseases in my post. So let's just call it some self-limiting tangentitis and leave it at that.

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  9. @Doktor

    Out of curiosity, which lefties should be stripped of their voting rights?

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  10. @everybody .... I suppose the voting rights thing really is a bit of hyperbole...

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