I left work early on Friday because I had a headache that was becoming a migraine. I got home, guzzled a whole coke for the caffeine, and tried to sleep. When I woke up, I was disoriented and fragile – I felt like I was going to cry at the slightest provocation – so to distract myself, I turned on television. The only thing on was Wife Swap. I’ve only seen one or two episodes in the past, and it’s a pretty harmless show. It can be on in the background while I write or work or whatever.
But this episode was different. A nice middle-class couple was swapping wives with what I can only describe as a nearly homeless couple in Indiana. The middle-class wife got to the trailer park and was repulsed by the filth. The walls were dirty, dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, and the husband was fat, missing some teeth, and generally didn’t care.
The man who received the nearly homeless woman was in for a shock. She was about 350 pounds with severe dental problems (missing teeth, weird spaces between all her teeth), her clothes were filthy, her hair had not been brushed in what looked like… ever. He was disgusted by her (as I was just looking at her) yet he attempted to be polite.
But the woman wasn’t having it. She was quarrelsome, she accused him of benefiting off the poor, she just hated that he had a nice home with two dining rooms. She felt that it was snooty to eat fruits and vegetables, and when the man tried to tell her that her fatty diet had made her body uninhabitable by obesity, she flew off the handle and said he didn’t know what it was like to be poor.
The middle-class wife who was at the trailer was trying to lift the rest of the family out of their nasty habits. She would ask them to say affirmations. She arranged for them to get haircuts. The husband grumbled that just because he got a haircut didn’t mean he’d get a job because there were 36,000 people who didn’t have jobs in his county, and basically he had zero shot at getting one. The woman was disgusted by going to a soup kitchen to eat. She said, “Don’t you feel like you should provide better for your family?” The man said, “I am very proud. I am providing for my family so we don’t starve.” He meant that he was providing for them by taking them to the soup kitchen.
This episode was an absolute train-wreck. While I don’t take anything I see on TV as the gospel fact, the show depicted the homeless people as being irascible, mean-spirited, passive aggressive, and just gross. For instance, the fat, homeless woman brought the middle-class man to a soup kitchen with a bullhorn and wanted him to announce that he was directly responsible for their financial problems.
As I was watching, I came to realize that it is the sincerely held belief of some people that rich people have stolen their wealth from the poor. I never believed it until I saw it on that show. I still don’t get it, but I at least accept that it is a real phenomenon. While I think the Clayton family’s hatred of the rich might be extreme, the fact that they feel entitled and bitter about other’s wealth is not extreme; the same opinions are voiced every night on the news.
And it’s basically in every speech the Obama administration gives.
I have always been conservative because I never felt comfortable envying anyone else their wealth and my first impressions of liberals – or at least Democrats – is that their entire platform hinges on making one group of people, be it gays, blacks, illegal aliens, women, HIV positive patients, whatever feel like some other group is keeping them down. But just because I exempt myself doesn’t mean everyone else does. Class envy is apparently a pretty powerful motivator for voting.
I believe part of the reason Enron was so easy to despise was because the men were rich. I love them for that reason. I love them because they are industrious, creative, hard-working, and ambitious. I love them because they aren’t content to sit around and do nothing; if we lived in caveman times, they’re the ones who would be dragging home a sabertooth carcass every night to cook up and eat. They’re the ones who are out there creating, making things safer and better and cheaper for those of us who don’t want to chase sabertooth tigers.
But to others, that wealth represents human avarice and it probably also reflects a lack of intelligence or will on the part of the person making that judgement.
I always thought Jeff Skilling was a weird person to hate. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t really care about money. He cared about the intellectual side of earning money, making markets, being creative. But the money itself wasn’t a motivator at all. So when idiots scorn him, they’re not scorning the result of his intelligence (money), they’re scorning his intelligence and creativity themselves.
Enron was objectively tragic when it collapsed, but it became something else when the media kept repeating the retention bonuses. Those bonuses were crucial for keeping people onboard. But like the AIG bonuses, people who hate anyone having anything more than they have went wild with fury.
I watched with amazement as people’s salaries were discussed on the nightly news. It was grotesque, a bacchanalian orgy of envy.
Today, the envy has turned hard, to blind hatred for anything to do with Enron. People are appalled that Jeff Skilling is “paying for justice”, a laugh since Jeff Skilling has not paid a legal bill in four years. Jeff Skilling is broke; that should make naysayers happy. But it probably won’t because like the gross lady on Wife Swap, it is never enough.
Personally, I think if someone want to be wealthy, really really sickening wealthy, the best thing that person can do is watch how others have done it. I think if you’re at all enlightened, and you’re trying to get somewhere in the world, you won’t begrudge anyone their wealth. If it inspires envy, it should also inspire the drive to work hard. Wanting something without wanting to work for it results in the kind of envy I’ve been discussing. Those who want to do better are too busy working to care what others have.
That’s why when I hear someone say a nasty comment about Jeff Skilling, or indeed any of the Enron men, I immediately know two things about them: they’re lazy, and they’re not people I would ever want to know personally.
Enron Online: The Enron Blog 