A Sorry Excuse for Challenging the Unpopular Views about the Problems of Elitism in its Intended Context
This entry was first posted as a note in my Facebook account.
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The writer of this article in Friday's (3 April 2009) edition of the TODAY paper obviously has got a grudge against having been made to feel guilty over his elitist attitude.
( Web source: Link )
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Do I look rich to you?
Rich kettle, poor pot —all black. You’re just asbad as the person you’re hanging your baggage on
Phin Wong
plus editor phin@mediacorp.com.sg
I’m rich. Oh, I’m rolling in green — and I don’t mean grass. No, grass is for poor people who have to appreciate the riches of the outdoors because they don’t have terribly much indoors.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some hideous nature-hater. Goodness, no. Only the tacky nouveau riche have no appreciation for Gaia’s bounty. I myself adore my modest field of South African calla lilies where I often frolic upon over apple-seed crumpets and vino made from grapes crushed by delightful little Italian orphans (it’s sublime — you can actually taste the hope).
I even allow my three butlers — Jeeves, Jenkins and Pepe — to occasionally take a stroll through my garden labyrinth (as long as they use the service entrance). I find they polish the silverware better when they get some exercise.
You see, rich people do care for the disadvantaged (Pepe often shows his gratitude for saving him from the squalor of South America during a boating trip through the Amazon last year by performing a quaint native dance involving lots of wailing and calling out for his mother — village people are so marvellously cultured). Please, hold the applause. My humble nature simply cannot take any more adulation.
Now excuse me while I figure out how to pay my phone bill and still have enough money left to afford a Happy Meal. Does McDonald’s have an instalment plan?
Yes, the truth is, the only thing rich about me is my sense of irony. But according to one particular cab driver, I look rich. Dude, that bulge in my pants isn’t a wad of cash — stop staring.
It started off quite innocently. He was yabbering on about the rat race and how maybe we Singaporeans have gotten it all wrong. Look at the Australians, he said, sweepingly, they don’t care to “earn money”. They just want to “relax and be happy”.
Well, I don’t know if it’s fair to brand all Aussies as hippy slackers, I offered innocently, but I for one would rather be happy than chase the dollar.
“That’s because you’re rich,” he spat.
I looked up from picking cat hair out of my cardigan, temporarily stunned by his random accusation.
“Erm, I’m not rich,” I assured him. He did pick me up from Caldecott Hill. Maybe he had mistaken me for Fann Wong. I get that a lot.
“You’re rich, lah!” he repeated. “Look at your address. Only rich people stay there!”
I explained to him that my parents had bought the place 20 years ago when it was still a HUDC flat. I just so happen to still be living there. Which says more about my financial state than anything. The most valuable asset I own is a cool Star Wars action figure holder in the shape of Darth Vader’s head from the 1980s. It’s the closest thing I have to a nest egg.
But he wasn’t having any of it.
“Rich, rich, lah! Pretend for what?” he continued, rather rudely. “Rich people all like that one.”
Now I wasn’t just rich — I was a bold-faced liar, too. When we pulled up at my block, I reached for my wallet, fingered intentionally past the two- and five-dollar notes and whipped out the $50 note I had just (painfully) withdrew from the ATM.
“Got smaller notes or not?” asked the irate cabbie.
“Sorry, don’t have,” I replied. “I’m rich, mah.”
In this increasingly politically correct world, rich people have become the only truly safe group to openly insult. And it’s fascinating.
A few months ago, I ranted about my adventures with crabby cabbies who have turned redefining standards of appalling service into an exquisite art form. Cab drivers, I argued, are paid service-providers and commuters the paying customers.
I am, it turns out, wrong in the court of public opinion. A barrage of emails flooded my inbox, accusing me of being everything from a drunk lout to a snooty princess. I had ventured into terribly sensitive territory — pointing out the faults of what is assumed to be a low-income group.
Would it be okay to highlight how some tai-tai manning the muffin counter at a charity bake sale for the girl scouts didn’t smile toothily when I forked over my two bucks?
After all, the elite faction with money is impervious to insults. It’s the anaesthetic properties found naturally in cold, hard cash, you see. My cabbie obviously believed so. Because he thought I was rich, he felt it perfectly acceptable to be blatantly unpleasant.
Let’s get one thing clear before you start banging away on your keyboard, crafting an angry letter to get this bourgeois elitist forcefully removed from his cubicle in his swanky ivory-tower office. I’m not belittling the disadvantaged and I’m not a guardian of the filthy rich.
All I’m asking is if elitism is defined, according to dictionary.com, as the belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favoured treatment due to their social status or financial resources, and it is a socially acceptable belief that the rich deserve to be pooped on while the poor are considered a favoured, untouchable segment of society that can do no wrong, then who’s being elitist here?
Is it okay for one to expect to be treated differently because he has less, and not for another to expect the same if he has more? Because if that’s the case, then you’re a pot and he’s a kettle, and we’re all black.
Luckily for me, I’ve got Pepe to do the dishes.
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The trouble with the argument that he poses (as shared by many like him) is that he does not understand that the essence of elitism applies unidirectionally - the poor are never to be bearing the brunt of the guilt of being of the higher standing since the whole argument becomes an oxymoron.
It boils down simply to the truth - that those who should be guilty about it, hate and resent the indictment that they either refuse to accept it, or they run away from owning up to it. It also should not escape the eye of the discerning reader as to the underlying heart condition of the writer - the manner in which he blurts out his irreverent statements with smugness. For a topic as serious as this, even a street-side daily such as TODAY should not even stoop to such frivolity just so to orchestrate a heightened reader traffic.
________________________________________________________________
The writer of this article in Friday's (3 April 2009) edition of the TODAY paper obviously has got a grudge against having been made to feel guilty over his elitist attitude.
( Web source: Link )
__________________________________________________________________
Do I look rich to you?
Rich kettle, poor pot —all black. You’re just asbad as the person you’re hanging your baggage on
Phin Wong
plus editor phin@mediacorp.com.sg
I’m rich. Oh, I’m rolling in green — and I don’t mean grass. No, grass is for poor people who have to appreciate the riches of the outdoors because they don’t have terribly much indoors.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some hideous nature-hater. Goodness, no. Only the tacky nouveau riche have no appreciation for Gaia’s bounty. I myself adore my modest field of South African calla lilies where I often frolic upon over apple-seed crumpets and vino made from grapes crushed by delightful little Italian orphans (it’s sublime — you can actually taste the hope).
I even allow my three butlers — Jeeves, Jenkins and Pepe — to occasionally take a stroll through my garden labyrinth (as long as they use the service entrance). I find they polish the silverware better when they get some exercise.
You see, rich people do care for the disadvantaged (Pepe often shows his gratitude for saving him from the squalor of South America during a boating trip through the Amazon last year by performing a quaint native dance involving lots of wailing and calling out for his mother — village people are so marvellously cultured). Please, hold the applause. My humble nature simply cannot take any more adulation.
Now excuse me while I figure out how to pay my phone bill and still have enough money left to afford a Happy Meal. Does McDonald’s have an instalment plan?
Yes, the truth is, the only thing rich about me is my sense of irony. But according to one particular cab driver, I look rich. Dude, that bulge in my pants isn’t a wad of cash — stop staring.
It started off quite innocently. He was yabbering on about the rat race and how maybe we Singaporeans have gotten it all wrong. Look at the Australians, he said, sweepingly, they don’t care to “earn money”. They just want to “relax and be happy”.
Well, I don’t know if it’s fair to brand all Aussies as hippy slackers, I offered innocently, but I for one would rather be happy than chase the dollar.
“That’s because you’re rich,” he spat.
I looked up from picking cat hair out of my cardigan, temporarily stunned by his random accusation.
“Erm, I’m not rich,” I assured him. He did pick me up from Caldecott Hill. Maybe he had mistaken me for Fann Wong. I get that a lot.
“You’re rich, lah!” he repeated. “Look at your address. Only rich people stay there!”
I explained to him that my parents had bought the place 20 years ago when it was still a HUDC flat. I just so happen to still be living there. Which says more about my financial state than anything. The most valuable asset I own is a cool Star Wars action figure holder in the shape of Darth Vader’s head from the 1980s. It’s the closest thing I have to a nest egg.
But he wasn’t having any of it.
“Rich, rich, lah! Pretend for what?” he continued, rather rudely. “Rich people all like that one.”
Now I wasn’t just rich — I was a bold-faced liar, too. When we pulled up at my block, I reached for my wallet, fingered intentionally past the two- and five-dollar notes and whipped out the $50 note I had just (painfully) withdrew from the ATM.
“Got smaller notes or not?” asked the irate cabbie.
“Sorry, don’t have,” I replied. “I’m rich, mah.”
In this increasingly politically correct world, rich people have become the only truly safe group to openly insult. And it’s fascinating.
A few months ago, I ranted about my adventures with crabby cabbies who have turned redefining standards of appalling service into an exquisite art form. Cab drivers, I argued, are paid service-providers and commuters the paying customers.
I am, it turns out, wrong in the court of public opinion. A barrage of emails flooded my inbox, accusing me of being everything from a drunk lout to a snooty princess. I had ventured into terribly sensitive territory — pointing out the faults of what is assumed to be a low-income group.
Would it be okay to highlight how some tai-tai manning the muffin counter at a charity bake sale for the girl scouts didn’t smile toothily when I forked over my two bucks?
After all, the elite faction with money is impervious to insults. It’s the anaesthetic properties found naturally in cold, hard cash, you see. My cabbie obviously believed so. Because he thought I was rich, he felt it perfectly acceptable to be blatantly unpleasant.
Let’s get one thing clear before you start banging away on your keyboard, crafting an angry letter to get this bourgeois elitist forcefully removed from his cubicle in his swanky ivory-tower office. I’m not belittling the disadvantaged and I’m not a guardian of the filthy rich.
All I’m asking is if elitism is defined, according to dictionary.com, as the belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favoured treatment due to their social status or financial resources, and it is a socially acceptable belief that the rich deserve to be pooped on while the poor are considered a favoured, untouchable segment of society that can do no wrong, then who’s being elitist here?
Is it okay for one to expect to be treated differently because he has less, and not for another to expect the same if he has more? Because if that’s the case, then you’re a pot and he’s a kettle, and we’re all black.
Luckily for me, I’ve got Pepe to do the dishes.
__________________________
The trouble with the argument that he poses (as shared by many like him) is that he does not understand that the essence of elitism applies unidirectionally - the poor are never to be bearing the brunt of the guilt of being of the higher standing since the whole argument becomes an oxymoron.
It boils down simply to the truth - that those who should be guilty about it, hate and resent the indictment that they either refuse to accept it, or they run away from owning up to it. It also should not escape the eye of the discerning reader as to the underlying heart condition of the writer - the manner in which he blurts out his irreverent statements with smugness. For a topic as serious as this, even a street-side daily such as TODAY should not even stoop to such frivolity just so to orchestrate a heightened reader traffic.
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