Morons With Money

Wealth is an overall factor in determining a person’s worth and position in society, and to deny this would imply a mental and physical detachment from the real world or an addiction to prescription painkillers.

Money, as it turns out, really does make the world go ‘round. People with an exorbitant amount of it can change the world, both for good or bad. You could build schools in Africa or suppress voter’s rights. You could save a hospital from demolition or clear-cut the Amazonian rainforest. You could fund meals for indigents or make a sequel to “Grown Ups”.

The wealthy truly are in the driver’s seat. They get invited to all the best parties, are friends with the high and mighty and even have things named after them like streets, colleges, or small Caribbean islands.

Yet despite the attractiveness a life of wealth and privilege offers, it stings when the truly affluent don’t possess the decorum that they should.

I’m not talking about the nouveau riche. I’m talking about younger generations from old money.

Old money was built slowly, usually by a few hard-working ancestors who started a business from scratch. Gradually through time, wealth accumulated and was maintained and expanded by subsequent generations of caretakers. The Carnegies, Morgans and Astors helped build modern America and became some of the nation’s first multi-millionaires. They cultivated high society, an insulated royalty built on privilege and finery like the European monarchs. This wealthy class established institutions of higher learning, private clubs for socializing and sport and a culture of extravagance.

These elites were the finest examples of pampering since Louis XVI rode his sedan chair to an all-night Lounging Around on Silken Pillows and Binging on Éclairs Soiree.

With these creature comforts came the need to give back to society, to use their family’s wealth to help those less fortunate and build things that would benefit America and the world.

But something happened on the way to the Hamptons. The elite culture of sophistication and education became clouded by stupidity. Instead of pedigreed millionaires, wealthy families began siring idiots raised on a glut of cash and luxury but sans the personal responsibility and call to stewardship.

Instead of millionaires driven to a life of philanthropy and industry, we have a bunch of Lacoste wearing retards who take daddy’s yacht out to Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend of drinking Grey Goose and raping coeds by moonlight.

Who wants a summer job when you can hang out with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch and do bodyshots off a supermodel?

The Kennedys were the first blue-blooded hellraisers in America whose antics were longtime fodder for tabloids and comedians. Booze, mistresses, politics. What normally would kill anyone’s career only made the Kennedy mystique more interesting. Uncle Teddy drives his car into the water, Cousin William wiggles his cock at anything in a skirt, Uncle Bobby secretly murders Marilyn Monroe.

Spoiled playboys and debutantes are handed everything and feel they shouldn’t have an education or develop responsibility. What you get aren’t fully developed adults. You get the anthropomorphic representation of the Id and Ego, all juiced up on materialism with an adrenaline rush of partying like a perpetual teenager.

I’m not saying that everyone born rich should take up the family business. If you’re happy repairing cars, then make that your vocation. If you’re into nature photography, then pursue that. Just do something constructive, or something that will contribute to the world, not leech off your family’s savings like some bloated tick sucking blood from a cow’s shoulder.

Despite their wealth and prestige, these retarded offspring of America’s richest families float through life with a cadre of support staff, publicists and handlers. Paris Hilton and the Kardashians are example of people who are famous just for being famous. Though they donate money to charity, it still doesn’t absolve them of douchehood.

This clueless jet set travels the globe and remains in an amniotic sac of luxury, from seaside villas to five star hotels. Their raison d’être is to consume alcohol and cause havoc. We eat this up - every last drop - because we enjoy seeing the high and mighty toppled at their expense.

I have no problem with these spoiled brats dodging the law, skirting responsibility and delaying adulthood. They’re not hurting anyone but themselves and their family’s expectations and legacies.

In the movie “Arthur”, Dudley Moore plays the scion of a wealthy family who drinks at night, sleeps with hookers and has an elaborate model train set in his room. He’s a drunken eccentric, an uber-rich manchild and man of leisure. Moore plays the character with falling-down-drunk comic effect.

This depiction doesn’t bother me as much as when these morons with money try to pass as adults. They put themselves out in the public square and run for office, promising to lead us. The problem with this is that these people aren’t leaders at all. They’re stupid. They’re children whose every appetite has been indulged. They’ve never had to work nine-to-five jobs, pay the mortgage and balance a checkbook.

They eventually win the elections, not because of their detailed plans to right society’s wrongs or make America a better place, but because of the size of their bankrolls.

When they finally get into office, they’re clueless, often inarticulate and scraping for a way to pass themselves off as educated and enlightened. So they hire handlers to groom them, to teach them oratory skills and make them better speakers and to make sure they don’t fuck cocktail waitresses on the way out of the convention center.

The left viewed former President George W. Bush as inarticulate, incompetent and ineffective. His communication skills were weak and he often found himself at the end of many verbal gaffes. Though he attended Yale and Harvard, he didn’t come across as one with an Ivy League education. He said he would make decisions “in his gut” and govern from the heart. Bush said he looked into former Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “soul”:

“I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country,” Bush said during a 2001 visit with Putin.

If anyone else talked like this, they’d be fashioned with a straightjacket and thrown into a rubber room.

These silver spoon simpletons crave power and approval. Their quest is to make mumsy and daddy happy, yet it often ends in disaster, usually with one of them being elected president and some foreign country invaded.

Author William Saroyan wrote, “Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.” When you’re given infinite chances and live a life bereft of consequences, when you view the world as your personal plaything and when people are simply a commodity you can buy off, you really haven’t failed. And if you’ve failed, like Bush had when his oil company went broke, others bail you out.

Yet you don’t learn anything. You’re stuck in childhood, lashing out for the attention.

It’s hard for anyone to take you seriously when you’re a martini-drinking dick in an ascot with no real world experience except partying in Cancun and Aspen every year. When your resume consists of all the countries you vomited in and how big the family’s Learjet is, you’re not the one to run for any political office.

This country and world is in turmoil and the people crave real leadership, not manufactured leadership or hollow buzzwords that sound like something from a Tony Robbins motivational seminar. The last thing we want is to stroke the ego of a plutocrat’s son and make him feel better about himself.

If your intentions aren’t selfless, then stay on the family compound, drink Glenlivet and bang another aristocrat. Maybe there’s hope that your kid won’t be a posh hillbilly like you.