by notesfromachair

Billionaire Boys’ Club

I heard a troubling statistic this week – 80 billionaires own HALF the wealth in the WORLD. You read that correctly. There are eighty people on the planet as wealthy as 3.6 BILLION of the poorest people. Not to mention, of those, 50% live in the United States. And you thought we were a country in decline?

Please.

Of course, if you’re female the news is not good. Of those fortunate 80, only 8% are women. Surprisingly, it’s not much better for young people since 68 of the 80 are over 50.

So if you reject the cliché of rich white men essentially owning the rest of us, well, you can’t argue with facts. This is NOT a debate on global warming.

The struggle is real

You might be comforted to know the cut off point to make the Elite Eighty is a net worth of $13 billion. Though that means Oprah’s $4 billion plus doesn’t put her even near the top 200. Somehow it only seems fitting that she be there as OUR rep. But what’s fitting, or even seems so, is not reality. That much most of us 21 and over already know.

There is one piece of good news in all of this – not even The Republican Apprentice makes the team. I don’t know about you but I find some comfort in finding he’s not winning at everything – that is if you don’t count decency.

Here’s his latest invective from the campaign trail in Sioux City, Iowa this weekend:

I could stand in the middle of 5^th Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any votes. It’s incredible.

See, even he can barely believe it.

LOL… he says

Do I have to write the words Donald Trump? I suppose so since my prediction at a dinner party two months ago that he was the likely Republican presidential nominee this year seems to be coming true. I couldn’t foretell more than 33% of the Golden Globe winners two weeks ago yet with this I appear to be right on target. Well one can only hope history holds true and I don’t know a whole lot about what any of our futures hold, most particularly yours.

Perhaps it’s all my years working in and around the entertainment industry, but I for one have no desire or belief that a famous rich person would or even could rescue me. Too many deals fall apart; it’s easy to make promises when you’re at the top of the heap you don’t necessarily plan to, or might not even be able to, keep.

Since to get there you usually have to have enough smarts to possess a large personal wealth and career cushion, not to mention several other types of back up plans, you never really have much of your own skin in the game. Intentions are good, or not, but they seldom ever put this group in any real danger of falling in with the rest of the herd that we comprise. Yeah, you heard me. That would be us. Mooooo….

Truth bombs

Therefore, it’s quite perplexing to me to see the world reaching out to today’s uber wealthy in order to lead. Putting Lord Trumpness aside, the latest news is that another mega billionaire – former three term N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg – has enlisted a team to research the viability of his own independent run for the presidency. Bloomberg’s net worth is said to be $37.2 billion, which would easily put him in the top twenty of the Elite Eighty. Though for some reason he seems to be absent from the current 2015 list. Debate on that all you want but what is undebatable is he could still easily buy and sell The Ass-holian Apprentice several times over.

Oh Chairy, don’t make me laugh!

Does this then mean it’s us against them and our only hope is the polar (Note: That’s not a blizzard joke) opposite of a 73 year-old socialist senator from Vermont – the state with the least amount of people in the country next to Wyoming? Well, Bernie Sanders’ net worth is under $1 million so that doesn’t seem likely. Pres. Obama, a senator and best selling author, was already worth at least triple that when he was elected to the presidency more than 7 years ago.

Hillary Clinton, whose net worth is at least $31 million seems more in line with populist sentiment at the moment – and not only because she’s married to a former president who on his own is worth more than $80 million, not counting his political skills. Yet despite an initial excitement that we could finally elect our first female chief executive in U.S. history and an initial groundswell of excitement and support – the enthusiasm level for her seems to be faltering. I guess it’s no longer enough to elect someone from a minority group in the country. Oh right, females actually are the MAJORITY of voters. Perhaps, that’s it. We really do hate ourselves.

Words fail me

Which brings us back to the wealthy, white male elite. What better personification can there be that we’d all relate to than the virulent #OscarsSoWhite uproar over the lack of diversity among this year’s nominees? Forget that the real fight is a much larger, ongoing battle of equal opportunity in the film business. How dare those guys not nominate Will Smith for Concussion and Spike Lee for…Chi-Raq? We’ve now got Will, Jada and Spike sitting it out this year, despite Chris Rock hosting and even though the Academy has nominated Spike and Will several times in the past, awarded Spike an honorary award this year for his many contributions to the industry and currently has a Black woman serving as its president.

Not that any of the above means a damn thing when it comes to diversity. Though, nor do the Oscar nominations. They’re hardly ever fair as a barometer for anyone or anything. I mean, I for one am glad I’m not 9 year old Jacob Tremblay’s father right now or little Jacob myself. I’m not sure I could ever imagine topping that bravura performance in Room even if I lived to be Gloria Stuart’s age. Which is fast approaching.

Just kidding… this is so me!

Nevertheless, pseudo liberal bastion that it is – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, quickly announced this week it would be modifying its nominating process to disqualify some members from voting for future Oscars if they don’t have credits within the last 10 years. Plus, it is doing a massive campaign to recruit (and presumably admit, since it’s tough for anyone to get in these days), more non-white members.

Well, I’m not sure if this is entirely right or wrong but if it gets rid of a few of the macho homophobes who refused to award Brokeback Mountain Best Picture back in 2005 and instead chose the more bland and mainstream Crash – it’s all right with me. Though for sure, I’d trade it all for clean water in Flint, Michigan.

Great, now my head is now pounding with confusion about equal opportunity, wealth and fairness. Still, if anyone thinks of themselves as somehow lesser-than for not being at least a millionaire several times over at this point in their lives –here’s one last fact:

Sarah Palin’s net worth is estimated at $12 million.

I know

Clearly, you don’t have to be a guy or particularly smart, seemingly sober or, well, even vaguely rational, to lead. Okay, you often do need to be white but relax –the Motion Picture Academy has picked up the mantle from Pres. Obama and is already working on that. Please don’t set us all back and, like a 1950s Disney princess, hope some wealthy white guy from the ruling class will rescue you. Movie endings don’t usually happen in real life. It’s a fantasy business.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0niwn2pOEno

11.22.15

by notesfromachair

Time Bandits

The terrific new film Spotlight tells the story of how an investigative unit of reporters from The Boston Globe spent more than a year researching, reporting and writing a story about the Massachusetts Catholic sex abuse scandal and the Catholic Church’s widespread cover-up of numerous pedophile priests. The real-life reporters won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for their work – which exposed many decades of the hidden sexual abuse of many hundreds of children by these men, who were protected by a massive labyrinth-like web of obfuscation by Church hierarchy that reached all the way to the upper echelons of the Vatican.

A year or more on one news story? Uh, yeah – sometimes it takes a long time to get things right.

#preach

I can personally testify to this as someone who just took a year to write a very complicated screenplay adaptation about another journalist who sacrificed his family and career in order to expose widespread corruption in a small midwestern town. The tireless work he did in the late 1970s failed to receive the massive attention of the Globe story but nevertheless it put some very bad people behind bars and shed light on a corrupt system of justice that slowly began to get just a little better as a result of his efforts. And yes, it also took him a little more than a year to do it.

All of this is not to say that one year is the writer/reporter’s magic number to turn out anything of value and significance. Rather what the demarcation means is that in order to tackle particularly challenging tasks of any kind —

IT. TAKES. TIME.

Not to mention lots of thought, many dead ends, and tons of hard work.

This seems a novel concept these days.

We want immediate actions and spontaneous results to some of the world’s most complicated problems. And by gum, we’re getting them.

Take terrorism (Please).

Yes, let’s please discuss

The Republican Apprentice proposed a national registry just for Muslims, in addition to surveillance programs and taking a serious look at the mosques. (Note: Re the mosques – in Apprentice-speak that could mean anything from a walking tour to a burning tour depending on whether he’s talking to MSNBC or Fox News while subtly evoking images of the Holocaust or KKK).

Dr. Ben Carson advocated banning ALL Syrian refugees, whom he compared to rabid dogs running around your neighborhood.

Marco Rubio raked Pres. Obama over the coals for not taking more immediate, hands on action in light of the Paris attacks to stop the Syrian, or perhaps all immigration – it wasn’t quite clear. What was apparent…oh heck… here’s the chief sound byte from the diminutive Florida senator who could: This is a clash of civilizations. And either they win, or we win.

Ladies and gentleman and those who prefer to remain gender neutral: These are your three top Republican presidential nominee frontrunners. By A LOT. Either one of them or Hillary Clinton will be your next president.

Oh gawd, don’t remind me!

It’s not hard to imagine how long it took each of them to come up with those responses to perhaps what are the most complicated and perplexing issues of our time – how to stop terrorism, protect our homeland and help broker some sort of peaceful co-existence of various factions, tribes and religions in the Middle East.

A minute, 10 minutes, an hour? Certainly not a full day. They don’t have time for that.

Mrs. Clinton delivered a very detailed, in-depth, speech with her own complex plan and strategy. How boring.

Oh, and here’s the answer Pres. Obama gave at the G3 summit last week when a CNN International reporter/patriot spit out this thoughtful, provocative question re: radical terrorists: Why can’t we take out the bastards?

The president’s response: This is not, as I said, a traditional military opponent. We can retake territory. And as long as we leave our troops there we can hold it. But that does not solve the underlying problem of eliminating the dynamics that are producing these kinds of violent extremist groups.

What a wimpy nerd.

#reality

If I have to listen to or read about one more dumbass talking head angling for some votes, or trying to sell a few more books, or even adding a couple of more points to their TV Qs, I’m gonna barf.

And you try turning off the noise. Everyone’s talking about it. Commenting on things they know nothing about. Yes, I suppose that includes me – at least in comparison to Mrs. Clinton and the/our current sitting president. See the president gets confidential briefings on these matters daily and Hil circled the globe maybe five times as Secretary of State talking to all of the players. Which was 10 years after she spent 8 years as First Lady, circling the globe while married to another former sitting president.

Oh… was that me?

If I wanted to build a hotel in Beirut even I might consult the Republican Apprentice. And while I wouldn’t trust him to operate on my brain for fear that someone might have told him about The Chair, I would certainly choose Dr. Ben’s hands over Hillary’s if it meant going under anesthesia. (Note: Wait, would I???) As for the Senator-ette that could – he hasn’t been in Washington, D.C. all that long and has one of the highest rates of absenteeism of any current elected official in Congress. So I guess if I needed an advisor on how to get elected to a job I didn’t want to do I admit he might be in my top five, or maybe even three.

But at the task at hand (i.e. how to stop the terrorists) – none of the above three.

blerg

They don’t take the time, they take the oxygen. And suck it out of the zeitgeist. To the point where most of the rest of us can’t breathe and recede into our own individual worlds – desperate to not pay attention when attention should be paid because it’s too tortuous to engage through their smoke and mirrors spew show of nonsensical rhetorical bluster. I always hated the jingoist dialogue in tent pole action movies. Why would I want to engage in it – or even listen to it – in real life?

It is in this way that the lazy know-nothings win. To fight them is the intellectual equivalent of continuing to go out to cafes in order to not let the terrorists win. But one has to keep paying attention, reason through the muck and fear and put a great deal of thought into considering what the long term solutions are and who best can lead us there if we are to survive through this.

We’ll be lucky if it takes just a year.

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Republican Apprentice

Billionaire Boys’ Club

Time Bandits