For whatever bizarre and pointless reason, those who are, shall we say, poor (which, in the current year signifies not being a millionaire) still relish getting up in arms over the privileges enjoyed by the rich. Of course, it can be rather upsetting when one takes into consideration that it is not really talent, drive or hard work that leads to wealth so much as the fickle fate of one’s circumstance of birth (you can’t make any damn headway in this world without a leg up, after all–despite what the myth of the American dream would like to falsely dangle in front of you), but so long as, like most unpleasant realities, you simply close your eyes to them, you will find your low-budget face being far less prone to the wrinkles that will already come sooner because you are not affluent and thus cannot afford the right “moisturizer” (read: plastic surgery).
And because you are not, you will never be able to fathom the idea of actually owning anything (least of all many things) of value. The sort of things that require insurance policies and the endless signings of documents to protect what you’ve vaguely worked toward possessing (in between when it wasn’t being handed to you as a result of your last name or whose tit [Paris’] you happened to suck dry to get where you are today). In Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s (or whoever is in his body right now) case, one such asset is this house on the edge of a field in the exclusive Hidden Hills neighborhood where reality is what make you of it anyway thanks to its gated community structure. Insisting that the fire that had been burning with unprecedented fury even by California’s standards would have spread much more quickly (with neighbors who have corroborated this belief as well) without these highly recommended private firefighters for hire, Kardashian can now not only maintain the various accoutrements of her wealth but also paint herself as a roundabout heroine to other richies in the vicinity, despite the fact that the Kardashian-Wests “didn’t obtain permission from authorities to enter the threatened upscale neighbourhood that had been placed under mandatory evacuation.” Because who needs permission when your bank account is burgeoning? That is but the divine right of those with money.
And when you are rich, you become delusional in a different way than being poor makes you (you know visions of phantasms from your unwanted daily fasts), so that you truly believe that an entire house of cards is resting on your supple, daily massaged back. As Kim clearly thinks it does as she explained to Ellen DeGeneres, “I feel like we were really blessed to have the help of the firefighters that we did. And our house is right on the end of a big park. So the whole park had caught fire and if our house went, then every other house would go.” Ummm. Sure, whatever you need to tell yourself to feel the act was done in martyrdom and not out of lust for a glorified storage unit housing jewels, lingerie and couture.
And yet, isn’t that the entire point of having money? To use it as you damn well please without having to worry about ramifications. That is the very benefit of privilege: zero ramifications. As Matt Welch of Reason pointed out in 2007, when another wildfire in California raged similarly, therefore drew out the coveted private firefighter option, “You would think that the cheap availability of potent fire retardant, and the creation of supplementary firefighting capability with costs borne entirely by the homeowners who choose to live in fire zones, instead of everyday taxpayers would be a cause for at least mild enthusiasm.” But no, the poor do so love to complain, forcing Kim to make this type of “mea culpa” public appearance in response to the contempt. “I can’t help it that I’m rich,” one imagines Kim Kardashian saying internally in a Gretchen Wieners voice as she instead publicly deflects with the false modesty of, “I don’t take that for granted, and that was such a blessing that we were able to do that.” Uh huh, such a fucking blessing that you came out of the vag of someone with the good sense to marry money.
“I know that not everyone has this luxury available to them,” (nor the one that allows them to fly in an empty 747 right after the release of a damning environmental report), she concluded in making her so-called case to DeGeneres. Well how nice that rich people occasionally pretend to feel humbled by the things they have easy access to that the rest of us down at heel (and the ones burning in the hell that was already California even without the fire) do not. And thanks for making us certain that the rich are capable of tiptoeing out of their bubble to defend it lest the poor start pelting it with bricks or some other plebeian emblem. Because, yes, the poor are just so goddamned petty in their jealousy that they want to bring everyone at the top down to their hovel as well by letting perfectly good property burn to the ground.
