Misfortune and Fame by Paul Berton

Author:Paul Berton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Wealth, Psychology, Ethics, Rich people, Fame, Celebrities, Social Science, Popular Culture, Humour
ISBN: 9781771623735
Publisher: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
Published: 2023-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Affluence and Anxiety

“The billionaire bashing needs to happen. I don’t know why we’re being so polite.”

—Abigail Disney, multimillionaire

Reason No. 8 is that nobody seems to like rich people.

Ironically, lots of rich people are quite nice. As a matter of fact (if you’ll pardon the cliché), some of my best friends, acquaintances and family members are rich, and they are very nice indeed. They seem genuinely kind, not just to friends but also to strangers. They give to charity, they help people, they care about the world around them, and while they live well, they don’t live ostentatiously, notwithstanding the fact it’s tempting to when you have so much. But these are not the type most of us think of when we contemplate the wealthy. Looking for foibles, failings and faults is more popular, and more fun.

Some of us are envious of wealth and fame. Others, given the excess often displayed by the superrich, simply can’t resist marvelling at the many ways that rich people create problems for themselves through their own extravagance. A case in point: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos generated negative headlines worldwide in 2022 when building his new half-a-billion-dollar yacht in Rotterdam. The shipyard wanted permission to remove part of a historic bridge to allow it to sail out to sea, but the request caused such a backlash locally they scrapped the plan and towed the yacht to another yard to be completed. No expense was spared, and the builders thought of almost everything—except how to get it quietly out to sea.

Some feel that many rich people have not played fair: they lie and cheat and scheme and do not deserve all that cash. Most bankers who helped plunge the world into the economic crisis of 2008 did not face any legal consequences, and many are still superrich. Some conniving chief executives have gone to jail, deservedly, but the general public can’t shake the feeling that too many others continue their illegal deeds with impunity. Sports icons such as baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez and cyclist Lance Armstrong are still fabulously rich despite admitting they cheated their way to huge paycheques. Paul Manafort, a Washington lobbyist and lawyer famous for being Donald Trump’s campaign chair in 2016, is still rich, despite having been tried, convicted and jailed for laundering money, among various other charges related to his opaque operations with foreign governments. Trump later pardoned him.

Chronicling the problems of the rich is a kind of deranged sport for the masses and a gleeful career for television producers, filmmakers and writers like me. Dallas and Dynasty defined rich people for a generation of TV watchers in the 1980s. Yellowstone and Succession and The White Lotus are streaming sensations today. The Wolf of Wall Street, Parasite and Triangle of Sadness, among dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other movies, are somehow both compelling and appalling. It’s a love-hate relationship. We want what rich people have, but we don’t want their problems, and just knowing they are miserable can make us feel better.

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