Revulsion.
Revulsion.
It's still filling my mind, blotting out every other thought. Normally, by now, I'd have recovered some kind of critical response to what I've read. But every time I try to frame a more measured response to what I've just read, the facts of the matter keep getting in the way.
Janelle Brown's article in Salon "Brother can you Spare a Dime for my Gucci bills" (paid subscription only I'm afaid.) is the most damning portrait of an individual I can remember since Mark Singer's piece "Wall Power" on dealer W. Graham Arader.
Karyn Bosnak is the owner of SaveKaryn.com. Here she requests people to send her money to pay off the $20,000 dollar credit card debt she ran up when working as a television producer at $100,000 a year. All but $3000 dollars has now been paid off.
In an episode so telling it looks like it was sent by the fiction gods, at the end of the article she and Janelle are walking down the street. They're stopped by a "vaguely surly" young man and asked for a dollar for the subway to "go to school". Karyn refuses, explaining her decision by saying that he looked crusty and was smoking, and she didn't believe he was going to school at all.
I went to college in UCD. Its the largest college in Ireland, and is the most homogenous. Over a quarter of all its students are from a wealthy family background. (Father is a Higher Professional or an Employer/ Manager) Despite the abolition of 3rd level fees, it remains so.
I mixed with people like Karyn everyday. People who were filled with confidence and saw themselves as "future leaders" (a phrase which always flashes up a picture of a Hitler youth picnic in my head).
I like confident people. I'm quite sure of myself a lot of the time. But the problem with Karyn, and the same class of people here in Ireland, is that they are blind to the difficulties facing others. Neither they, nor anybody they know has ever faced hardship. When they looked around themselves in their fee-paying schools, everyone was equal. We all have the same chances, don't we?
So it's the other person's fault that they're not as successful as we are, and we've nothing to feel guilty about. And we shouldn't feel as though we should help them, because if we can look after ourselves, then they could too if they just tried hard enough.
Revulsion.
And not a little rage.
(Have a link to another view on this. No subscription needed this time.
3:34:04 PM 
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