Julia Schwartz

February 23, 2003

King Lear

It’s common for the masses to blame the plights of society on the rich, for society’s “unfortunates” to resent those who live lives of comfort, to feel they are being treated unjustly by the gods of society. No one ever says, “well, she has it easy; she’s poor!” No, it’s always the opposite: the so-called “rich” have everything they need – money does buy everything in our society from material desires to political control to economic judgment.

But what if the line isn’t cut so cleanly? What if the difference is not black and white? What if there is no black and white, only gray? What if the rich somehow do have it harder? Or at least, what if they have problems of their own to deal with that are so commonly ignored because society understands them to have it easier? What if we have gone too far with our quests for equality and our strains to take away from the classical holders of wealth that we have taken too much? This is much the same as the conflict over women’s rights, as noted by Herb Goldberg[1]: we have concentrated so hard on the rights of women, on allowing them to break the societal mold they were oppressed by for so long, that we may have forgotten to ease the mold for men as well. What if we have worked so hard in our society for so long to avoid the class of the wealthy who control everything and trying to give the bourgeois power that we have taken too much away from the wealthy? What if now, despite what the general opinion is, the rich get the shorter end of the stick?

Justice is one of the more interesting concepts of the human race. “Justice must be served!” we hear loudly proclaimed in the courts. Yet we wonder, in whose eyes? Justice is like love, friendship, power – it can’t be measured with scales or cups. It is, instead, one of those arbitrary ideals that we hold so dear in our lives, but which we can never prove exists. Justice will always exist in one person’s eyes but not the other’s. So, then, how can we determine whom justice favors?

The simple answer would be to say no one. Simpler still would to be to say the rich. Someone’s view has to take precedence in the debate over justice, and it must be that of him in control. He in control will always be of the rich, the powerful – and like will always protect like. Thus, justice is skewed in the favor of the rich, who enjoy bent laws as merely one of the privileges afforded to them by the presence of their monetary wealth.

What about the absurdly rich of our society, however – those whom we watch with hawk’s eyes, waiting to see their every move? What about our celebrities – our sports stars, our musicians, our athletes, our politicians? Why was it such a big deal when we found out George W. drove drunk, when Bill Clinton admitted to smoking pot?[2] Yes, society looks down upon these actions, but it’s not like the majority of the population doesn’t partake in them. We hold these people above ourselves, expect them to be better, to fit a mold we don’t require for ourselves, merely on the basis of their wealth. What about the movie stars who get caught doing strange things? What about Pee Wee Herman seeing a porno flick? Freedom of expression, right? How many people in the country have seen movies that are off color? But Herman was an idol of society. All eyes were cast upon him and his indiscretion cost him his reputation.

We, as Americans, watch our celebrities all too closely. We shouldn’t care what they ate for lunch, whom they last kissed, what shade of eyeliner they are wearing. But we do, and we strive to find this information. In doing so, we take away every bit of privacy they should possess as human beings, and every minor flaw they possess is blown to the stars. This, then, is the unfortunate side effect of the rich and the famous. The gold that plates their sin merely serves to illuminate them.

The poor, however – the proletariat, the bourgeois – these people are afforded privacy. No one cares for what they do, for how they live. They are left to their own world, and if they see a porno flick, it’s not a big deal; if they smoke pot, hey, live free dude. In a world so bent on the injustice of society, in a world where we strive to bring the lesser classes up and the upper down to create a more equal society, we have forgotten to take into account both extremes, instead only concentrating on the original victims. Yet as we do so, we alienate the original oppressors, and begin to victimize them. Justice knows no true friend, for it will always be an abstract, a quality of debate that can never be truly resolved, a pawn in the struggle between the rich and the poor. Tatter’d clothes or furr’d gowns: either way do the small vices appear, but we only accept those of the tatter’d ones. Perhaps it’s time to start in the reverse direction.