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Celebrating elitism
Time to really promote democracy rather than elitism and oligarchy

Januaey 22, 2004
The Iranian

For a long time now I have been wondering why I find myself so deeply offended by the sex scandal of Paris Hilton. It is more than the fact that I receive daily 2 or 3s spam e-mails inviting me to look at her willing or unwilling contribution to pornography; totaling in these weeks several hundred invitations to participate as a spectator in something that is an assault on public morality.

Sex without intimacy, without love, compassion and privacy is not cool. It continues the exploitation of women and children by a male dominated society. We as a society have got to grow up and stop celebrating wickedness and stop admiring the profane at the neglect and expense of what can and should be sacred. In the final analysis how fulfilled does an individual feel who holds nothing to be sacred in their life? How personal are any of these things to us, which money can buy which are made for us by corporations including ideas and trends given us by the media?

We live in a world where the right to privacy and in fact privacy itself has become a rare and precious commodity, so rare in fact that rather than struggle to maintain privacy many people cash in on it with scandals to the benefit of their own careers in a culture that has celebrated lawlessness and indecency since the frontier days with its brothels and vigilantes and lynchings.

We are introduced by our media to role models like Monica Lewinski and Paris Hilton. We celebrate crime by making movies and books about serial murderers or celebrity crime. We come away feeling that if you are a celebrity like O.J. Simpson that you are above the law. If you are famous and rich enough you can buy justice or if your crime is big enough it will give you the fame and immunity you seek.

In the case of Paris Hilton there is the added implication that wealthy aristocratic families
are above the law and are amoral when instead they should be role models of social responsibility. One wonders why a young person like her would even be attracted to someone capable of committing such an act of greed and crime and indecency? Why do we find lawlessness so attractive as a culture? There is something fundamentally wrong here which is reminiscent of the fall and decline of the Roman Empire.

I am reminded of the long list of sex scandals of the British Royals which through publicizing becomes a form of celebration and normalization of these acts by repeated public exposure. Why does the American public adore the British Royal Family? Monarchy is not about equality or democracy. It is a defunct vestige of past corruption which in 1776 we rebelled against. The British Empire is dead and thank heavens... so let's keep it burried. Thanks to the likes of Bill Clinton how many parents had to explain to their prepubescent children what oral sex is? If our leaders flaunt laws and mores then why should the average citizen respect them?

The message to our youth is yet again that ego gratification and self interest and the worst aspects of pure capitalism are to be admired and celebrated. Think of the great capacity to do good and help humanity that someone with the wealth of Paris Hilton could achieve even at her tender age? In the Middle Ages some of the world's greatest leaders were younger than her. Every young girl who wears a T-shirt with "I'm a Princess" silk screened on it is attacking our democratic principles. We need to stop celebrating elitism and start believing in democracy and practicing it not just pay lip service to it.

When TV shows present celebrities being given high fashion accessories worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by corporations just for product endorsement it makes us wage slaves working for an honest living feel like failures. Where is the celebration and admiration of our middle class and working class and family values? And of our work ethic when selling drugs or child pornography for example is so much more profitable?

One celebrity during an Oscar ceremony was loaned a $27 million diamond necklace complete with two body guards and another, a $45,000 watch. This in the face of a long suffering impoverished third world where that money could go to build schools, hospitals, give people livestock and livelihoods and feed hungry children.

The terrorists would argue perhaps even justifiably that the wealth of the West has been robbed from them for generations to begin with. They watch their birth rights being squandered by the decadent life styles of the elites while they live in generations of abject poverty and their corrupt leaders are kept in place by Western backing. Why do you think there were revolutions in the colonial USA, France, Russia, China and more recently Iran? Do you think people risked their lives out of boredom? We do not remember the decadence of the Shah's Iran and the American role in it. We only remember our hostages.

The message of our Paris Hiltons gives ammunition to the rhetoric of the IRI leadership who called the USA:"The Great Satanic Nation" and other Islamic fundamentalists who use the decadence of our society to fuel hatred and terrorism against us.

There is much to celebrate that is good about the USA and it is time to really promote democracy rather than elitism and oligarchy. The rich are rich enough and they have not been good stewards for us so far and indeed they need our stewardship to get back in touch with common decency and equality, so let's vote them out come November rather than make them role models. Their greed is not worthy of our admiration.

I want the next administration to pass the biggest education budget in US history rather than the biggest defense budget of all former defense budgets combined. If we love and value our children then let's give them education as their patrimony rather than passing on to their generation the largest deficit in the history of our nation.

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