Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I believe the word I'm looking for is "Booyeah."

Keli Goff on Gwyneth Paltrow. Excerpted below.

In an interview with Popeater, Paltrow addressed just why she believes she has so many critics by saying:

"I think my work ethic is the reason why I'm successful. I think that a lot of people don't want to put in effort and it's easier to not change, not do something good for you... [They're just] pissed off at someone else doing that. Everything in my life that's good is because I worked my ass off to get it and to maintain it."


In an age in which America's class-divide is greater than it's ever been, our patience has simply waned for the George W. Bush's and Gwyneth Paltrow's of the world -- people who were born on third base and act like they hit a triple. America was founded on the idea that everyone has equal opportunity to carve out their piece of the American Dream, but increasingly that's becoming less and less of a reality. And there's something infuriating about listening to people born into the Dream -- silver rattle in one hand, silver spoon in the other -- lecture the rest of us on how easy it is to obtain -- if we're just willing to "work our asses off" like they do.


It seems like there used to be an unspoken pact between those who were born into privilege and the rest of us to keep all out class warfare from breaking out. They would quietly go about spending their money in respectable, socially beneficial ways -- philanthropies and such -- and we wouldn't publicly point out that the only way they got their job, record deal, book deal, political appointment etc. was because of the last name of their parent or their spouse. But not only have people begun riding their families' coattails more publicly (Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Tori Spelling, Ben Quayle, Megan McCain, George W. Bush, Jenna Bush, Ms. Paltrow, the list goes on), but it's become par for the course for these same people to dismiss allegations of nepotism out of turn, which would be funny if most people weren't too busy trying to figure out how to pay for college to laugh.

No comments: