Why we laugh at ‘white privilege’
I think I finally understand what white privilege looks like. I caught some photos of the Met Gala last week, complete with Whoopi Goldberg dressed in something that can only be described as a giant crocheted toilet roll holder and AOC flaunting her chassis in a form-fitting dress with the words “Tax the Rich” scrawled in blood red on her butt. Neither of them was wearing masks, which is bizarre because if I’d been wearing either one of those dresses, I’d choose a mask. Heck, I’d choose a full-length burqa, and order that my fingerprints be burned off to frustrate identification.
The outfits that were paraded down the steps and through the hallways of the vaunted venue were at the intersection of “ridiculous” and “pathetic,” with a slight detour through “pretentious.” The Met Gala seems to attract this sort of display, although in prior years it wasn’t quite this bad. A friend who’s worked for decades in fashion in both Europe and the United States just rolled her eyes when I asked her opinion of the haute couture at the gala. I also asked the woman manning the cash register at Macy’s what she thought of the event, and her exact response was, “Oh you mean the one where Whoopi dressed like a giant papier mache Concord grape?”
Yes, that one.
The Met Gala is designed to raise money for the eponymous New York City museum, a place where I’ve spent many joyous hours as both a child and adult. I fully support the arts, and the need to protect and promote them in an era where everything has become polarized, pasteurized or petrified. Without them, we are Neanderthals before the cave drawings.
But there is a cognitive disconnect in charging people $35,000 per ticket, at a time when people are literally struggling to put food on their tables. It is obscene that the equivalent of a yearly salary would be spent on a dinner, a gift bag stuffed with trinkets and a photo op.
I am not one of the woke, who thinks the free-market system is dangerous because it crushes brown and Black people under its massive weight. None of those things make any sense to me.
When you go to a costume party, you are not supposed to take yourself seriously. And yet, that is exactly what AOC did, as she paraded herself through the halls, mask-less from all accounts, like a clueless Disney Princess with a Jackson Pollack painting splashed on her tochus.
AOC gets away with it, even though she’s technically a person of color. Whoopi gets away with it too, even though she’s obviously a person of color. They benefit from the truest form of “white privilege” that exists, namely, the privilege of living in the sterile liberal bubble.
The people who live within that bubble, and it is quite large and encompasses actors, journalists, politicians and certain religious folk, are incapable of understanding the rest of us out here in the greater world. They think they know who we are, what we need, how we are violating their standards and what should be done with us if we fail to acknowledge their wisdom.
But the rest of us see who they are and what they stand for, and we laugh. They might not hear us, in that bubble, but the sounds are becoming louder and more constant with each passing day. Inhabitants of the bubble have the whitest of privileges, the right to ignore reality.
Every time I hear someone attack me or my conservative friends for our “white privilege,” I chuckle. I’ve heard Larry Elder, Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice, Alveeda King and Candace Owens accused of exercising “white privilege.” I’ve seen Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Alberto Gonzalez, Maria Salazar and Susanna Martinez tagged with “white privilege.” You can, apparently, be brown and Black and yet have a certain color of privilege, according to the left.
But the true color of privilege is the color that defines your world view, one that allows you to preach and prattle on about how we need to take care of the poor, all the while draping yourself in diamonds and disdain and traipsing around for the cameras.
Limousine liberals have always been with us. They just used to dress a lot better.