The Limits of My Bleeding Heart

I’m an incurable bleeding heart. Always have been. Almost anybody having a bad day short of Charlie Manson gets at least some measure of sympathy from me. (And I even managed a wince for him when I heard he’d been set on fire.)

There are times, however, when my sympathy contends with – what is the word I’m looking for? Not schadenfreude, because there’s no element of pleasure in it.

It’s something more akin to amazement and best summed up by me withdrawing the hand I’ve been using to pat the other person comfortingly on the shoulder, sitting back, opening my eyes wide and asking “You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding.”

That’s my reaction to Alexandra Penney’s two recent pieces, one at The Sunday Times Online, the other at The Daily Beast about her savings being wiped out in the Madoff scandal.

It’s not that I blame her for being unhappy, for feeling violated, bewildered, bereft. Her savings have been taken away, savings she earned through her own hard work. All her assumptions about her future have now been seriously shaken.

But self-pity and hyperbole among the very rich – even among the very rich who’ve been cruelly bilked of their savings – is a sure-fire empathy killer. I depend on San Francisco’s transit system to get me where I want to go, and if I want an ironed shirt, I iron it myself, and have had to since I left for college more than thirty years ago. So naturally, when the indignities being brokenly imparted to me include having to ride the subway, and giving up the freshly ironed shirts provided by her soon-to-be-fired maid, I have a hard time relating.

When someone declares that she has “nowhere to turn” and then adds “At least I have the offer of my son’s adorable back house in Santa Monica,” a certain sense of alienation sets in. When that someone goes on to say she has “nothing” and to prove it cites the fact that “The cottage in West Palm Beach is already on the market, my little country house is being appraised, and I can’t even think what will happen to my apartment…” I have to wonder about her definition of “nothing.” That sounds like a hefty chunk of equity to me, even in today’s real estate market.

And the sense that I’m listening to someone from another planet entirely is made complete when she is driven by desperation to “call my good friend Ed Victor, the literary agent, and say I need to write something, anything.”

Golly. As a freelance writer, I sure wish I had the option of calling my pal, one of the worlds leading literary agents, and asking him to rustle up an assignment for me.

In short, Alexandra Penney has nothing, absolutely nothing but a well-off son willing to offer her a cottage in Santa Monica, the money from the sale of at least two high end properties, and wealthy, influential friends willing to offer her a helping hand. Not to mention the royalties from her bestselling book, How To Make Love to a Man.

And the no doubt hefty advance for her next book, which hopefully, will be written in a calmer frame of mind, and with a better sense of perspective.

out money to, hand over fist.

in anger when I hear what to me sounds like whining, when a heretofore charmed existence has a small, gold plated monkey wrench pinging around in the works...

And I then think of the dark longest night of the year, in sub-zero temperatures when there are people who have no place to lay their heads or people to take them in...

her "soon-to-be-fired maid" who I doubt has the same resources she has. These people make me ill.

on edit:
I went back and read the whole article and thought about it: has to be a joke, a parody. No one - not even George Bush - can be that completely clueless. If it is not a joke or a parody, then she is the kind of person who, when you meet them, you just light up a joint, take a humongous hit and say "wow, that's one really fucked up person." If it is for real, she is so clueless, I can't even really get mad because I am too amazed.

"I began to think about my options: I’d have to sell the cottage in West Palm Beach immediately. I’d need to lay off Yolanda. I could cancel the newspaper subscriptions and read everything online. I only needed a cell phone. I’d have to stop taking taxis. And who could highlight my hair for almost no money? And how hard was it to give yourself a really good pedicure?"

Well, hmph. Poor thing!

as the sense of entitlement smacks up against the reality of reduced circumstances.

However, like you I have compassion fatigue when they moan about the indignity of riding the subway or buying frozen food at the supermarket instead of getting it from a big name restaurant to plate at home, the maid will run the dishwasher tomorrow.

The ones who won't survive this are the ones who won't be able to adapt, though, and it's going to be sad no matter who it is.

I'm certainly not happy that she lost her savings but it doesnt' bring a tear to my eyes either. She is well positioned to move forward, albeit on a smaller scale, with her life. She's not going to be a bag lady.

:yoiks:

ps -

http://haasundfuchs.de/artists/alexandra_penney/works/

What's with the bizarrely fish-like open mouths? Is that still part of the "Making Love to a Man" theme?

:shrug:

Alexandra Penney: Skid row
She had three homes, a luxurious lifestyle and a nest egg in the hands of that clever Bernie Madoff. Then disaster struck. Alexandra Penney describes her plunge from lady who lunched to bag lady - a victim of the world’s biggest fraud

but you certainly nailed my feelings. am i really supposed to feel sorry for this person? sorry, no can do.

Just about a year ago, I interviewed for an elder care assignment with a family who had "lost everything"

They explained that normally I would be paid for one and a half shifts, since I would be working one and a half shifts.

But they couldn't afford it. I guess they had been investing in the sub prime mortgage end of the market - and when that fell apart they thought they were broke.

Anyway there was this whole entitlement thing. I worked exactly two days, collected my pay and left. (I had said up front that I was only willing to work the one weekend - putting the situation
on probation.)

It struck me that had not every single person in the family felt that they were entitled to designer clothes, new Mercedes, designer handbags etc. they might not be so broke. And hey, since they couldn't afford to pay the second shift I was working, maybe I could have a slighlty used designer handbag as part of the deal??

When I said I didn't think the job was for me, they blurted out how awful my leaving then was - they were about to go to Cozumel for the Christmas holidays - and how could they find help on short notice!!

I applaud you.

Someone would have had a free boot in their arse if they stood there and told me that.

Boots!!!!!

Which I was not wearing at the time (I consider it tres gauche to wear my Christian Loubouten Goya's while nursing...)

Because the elite will be horrified at seeing one of their own "suffer".

Which I find infuriating.

But, this shows where the working people of America figure into the
media and government landscape--- we're just like Katrina victims,
to be shoved off and forgotten as a burden to the economy.

For too long, working people have been used as an ATM machine by
the banks, corporations, and our government. And over the last
eight years, we REALLY were on the menu as a 'profit center,' as
the financial industry used our pensions and savings and DEBT to
create financial 'instruments' that allowed them to place bets on us,
not jsut to charge us 23% on our credit cards---all with Congress's
blessing.

Our Congress is not on our side, and I am unsure of Obama given his
economic team choices---from the very companies who started this
financial debacle.

We must take ourselves off the menu.

"Every dollar I have earned was from my own hard work."

Which part was from her own hard work? This? "They paid for my education at Smith, an expensive women-only liberal arts college."

Or the part where she was making money by investing? I don't think of investments as being earnings from "my own hard work." The whole point of investments is to make money off other people's work.

Like you, I don't wish her any ill will, but she certainly is clueless about how privileged she (still) is.

I don't think it _is_ satire, but it sure reads like it. Wow. Just wow.

That's evident from reading her blog. She's ok, at best. Probably got her high-paying jobs through connections. Fine. But let's face it, that's mostly luck.

She was lucky to live in a time when mediocrity could strike it big. Ok, good for her. But really now, she's ending up pretty much where her ability would've put her all along, minus the luck.

And anybody who needs someone to show them how to get a subway card is not creative. Not lots of other qualities too.

So, what luck giveth, greed taketh away. This is not an unusual thing to happen, even in normal times.

But I'd still like to slap her silly - not out of envy, I wouldn't trade places with her for all the tea in China. But because she didn't give a damn about the truly awful things that other people are going through, yet she expects sympathy for herself about this mountain out of a molehill "cataclysm" as she makes it out to be - which she has the nerve then to contemplate suicide over! And there I rest my case, that this is a weak and shallow and unimaginative person, not exceptional enough to have landed in the big pile of roses in the first place. If she genuinely had a brain, all her money wouldn't have been with Madoff, so there you have it.

Obviously a very self-absorbed person, and at this moment (in all her supposed-brilliance) she doesn't EVEN get the total cognitive dissonance of flaunting that to the mass public right now. Yup, I'm damn impressed, lady. Small wonder she got the kind of comments she did. I'll bet she has no idea why.

She's not the worst person in the world, as KO would say. We know where to look for contenders for that distinction. But she didn't mind hobnobbing with them either. Lie down with pigs, get up in...

She isn't worried about physical survival, as she hyperbolically pretends. What she's really this extremely worried about, is looking shabby next to her still ultra-rich so-called friends.

What about the people who lost EVERYTHING and REALLY did nothing wrong? When she can learn to shed a tear for them, then I'll revisit my opinion of her.

The erosion of fraud law hurts us all. It's very hard to get anything to change unless the rich are being hurt by it too. Perhaps something good can come from this.

But she does not have much of my sympathy, either.

:dem:

-Laelth