By Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
It is always in poor taste for modern Americans to liken
their ideological critics to Nazis. So when venture capitalist Tom Perkins
wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal that equated "the progressive
war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" with "fascist
Nazi Germany," he opened his double doors to the cable TV umbrage-fest
that followed.
I have a teensy bit of advice for Perkins: When your
reported worth is somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion, you don't need
to wrap quotes around the word "rich."
In three paragraphs, Perkins, 82, lambasted the San
Francisco Chronicle for "the demonization of the rich" -- this time,
"rich" was not in quotes -- and a "rising tide of hatred of the
successful one percent."
Perkins cited the paper's coverage of public anger at
Google buses and rising real estate prices, as well as "libelous and cruel
attacks" on the city's "number-one celebrity," Danielle Steel.
(It's sweet of husband No. 5 to stand up for his ex-wife, but I can think of
bigger outrages than two Chronicle scribes dishing Steel's big hedge.) He
concluded by noting that Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930 and wondering
what fresh hell progressive radicalism might unleash on successful Americans.
Perkins' rhetoric was so over the top that his fellow big
shots threw him under the Google bus. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
tweeted that its co-founder hasn't been "involved in KPCB in years."
Sam Singer is the San Francisco public relations crisis
guru to whom people with money go when they find themselves in a PR pickle.
Singer told me that Perkins made a legitimate point about the "open
dislike of people who are successful and who have money by certain elements in
San Francisco, but he's approached it in a way that diminishes his point of
view" and that allows people "to denigrate it or make fun of
it."
That is, Perkins equated any criticism of rich people and
their shrubbery with a precursor to terror. He doesn't seem to understand the
notion of public discourse or give-and-take.
There was a legitimate point behind Perkins' over-the-top
rhetoric, I think. When protesters swarm around Google buses in an attempt to
intimidate tech commuters, it may not be a Rosa Parks moment, but it does
reveal the ugly underbelly of class envy.
It's magical thinking to believe that low-income
families' problems could be solved if only affluent earners made less money.
When Democrats go after what they call income inequality, they often push for
policies that end up pinching the U.S. economy.
Perkins might have written: Demonize tech money and it
just could move to a place where it's welcome. Go too far with these
soak-the-super-rich policies and you can kiss our tax dollars and jobs goodbye.
Instead, he launched on a rant that focused on the cheek
of San Franciscans who complain about the downside of The Special City's
embarrassment of riches. He wasn't railing against bad economic policy. He's
angry that people don't love the super-rich. He wants the peasants to applaud
while the royal coach speeds away.
Perkins might want to ask the help to needlepoint a
sampler of this famous Michel de Montaigne quotation: "No man is a hero to
his valet."
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