For our less, let's say, socially aware readers, I would like to familiarize you to undoubtedly the best half hour of teen reality based television programming. The concept of the show is a simple one: Document the weeks leading up to, and eventually at, the sweet sixteen party of an unusually privileged youth.
Let me stop there. When I say privileged youth I’m talking about children from the absolute wealthiest families in the respective communities. The season primer of the third season of My Super Sweet 16 last Wednesday featured the daughter of a affluent car dealership(s) owner in Scottsdale and the son of hip-hop mogul LA Reid in New York.
Both of these parties featured major celebrities and were easily over $200,000 for just the one “special” night. When Jermaine Dupri is DJ’ing your party, Kanye West is performing, and the artist formally known as Puff Daddy is making a special appearance, you probably had a fairly successful party (even though your Rolls Royce limo couldn’t drop you off in the front of the venue as you request). Obviously, a show of this scale and magnitude could only be played on America's primary after-school babysitter, MTV.
More interesting me than the parties, the incredible birthday gifts, or the celebrity performances is the actually honorees themselves. These lucky pups survived sixteen years on this Earth and they demanded a party, goddammit! Their collective sense of entitlement and vanity even outshines that of a Hollywood PETA meeting.
These poor children have absolutely no concept of hard-work, selflessness, determination, earning something based on merit , or even anyone else's reality outside of themselves.
This is both disturbing and perplexing to me because the money that paid for the lavish non-alcoholic open bar was garnered through the very principles I described above. Why do the parents (read: fathers) of these children allow their offspring to become soft, spoiled, out-of-touch lumps devoid of substance and masked in meaningless Armani and Tiffany? Why don’t the parents teach their children that in order to enjoy the lifestyle they have been raised in, it requires dedication and hard-work, and the fruits of their labor won’t be seen until years down the line?
Andrew Carnegie, the most successful businessman in American history, despised the bequeathment. Carnegie felt that he was doing his children a great disservice by giving them money they haven’t earned.
From Jim Grote June 2000 issue of Planned Giving Today:
He (Carnegie) asks his reader: “Why should men leave great fortunes to their children?” If it is from affection, then it is a misguided affection because “great sums bequeathed often work more for the injury than the good of the recipients.” The instances of public servants that live off their wealth in order to devote themselves to community service are rare. “It is not the welfare of the children, but family pride, which inspires these legacies.”
M. Harrison:
There is a reason Andrew Carnegie is one in a million - and is written about in business textbooks. This happens to be the same reason that ignorant, vain, miserable and shallow trust fund babies are the norm - and can fill a whole season of MTV programming.
It takes greatness to earn wealth, and greatness is worth learning from.
Why then, is the materialistic masturbation of sixteen year-olds even worth mention? It's simple. Great men and women don't just learn from others' greatness - they also learn from others' inadequacies. To recognize how not to run a government, we study the Third Reich. To recognize how not to run a business, we study WorldCom. To recognize how not to raise our children, we watch Sweet Sixteen.
It is a feat of great irony that MTV's political persuasion is so far on the left. If the socialists were actually effective in eliminating the accumulation of great wealth, MTV would find itself without a single show to put on the air.
Indeed, if we didn't have uber-capitalists subsidizing their children into luxurous lifestyles, millions of American teenagers be bereft objects of obsession, lust and greed. And that, apparently, is what they want.
So let them eat cake - even if it's not theirs. Every kid wants that lifestyle. It's the parents that should be keeping it from them.
My main curiosity is how each birthday brat must feel watching the other episodes of this show in which they are not featured.
Each episode is the profile of another aspirant to the throne of Most Solipsistic, Selfish and Shallow. In it, each teenager delivers his/her soliloquy, nay, pronouncement of de facto royalty, roughly touching the following points:
1. Protagonist is the wealthiest teenager in a given area. Where this is not stated explicitly, it is derived. (Teenage Premise A: I am the greatest. Teenage Premise B: I am great because I am wealthy. Tacit conclusion: I am the wealthiest.)
2. Protagonist is the most beautiful teenager in a given area. This point is often the most speculative, from the point of view of your humble correspondents, who viewed many classmates more attractive than the protagonist. But that's not really the point.
3. Protagonist is the most popular teenager in a given area. This is cited as a separate qualification, although it is generally only derived from qualifications 1 and 2. In other words, they're only popular because they are rich and beautiful.
But, wait a second, they can't all be the most beautiful, rich and popular, can they? What must these poor children do when faced with the competition?
If the way they react to the perceived competition within their high school class is any indication, they ignore it, deny it, or they force it to go away. Many businesses that end in bankruptcy follow the same foolish strategy. So does the entire nation of France. Unfortunately for them, and the futures of these children, the strategy always fails.
The Scottsdale girl, for example, refused to invite two females to her party who were, by our objective estimation, much hotter than the protagonist herself. Why? She just couldn't handle the competition.
So that's the life these children lead. They delude themselves into a superiority complex and then shelter their reality to support it. That's not a cause for jealousy - it's a cause for pity.
Such blindless will result in the eventual realization that they are not the richest, not the best looking, and not the most popular. As such ephemera is their entire raison d'etre, they will eventually collapse into deep depression surrounded by no one, when their sycophant "friends" have long since sought another shallow bitch and/or douche to follow.
Parents everywhere who don't desire their child to become such an obnoxious ignoramus should ask themselves one question.
