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ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: 'Tis the season of high acquisition. You can hear
the coast-to-coast ka-ching of the collective cash registers as American
does it seasonal holiday thing -- parents scrambling to get the toys
du jour for their own children and for themselves. The truth is this
sort of high pitch acquisitiveness has been going on for a stretch of
years now. It knows no seasonal down time - we've been on a high flying
binge, a gilded age redux, fueled by techno fortunes and global market
earnings, we have been prosperous deeper longer than at any time in
our history.
I walked the neighborhood where I've lived my whole life, once a relatively
modest seaside suburb - and everywhere there is the expensive thrum
of construction - people putting up huge Gatsby-like mansions -- Tuscan
villas so big that they swallow up the lawns and lots and actually block
the sun -- the very thing that brings people to southern California.
The weird thing is we no longer see it -- see any of this -- at least
I realize I don't. Only occasionally do I register the true depth of
the wealth that now surrounds me, that has taken such firm root here
in the past decade. The two, three, four million dollar plus houses,
$40,000-plus cars, the restaurants with their $40 and $50 and $60 entrees,
the business women in their Armani suits, their ivy league bound pampered
and tutored private school kids.
In fairness, this isn't just L.A. The same is true in northern California
and Atlanta and Seattle and New York City where at his new restaurant
French Chef Alan Ducaf is charging $60, not for an entree, for an appetizer
and the Guggenheim Museum is showing Georgio Armani's clothes as if
they were, in fact, art. Somehow all of this is flying under or over
the radar screen. It is often said with justification that it is the
poor or have-nots who have become invisible. Clearly that is true. But
what is different now and even more disturbing is how invisible has
become our own middle class affluence.
That was amply demonstrated by the huge success this summer of the
show "Survivor," -- we watched, laughed, grimaced and rooted for our
favorites as they pretended to struggle and starve on some deserted
island, but that's all they were doing: Pretending. It was faux starvation,
fake deprivation, pretend starvation and we didn't seem to get it, didn't
seem to understand the moral implications involved in watching healthy
adult Americans in island wear and shell necklaces play-act at hunger
for $1 million, while hundreds of millions around the world are actually
starving. You can only play hunger for laughs when it's the farthest
thing from your imagination.
At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly during this season or preachy
or a little of both, I promised myself to look hard at what's around
me, to make visible for myself the invisible, the extraordinary beneficence
of this time and place and my own share in it and the poor whom we seem
to have forgotten about. There are masses of people living as well now
on this earth in this country and in this state and in this very city
as any people have ever lived, and there are masses of people living
in possibly hard lives. The least we should be is deeply, daily aware
of that fact. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.
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