We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, June 13, 2015

The Price of Being a Power Mom on Park Avenue

Click here to access an excerpt from a new book by Wednesday Martin entitled Primates of Park Avenue posted at Vanity Fair.

This is another contribution to my occasional practice on Saturdays to run articles about lifestyles of the rich ruling class also known as the One Percent (actually .01 of the 1%, or one out of every 10,000 of us) who, under the rules of capitalism, "own" the economy in which we work. The ultimate effect of this economic design is that we all work for them to support their lifestyle. This is simply a fact of life that we need to adapt to--if we haven't already.

Thus, it is my hope to create a better understanding of our masters by becoming acquainted with life as they live it. I hope that by doing this we won't lose touch with their world and their concerns--you know, to promote better understanding. It is important that we become better acquainted so that we can serve them better and make it easier for them to carry out the daily burden of making important decisions--for us, since we are too stupid or lazy to do this ourselves--which affect whether we go off to war in foreign lands to kill their enemies, if we have jobs, if we live in a home or under a bridge, if we can afford their health care services, education, etc.

Unfortunately, for some reason they tend to hide their lives from the rest of us behind walls of secrecy, literal walls of guarded gated communities, private clubs, esoteric publications, traveling with private jets, etc. We should not let that deter us.


Today, thanks to this member of the One Percent, Wednesday Martin, we can get a glimpse of the lifestyle of rich women of this class that we are working to support. The editor of Vanity, a magazine which is popular among the rich, introduces the excerpt this way:
In an excerpt from her buzzy new memoir, Primates of Park Avenue, Wednesday Martin calculates all of the personal-training sessions, Botox, and spa treatments required to survive and thrive as a wife and mother on the Upper East Side [of New York City]. It ain’t cheap.