Bubble Boys — Howard Schultz — and Now Mike Bloomberg — Team up with Donald Trump to Give Us Lessons in Why Inequality and Worship of Billionaires Are Bad
Some billionaires are like bubble babies, whose immune systems are so faulty that they can’t survive contact with the outside world. So some — though not all, of course — billionaires live in bubbles.
Inside the billionaire’s bubble, sycophants — paid employees usually — do the job they are paid for — fawning over the billionaire. “Yes, you are absolutely right” they say, whether he suggests a new cherry flavored coffee or a run for president. The employees know which side their bagel is buttered on.
Schultz says the push back that he is getting from people not wanting him to run, means he must be doing something right.
That’s how narcissistic people think. If everyone approves of what they do, they think the approval means they’re right. If everyone is angry, it means they’re right. If everyone ignores them, they still think they’re doing great. Every thing on earth — to them — is a sign that they are magnificent & doing great things. Trump and Schultz both seem to feel this way.
They act like addicts. Should we really be handing over control of the nation to addicts?
This is a good time to do more push back against our government. No, not that government — not the one in Washington D.C. I mean the institutions that actually control our lives — and that and control the Washington D.C. “government”— mega-corporations.
Media corporations are among the most powerful ones. Roger Ailes said that he left political consulting, to work in media, because media is more powerful. He was right. Right Wing media — represented by people like Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity, with whom the president consults frequently by phone — own our government.
Mainstream media are powerful too. Sometimes they do a good job, reporting at least some facts, rather than 100% propaganda like most Right Wing media.
Mainstream TV stations are giving Schultz a big platform to speak to the public on, just because he is a billionaire. We should be asking ourselves “Is this what we want? Does this serve the public interest?”
If we no longer worship billionaires, and no longer want them to have big platforms to speak on subjects on which they have no qualifications, we can make it stop. We can pressure media to stop automatically giving billionaires platforms, for no other reason than their wealth.
As Margaret Sullivan pointed out in a Washington Post article, the media feel safest in the middle lane, interviewing centrist government officials or centrist billionaires.
The question we need to ask ourselves is: Do we in the public feel safer when media give platforms to these people, to the exclusion of others? I don’t. I feel ill informed when media do that.
It’s time for those of us in the public who care about this issue, to hold demonstrations at major media offices, such as TV stations that give Schultz a lot of air time. We can carry signs that state our demands. For example, “Stop putting billionaires like Schultz on TV to talk about areas they know nothing about.” Or “Stop bothsides/middle lane reporting and give us the truth.”
Nothing else has been working. Other ways of trying to get media to listen to the public have met with failure. To get media to listen, the public must BECOME the news. Then media have to notice, because reporting news is their job.
We can also pressure Starbucks as a corporation. In a new twist on Marie Antoinette’s famous saying, Schultz’s actions are saying “Let them drink coffee.” So let’s go ahead and do that. At our locally owned coffee houses, of course.
