September 8th, 2008

THE SADDEST NOTE I'VE EVER RECEIVED

Last week, I wrote a soapbox about my trip to Napa with my wife and a silly Barack Obama supporter’s t-shirt that we saw. You can read that by clicking here. In response, I received the following email from a listener:

For starters, one would think that such a “rich guy,” could afford Spell/Grammar Check. But I digress.

Human nature, and I presume the desired effect of such a letter by the author, would be a reaction of defensiveness. While it is true that the note is filled with stunning inaccuracies, appallingly elitist suppositions and arrogance beyond the pale, I felt upon reading this letter no anger or the need to defend myself or correct the record. I felt total, utter and complete sadness directed at the writer; perhaps even despair. While that sounds like hyperbole, I promise you that few interactions with people, whether it be in person or via my radio career have so deeply and wholly made me feel total pity for, in this case the author, and to a lesser extent, fear for our very culture and society.

Throughout my many years of receiving various levels of correspondences which reflect disagreement with either my views, my life, my opinions or even, in some cases, my existence, I have come to accept the fact that there is no response which will satisfy everyone. Some say that such inanely ignorant drivel as this note should be ignored, lest it be given credibility by even being highlighted. Others simultaneously argue that such pure evil and stupidity must be brought to the fore so that others understand the truly horrific potential of certain people. Still others demand that each and every false and inaccurate statement be systematically, factually and logically dismantled so that truth reins supreme. Others argue that such an approach screams insecurity and lends credence to the attacker’s initial claims. In the end, the decision lies within my soul how, if at all, to react to letters such as this. In this case, I am hopeful that I can use this letter to show others the type of cretins we coexist with, the dangerous attitudes that literally surround us everyday, and to encourage some to be sure that they never turn into such a small, pathetic person. Also, I will, at the end of this column, in the tone of this entire essay, address certain galling statements made by the writer. If I am to be deemed small and defensive by doing so, then I will accept such judgments. I hope that what I write before that serves as a primer as to why nothing could be further from the truth.

Let’s begin by ceding this point; the letter writer believes me to be a liar, and therefore addressing him directly is fruitless. Any person who takes a position based on disbelieving someone creates a situation that is un-arguable. Anything that I actually said or proved would simply be called a lie. Even if I were to grant the letter writer access to all of my financial accounts and confirm for him a net worth of six, seven or eight figures long, it would not change his position. He would simply switch his argument to what is actually the real, true message of his letter; elitism as defined by the classic position of all elitists since the dawn of time: All people must make the same choices I make and if they don’t, I must either force them to change their behavior or shame them publicly so that I am deemed to be correct. In other words, he would just say something like, “well, fine, you’re a millionaire, but you spend your money like an idiot.” Next time, just write that; it’s less offensive to humanity as a whole.

Elitism in its’ classic form is behavior control and is most illustrated by the war on smoking. In the 1960’s the anti-smoking crowd demanded that warning labels be placed on cigarettes. They did this because they were convinced that people were too stupid to know that putting a lit stick of fire in their mouths might be bad for them and if they were informed of the dangers, people would stop smoking. Lo and behold, two decades later, smoking was at an all-time high in America and the elitists were forced to show their true colors; they could not believe, understand nor tolerate people making decisions they disagreed with and launched their all-out attempts at making smoking illegal. As is classic with elitists, their position was simple; how dare you make a choice that I don’t make under the exact same circumstances? Elitists despise freedom because it allows others to demonstrate that there is more than one way to do…anything.

In the case of this letter, we have the growing trend of financial elitism, which usually rears its’ head in the form of class warfare, but often shows itself in the manner of this note; utter rage and envy directed at someone who may actually be doing as well, nearly as well or, (perish the thought), “better” financially. Usually the rage comes from a source of resentment in one or more forms:

- How dare this person make as much money as I do at a younger age?
- How dare this person (seemingly) work less and/or not as hard as I do and still achieve similar success?
- How dare this person do something professionally that is less important than I do and still make a similar amount of money? 
- How dare the person have so much fun AND achieve success? No one can have both!

Regardless of the motivation(s), in the case of this letter writer (and sadly so many other elitists in America), he chooses to vent his anger in the form of deducing, implying, insinuating and demanding that the answers to any and all of the above questions are “This person is not doing any of those things. If he were, that would mean that I am not nearly as successful as I insist on believing I am. He cannot be making what I make, doing something he loves and enjoying his life because that would be a reflection upon me, therefore he MUST be and IS lying.” Self delusion is a beautiful thing.

The elitist then talks himself into such a belief by analyzing, from a delusion state, the actions of his target. For example, he says to himself:

- I don’t enjoy Napa as a vacation spot. Since I find it boring (or, as the idiot spelled it in his letter “booring,”) everyone else must think exactly as I do, and clearly no one would choose to actually vacation there more than once. 
- I bought a beautiful swimming pool because I believe it is a status symbol. A pool defines success, and anyone who is successful would have a pool, even if they don’t want one.
- I own a Mercedes because it is a status symbol and everyone that sees me driving my Mercedes immediately perceives me to be as rich and successful I want them to. Therefore, anyone who doesn’t drive one is not as rich or successful as me.

 You get the idea. There are plenty of other asinine assertions in the letter which will be addressed and refuted at the end of this column.

None of this, however, is what saddens me. The sad, depressing, nearly debilitating part of the letter is that I know it is not a unique opinion of life in general. More and more people are so destitute of soul that they insist on defining their worth in perceived “net” terms, not impactful ones. More and more people demand that they be viewed and defined as “rich,” based solely on an unattainable definition that is always capable of being superseded. And more and more people are embracing the attitude that anyone who makes choices differently must be either a liar, someone who needs to be “fixed,” or simply wrong. The letter writer is demanding, for example, that not just I, but everyone, who reaches a certain financial milestone MUST choose to travel outside of America. Imagine the arrogance. Some of us simply don’t desire to leave the country. In this new found attitude of our culture, that answer is either a lie (why wouldn’t you want to leave America? There’s a whole world to be seen!), or presents a difference of opinion which is now deemed unacceptable, and so therefore we will call both the opinion AND the person stating the opinion a liar.“Well, clearly if you say that you don’t want to leave America, that’s because you don’t actually have enough money to do so, therefore you are lying about how much money you have.” Bravo.

Alas none of this is important or the point. The insulting aspect of this letter is how abjectly dismissive it is of people in America trying to become rich. How galling it must be for them to watch two rich people arguing over which is actually more rich. The letter writer insists that being rich means leaving the country and experiencing “cultural exchanges,” while my brother-in-law who served two tours in Iraq and had plenty of “cultural experiences,” simply wants to find a way to afford raising his daughter and will be quite happy if he never leaves America again. The letter writer demands that being rich is having $100,000 annually to spend on vacations, while my friend the firefighter who makes less than $100,000 per year felt as though he was king of the world when he could take his two sons to Disneyland for the first time this summer.

If you ask people “what makes someone rich,” you get answers that range from $100 billion to “If I had $10,000 in the bank I’d feel rich.” This is the point the letter writer doesn’t understand. I neither believe in shying away from your own success nor demanding that others be impressed by it. We have discussed ad nauseam on the show that given my line of work; most of my life is shared. Trust me when I tell you that I hide as much as I can and more importantly that while many people may interpret the sharing of my life as arrogant, braggadocios or pompous it is not intended that way nor interpreted that way by everyone. Many people take it for what it is; a story of how to succeed on some levels in America and maybe even an inspiration to some. I, unlike the letter writer, am proud of what I have and embrace the fact that, in my case, 97% of the people on this Earth will never have what I do. I also understand that amongst the 3% of who are worth more than $1.4 million, there is always someone who has more…unless you are Bill Gates, of course. Arguing over which rich guy has more is insulting and sad beyond words. I’d rather be out enjoying my money in “booring” old Napa.

As promised, I will close with a bullet point listing of the asinine lies and absurd statements of the letter writer. I do this not as an attempt to “show him,” for I recognize that is a lost cause. I do it for those of you who may read his letter and say to yourself, with an open mind “why DOES Rob make that choice?” I do it so that those of you who are too young and/or inexperienced to know that as you become more successful in life, you will be attacked more can be prepared. And I admit I do it to avenge not my honor, but the honor of those people who do actually look to me as a role model and/or modicum of what success actually is. I am not offended by the letter writer, but I am offended forpeople who have made the choice to decide that I represent an attainable goal of peer level. Most people in this world would kill to have the blessings that I have. Those who reach such a stratosphere will be revered and cheered by me and, unlike the letter writer, allowed and encouraged by me to make the choices that make them happy, not those that appease the demands of “keeping up with the Joneses’”

- Anyone who demands that any presidency be defined less than 25 years before the president has left office defies historians. I am no fan of George W. Bush but I am an ardent student of presidential history. When Reagan left office, he too was called the “worst president in history.” Today, we know the opposite is true. Demanding a judgment on any president in the present belies logic and reveals true ideologies.

- My wife and I love Napa. We were engaged there. We may retire there. Napa is home to some of the finest restaurants and people in the world. We make no apologies for our love of the life there and we can’t wait to go back.

- I drive a corvette (my second) because I have always loved corvettes. My wife and I also own a Cadillac Escalade, a Toyota Tundra and a Toyota Corolla which my mother drives. Those four 2007 vehicles sticker at a combined total of more than $250,000. If I wanted a Mercedes, I’d own one…or 3. I don’t like them, and I don’t apologize for that. I find Jaguars, Porches and BMW’s to suck for a variety of reasons that are MY opinion. I will buy a Ferrari when they make some improvements which have been glaringly needed since the Enzo.

- From April, 2000 until March, 2006 my wife and I lived in a home with a big, beautiful swimming pool complete with a waterfall. We used it less than a dozen times. We spent more than $150,000 on our current backyard, which is far more than a “lawn strip,” and we love and use it daily. Clearly, we could have put in a gorgeous pool for that amount, but we chose to make a quality of life decision that fits our lives. Finances and investment potential had nothing to do with our choice, happiness did.

- Many people, including my own father (who travels abroad many times per year) have espoused the values of leaving America. None of them appeal to my wife or me. We aren’t interested. We don’t care to leave this country. We could. We choose not to and regret none of it. We spend $15,000 in a weekend in Las Vegas and more than $75,000 in a week in New York City. We decide where to visit based on where we will have fun, not where our listeners will deem us to be “culturally enlightened.” We certainly are not restricted by financial limitations.

I have disclosed before on the air that if I wanted to, I could stop working tomorrow and change nothing about my life for many years. I have worked hard for what I have and earned every bit of it, thanks in large part to having an amazing woman by my side during my greatest years of financial growth. Together, we choose to spend our money on providing an elegant lifestyle complete with a home we own, a car we own and more for my mother, owning designer clothes, traveling where we choose to travel and investing for our future in the ways we deem fit. We choose to donate sums that are nobody’s business to charities and causes that we support. We use our wealth (which in the letter writer’s mind doesn’t exist) in the ways that make us happy, not the ways that others say we should. It is likely that I could walk into the letter writer’s home and condescendingly demand that he is not rich based on comparison’s to my choices:

- Because he doesn’t own 1,000 bottles of wine. 
- Because his wife doesn’t own multiple Prada purses and literally hundreds of designer shoes, as my wife does.   
- Because he doesn’t have a humidor filled with more than 400 cigars valued at far more than the low 5 figures.
- Because he doesn’t own a prized, royal blood lined German shepherd trained privately by former members of the FBI in guard duties.
- Because he doesn’t own more than 20 designer suits and 20 pairs of designer men’s shoes
- Because he doesn’t work everyday from his home office seated in a $3,000 imported leather chair from Italy.
- Because he doesn’t own more than $10,000 worth of Bugs Bunny art.

How far and how long must such an absurd list go on to prove the point? For the letter writer, there is no length to which I or anyone else can go to effectively reverse his miserable outlook and attitude on life. The truth, which he isn’t interested in, is that my wife and I could have and do all that he demands we should if we wanted to…but if we did, we’d be almost as unhappy as he clearly already is. Wealth is available to anyone that is willing to work in America. Being rich, however, is only available to those of us who understand that richness goes far beyond money…it extends into your soul in a way that only each of us can truly grasp. The only problem for the letter writer is that you have to actually have a soul in the first place.