Get Herald RSSFrom "Dynasty" to "Beverly Hills 90210.", from "Dallas" to "The O.C.," American TV has a long tradition of focusing on how hard it is to be young, white, rich and beautiful in America - and that's not even including reality shows like "My Super Sweet Sixteen" and "The Hills." To find out how hard the financial crisis was hitting these poor little rich kids, your intrepid columnist did some significant research and discovered that though the stock market is in a permanent free-fall, people are losing their homes and unemployment numbers are at a record high, on TV, there are no victims in sight!
For those of you who are lucky enough never to have wasted 45 minutes watching the show "Gossip Girl," it follows a group of underfed, over-privileged New York City private school brats that includes queen bee Blair, her rival Serena, their friends/boyfriends Nate and Chuck and their "poor" classmates Jenny and Dan - where poor means living in Brooklyn.
These teenagers' parents all have an unlimited supply of money with which they can buy their offspring an unlimited amount of clothing, gadgets and multi-course meals at fancy restaurants, alcohol included. Apparently, despite their evident financial sophistication, none of these parents invested anything in the stock market.
Though the characters attend prestigious prep schools, the one time we see them doing anything resembling schoolwork is when Dan finds not one but two literary giants to tend to his budding artistry and guide him on his way to Yale.
Dan is such a creative thinker that he creates a character exactly like his classmate Chuck Bass and names him "Charlie Trout." The Pulitzer Prize winner who has nothing better to do than edit Dan's stories complains that "these are all about a sheltered young man with girl troubles who lives with his daddy in Brooklyn" - a perfect description of the show, as it turns out.
Nowhere in the New York City of "Gossip Girl" do we ever get a glimpse of the era-defining financial crisis that has affected even the most posh of neighborhoods.
Let's recall what happened in the week before the episode I watched, "The Serena Also Rises," aired:
On September 22nd Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs converted from investment to commercial banks. On September 25th, the grim Commerce Department figures on unemployment and consumer goods came out. On Sept. 26, federal regulators seized Washington Mutual and sold it to JPMorgan. On Sept. 29, the day the episode aired, the bailout plan failed and the Dow dropped 777 points.
The big drama in "Gossip Girl's" New York City that week? Jenny messed up Blair's seating chart so that Serena was sitting in the front row at the fashion show! OMG!
TV schedules are set far in advance, and if executives had realized we would be facing what Warren Buffet is calling an "economic Pearl Harbor," perhaps they would not have loaded up on so many TV shows like "Privileged," "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" and "The Rachel Zoe Project." Even the "reality" shows are set so far from what anyone else would call reality, it's stunning.
The truth is that even escapist fare can't credibly escape the reality of the nation's economy. Panic and anxiety penetrate the country's wealthiest enclaves. According to an American Express Publishing and Harrison Group survey, nearly half of all respondents with income over $250,000 a year said they worry about running out of money, and 71% of those same respondents say that the real estate and banking crises have affected their sense of financial security.
As Ned Lamont, the Democratic former Senate contender from Connecticut, said of the damage the financial markets have wreaked on the hedge-fund rich town of Greenwich, "This is our Katrina."
It's hard to tell what's tackier: Lamont comparing the plight of hedge fund billionaires with that of poor Louisianans stuck in the Superdome without food or water, or Blair calling the girls at her school spoiled because they care more about Serena's appearance in a tabloid than Blair's offer of fashion week tickets. (Yes, that's why they're spoiled.)
I believe it is Lamont by a nose, because at least Blair isn't reminding us that we do have to feel bad for these people. It would be a lot more fun to watch greedy titans of finance go down if everyone else wasn't going down with them. For now, we'll just have to settle for shaking our heads when one of the girls on "Privileged" forgets that she lent one of her twelve diamond tennis bracelets to a friend. May we all have such problems in the future.
Sarah Rosenthal '11 went to a New York City private school where she actually went to classes and did homework.
