It was probably 25 years ago when I heard that you could pay extra at Great America amusement parks for special passes that let you cut the line.
I remember feeling stunned. Really offended. Like a real line had been crossed. I also remember feeling a little lonely in my reaction.
I’m still offended by shit like that. Which means I’m offended a lot. I still feel lonely in my reaction. Which is probably why I’m writing this.
Elites tell one each other that the reason people hate “elites” enough to vote for Donald Trump three times and root him on even now is that we go around explaining to people what “condescending” means.
No, we fucking don’t.
You know what we do, though? Those of us who can afford to, happily buy skip-the-line passes at already overpriced amusement parks, pay monthly mortgage-prices for music concert tickets and almost as much to go to baseball games and other sporting events that many of our fellow Americans can’t afford to even park at.
The thing, is though: Not only were these kinds of events traditionally available to the masses. Their cultural relevance is based on their traditional availability to the masses.
At Cedar Point and Geauga Lake amusement parks as an upper-middle class kid from preppy, Hudson, Ohio, I was kind of amazed at the obesity and sartorial slovenliness of what we Hudsonites snottily called “the general public.” But the general public was there, and we shuffled along behind their flip-flops, in our Tretorn sneakers.
“Everyone is a VIP,” was Disney theme parks’ motto for many decades, before they developed elaborate luxury extras and a Byzantine pricing caste system that The New York Times maddeningly chronicled last month. The result?
A Disney vacation today is “for the top 20 percent of American households—really, if I’m honest, maybe the top 10 percent or 5 percent,” said Len Testa, a computer scientist whose “Unofficial Guide” books and website Touring Plans offer advice on how to manage crowds and minimize waiting in line. “Disney positions itself as the all-American vacation. The irony is that most Americans can’t afford it.”
Do you think working-class Americans are upset that “elites” look down our nose at them? Or are they mad that no matter how hard they work, they can’t afford take their kids to Disney, where their parents took them and their parents took them before that?
Taylor Swift is as close to an American hero as we have. Her “Eras” tour was a cultural celebration for some kids and their parents. And a financial hardship or an insult for others. You know what it cost to see the Rolling Stones in 1969, the year I was born? $8. That’s $70 today. The lowest face-value of a Swift ticket was $250, with good seats far above that.
To me, the most in-your-face insult is baseball. The ticket prices, the beer prices, the food prices, the exclusive restaurants and bars inside the shopping mall-like stadiums—these are constant reminders that “America’s pass time” now costs about a hundred bucks a ballpark hour for a family of four. (Unless it’s an important game, in which case the ticket prices go up dramatically, telling whole swaths of people over and over and over again: If it’s big game, you can’t go.)
People! Sports isn’t supposed to be for elites! (The symphony is, the opera is, the ballet is.) I remember my 60-year-old southern gentleman father, shivering on a cold and narrow bleacher seat in what was not yet called the “dog pound,” in Cleveland Municipal Stadium. A lit marijuana cigarette was passed down our row, and my startled dad took it, politely passed it around my 12-year-old self and handed it to the bearded, drunk Carhartt-clad pipefitter next to me.
That pipefitter’s kid now votes Trump, almost guaranteed. If I were that kid I would too. I’d vote for just about anybody who upsets the sensibilities of the system that made my dad’s Sunday ritual into a special occasion for me, and an out-of-reach luxury for my kid.
Thing is, though—and here’s where my elite condescension comes in—I don’t think Trump voters consciously cop to being enraged for themselves and humiliated for their children, for not being able to afford to go to amusement parks or attend music concerts and sporting events.
In fact, I’m the only person I know of any political stripe who sees rapacious pricing of heretofore commoners’ activities as a fundamental cause of the American sickness.
Why?
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