Do Rich People Deserve To Be Rich?

There are people who see the world as it is presented to us. And there are people who see past the
facade to what's really happening.

 Chris Hedges is one of those folks.  Another is Russell Brand.

Here he interviews George Monbiot about the facade - he calls it myth - that people get rich by working hard and poor by being lazy.

The two assert that it's this myth that helps keep the poor poor and the rich rich.  The start out with Self Attribution Theory (we attribute our good to our own efforts) and go on to look at examples of the wealthy perpetuating the myth, though they themselves were born to wealth.  Monbiot cites a study that says many corporate leaders score high on tests for psychopathy.  He goes on to say,

"If you're born poor and have psychopathic tendencies, you're quite likely to end up in prison.  If you're born rich you go to business school."  [I think he said 'business school' at the end.]

Brand does this with charm and wit and mockery of how most news hosts dress and act.


  

Did anyone watching this, even unconsciously, dismiss Brand because of how he is dressed and how he sits? I'm sure that he is intentionally making the point through his dress and posture that we have been conditioned to give more credence to men in suits who sit or stand up straight.  Even when they say totally stupid things, even outright lies.

[UPDATE 11:30am:  I've added a little to this post.  Nothing to change the meaning, just to supplement what I'd written about the video.]

Russell Brand Brilliantly Exposes The Emptiness of American TV News/Talk Hosts/Anchors

Gryphen had this video posted over at Immoral Minority. 

It's amazing video.  Russell Brand is a comedian I'd never heard of.  He's on Morning Joe, an MSNBC Talk Show promoting his tour Messiah Complex.  They treat him like a bimbo.  Turns out he's sharper and more aware than all three of them and turns the whole process upside down.  He chastises them  for objectifying him and for talking about him in the third person as though he weren't there.  He literally exposes the shallowness of what they're doing.  This is especially clear when he talks about the theme of his tour:

RB:  I'm talking about Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Gandhi, and Jesus Christ and how these figures are significant culturally and how their icons are appropriated to designate consciousness and meaning, particularly posthumously.  
Q:  And what brings all those people together?
RB:  They're all people that died for a cause, they're all people whose icons are used to designate meaning, perhaps not in the manner in which they intended.
Q:  That sounds dead serious.
RB:  [Hard to hear but sounds like "It's a lot funnier when I do it as comedy on stage."
Q:  Can't we get like 30 seconds now?
RB:  Not really love, this is my work. (hard to hear exactly because the third host is saying, and pointing, "Gandhi, go."

This is the point where we get a direct hint at the depth of Brand's thinking.  The hosts are simply not up to his level of adult seriousness.  But while they slip back into silliness, he calls them on it.  And he does it so politely, and with a big smile.  And as they fall apart, he takes over as an anchor and starts doing their job for them. 

I was watching him thinking how vapid these hosts were and this whole nonsense he has to go through to promote his show in the US, thinking about which way to take this, then deciding to say directly what he's thinking about what they're doing to him (and us the audience.)  Did they do any preparation for this interview?  They have no idea of who this man is. He turns this into a brilliant expose/satire.

This is what people should be doing all the time - articulately, politely, and with humor pulling of the facade of all the bullshit we deal with daily.  But not many people have the wit and stage presence to pull it off.    

It made me think of The Newsroom.  I only saw the first episode online of this satire series on television news.  But here is Russell Brand doing it on a real television newsy/talk show.