Take heart, downtrodden rich people of America: Another famous rich guy has heard your cries of persecution and is joining the small but growing 1st Percent Defense Brigade.
Billionaire bottom-feeder Wilbur Ross on Tuesday declared that "the 1 percent is being picked on for political reasons" and that poor people should stop their gripin' and get themselves an education if they ever want to stop being part of the 99 percent.
"Education is the way that people get out of the ghetto and into, if not the 1 percent, something close to it," Ross wealthsplained in an interview with Bloomberg TV, which is fast becoming the house organ for aggrieved rich guys (and not just the rich guy whose name is in the title).
Ross pledged his allegiance to another billionaire, the gnome king Sam Zell, who last week told Bloomberg TV that the 1 percent are "being pummeled because it’s politically convenient to do so" and because the poors are simply incapable of working as hard as the rich, leaving them seething with jealousy. Lazy, lazy jealousy.
And Zell's comments were an affirmation of the words of venture capitalist Tom Perkins, the spiritual founder of this League Of Extraordinarily Aggrieved Gentlemen.
Perkins kicked off the movement by writing a letter to The Wall Street Journal, like you do, warning that the 1 percent in America were being persecuted just like the Jews in Nazi Germany. Faced with outrage over that comparison, Perkins appeared on Bloomberg TV, like you do, to explain that he meant every gosh-darn word of what he said, except maybe his use of the word "kristallnacht." He also added that his watch was not some crappy Rolex but worth "a six pack of Rolexes."
Of course, most of what these men are saying is totally wrong. Higher education doesn't necessarily make you rich. The rich don't work harder than the poor. The rich aren't under siege -- in fact, they are the only ones truly thriving since the recession.
But their anxiety is understandable. As members of the super-duper-wealthy in America, the gap between what these men make and what the rest of us, including even the merely wealthy, make is growing so large that they are increasingly alone. At least they have each other.