I tried submitting this to Salon to help build their parody version of We Are the 53%, but the email servers don't seem to be working right. Oh well, gives me an excuse to post it here:
Please read the post below for more info on what this is about.
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I’m literally getting dozens of pouting “you’re stupid and ugly and YOU DON’T GET IT wah” tweets from wingnuts in response to this. You can measure how close you hit to home by it, I swear.
I get it, Amanda! I had a pea under my mattress, too, and I was so upset that I called Glenn Beck about it. He says that he’s going to include pea-proofed mattresses in his new 1791 fashion line!
All is right with the world!!
53% isn’t nearly elitist enough; he’s a pasty spokesman for the 27%.
I am a successful businesswoman who started from nothing and now own one of the largest underground bum-fighting networks in the Northeast.
Thank you for making me laugh out loud on a really crappy, grim day.
MP: So long as it doesn’t infringe on my railyard hobo boxing league (we also offer bindle insurance).
I was on my way to the Ford dealership to buy a new car, when I realized that all of those people on welfare have BMW’s.
I am the 53%!
norbiz—I sense a cross-promotion! It will be like when X-Men joined up with Capcom!
I am a hedge fund manager earning $10 million a year. Everything I make is capitol gains. I am the 47%.
Good one, Ben. Grimly funny. If that is the only sort of income, the income just isn’t real, or something.
A hedge fund manager earning less than 10 million a year? You’re doing it wrong. Clearly you’re too stupid to be rich enough to have to pay income tax though arguably the sales tax along with local taxes probably make the 47% pay more a year percentage wise than I do.
I am the 53%
I grew up dirt poor, raised by a single dad who was rarely around.
I developed a serious drug habit in Middle School. I dropped out of HS my Sophomore year. I spent most of my late teens in and out of incarceration.
In my early 20s, I got clean and sober, and managed to find gainful employment dressing up as a gorilla and waving a sign offering top dollar for gold jewelry to passing motorists. It hurts a little when they laugh at me. It hurts a lot when they chuck beer bottles at my head. But I’m proud that I’m not leeching off of Joe Taxpayer like I was when I was in the can.
A few months ago, I was kidnapped and locked up in some dude’s big smelly basement. Two or three times a week, he visits me and beats me savagely with a bicycle chain. That first night, I simply asked him “why?”. He mumbled something about how I should have made better choices, and hit me even harder. I didn’t ask after that.
I have to admit, at first I was a little cheesed off about the whole thing. But lately I’ve gotten to thinking - he kinda does have a a point about the bad choices. And last week, he brought me a bucket so that I don’t have to poop in the corner right on the floor any more. He even complimented my recent weight loss!
Truth be told, if I’m being honest, I have to admit that he smells really nice. And you should see his car…
I am… uh… I’m sorry, what were we talking about again?
I made my own 53% image here:
johnnykaje.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/don-ray-am-the-53/
I wish I knew how the hell tumblr works.
I drink water from wells I didn’t dig. I am the 53%.
I work as a middle manager fixing the screwups my division chief makes. I pay for my own health insurance. Five years ago, I refinanced my house with an adjustable mortgage, and now, even though I’ve made every payment, it’s in foreclosure. But after 30 years during which countless twits with better connections have been promoted past me, I believe that one day I, too, will be a division chief with stock options and a defined-benefit pension plan. So all you smelly hippies stop complaining about Wall Street. I am the 53%.
My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum… it’s breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.
But I can’t get any work done these days without some inane government regulator interfering. I am the 53% percent.
You can measure how close you hit to home by it, I swear.
See also OWS.
I totally pay taxes I am in the 53.
Except I am trapped in a job I hate by an economy that bankers fucked into the ground by sleazy bankers.
And I actually do blame bankers for things that they actually you know did and are responsible for.
So WELP I guess I’m part of the 99.
If we’re not supposed to blame Wall Street, who are we to blame? I already tried unsuccessfully wagging my finger at several gay immigrant welfare queens driving their Jaguars to the local ACORN office for free late-term medical marijuana abortions given in Spanish by atheist swift boat veterans.
This is so idiotic. Every single one of these people reveals, in their life histories, that they have been part of the 47% at one point in their lives.
My parents are part of the 53%. I would like to be part of the 53%. That’s the whole point.
I am the 53%.
Growing up, it was just me, my Mom, and my 4 older brothers, all sharing a single bedroom in my uncle’s broken down Airstream.
When I was 19, I joined the Marines. This was entirely due to my sense of patriotic duty and my desire to keep America Free. It in no way whatsoever had anything to do with any anxiety that I might have felt about my ability to live up to cultural expectations vis-a-vis gender norms in modern American society, nor was it in any way a subconscious attempt to allay said anxiety through the idealization of an artificial ecosystem that reveres and rewards overt displays of violence and hyper-masculinity. It also had nothing at all to do with trying to satisfy a latent yet profound sense of deep psychological longing for masculine affection by proxy via conflating my emotions about the missing affections of the father that I never knew with a desire to connect myself to the sanctification of the image of the American Warrior by a worshipful populace raised on the overtly propagandist imagery and outright deification of the self-dubbed Greatest Generation. Hell, I could have chosen to do community service instead. But these colors don’t run.
Thing is, once I got into the Corps, it kinda sucked. The weapons were cool as shit, and some of the dudes in my company were really awesome. But a lot of them were tools, and I got sick of having all of that “all for one” crap shoveled in my face all day. Like I’m supposed to get my dick shot off for some greasy wetback loser who’s probably just an anchor-baby anyway. That’s the problem with the military – they want everyone to be a Hero, but I don’t know how you can be a Hero if you’re always being held back by the losers and the chicks and the fags in your unit.
Anyway, I got out of the Corps as soon as I could. I started my own business, without a dime from Uncle Sam (I got my cousin’s stepdad to give me a loan instead – he’s so loaded, I doubt he even missed it). When that business failed, and the next one too (thank God for Limited Liability, amirite?) - well, I could have thrown myself a pity party and cried to myself how life isn’t fair and stopped trying right then and there. But I didn’t. I found some weird nerdy dude who had written some hoosywhatsists for the Internet and got good ol’ Uncle Ernie to float us another loan.
That first year, I took exactly $0 in salary. In fact, other than a company car, the club memberships, the apartment downtown, the per-diem for food and “entertainment” expenses (heh, heh), the vendor swag, the office supplies, and the social capital conferred onto “entrepreneurs” as the real movers and shakers of our modern economy and the bedrock foundation of our society, I didn’t get bupkis out of that company for that first year or two.
Well, guess what! Year 3, Google got interested in my company, and I ended up selling it for $35,000,000. That’s right - my company, that I built myself. BOO-YA!
So now I’m known in my community as a job creator and a tech wizard to boot. These days, I mostly get paid to sit in boring meetings and talk about other companies’ damn problems. (actually, I don’t even have to talk. Just vote). And so what I really want to tell those deadbeat pot smokers camping in the park, is that if they’d just get off their lazy asses and do the same kind of stuff that I did, there’s no reason whatsoever that they couldn’t end up just like those fancy-ass banker boys that they are obviously so jealous of. If it worked for me, I don’t see any reason whatsoever that it wouldn’t work for everyone.
Hell yeah. I am the 53%.
I’m about to turn 31 years old. I work in a job that I love doing interesting things, maybe someday I’ll make $30,000, but perhaps not. I have very good friends, and a dog, and interesting hobbies. I get to travel and do many varied and fun things. But I don’t make enough money to buy a house or have children, either of those things would feel too financially risky to me. I am not invested in my community. So, I’m gonna work for a couple more decades and then retire to Mexico.
This is what “good decisions” looks like, and if everyone made the same decisions, it wouldn’t be great for us as a nation.
I don’t know which group I’m in, it could go either way.
Piator, your mother was named Chloe With Webbed Feet? That’s gotta be burdensome when filling out forms….
My parents are part of the 53%. I would like to be part of the 53%. That’s the whole point.
Bingo.
At my age my parents had two kids, two cars, a three bedroom home. Both my parents worked in jobs with guaranteed pensions. There were generally vacations every year, and us kids had plenty of extra-curricular activities.
I have an apartment… and a dog. I can’t afford a car. I have twice the education of my parents but make half as much as they did when I was young. I have bounced around trying to find a permanent position since I graduated. I will never see a pension.
Is it really so wrong to want to achieve the same level of affluence that your parents did? The way things are going my generation never will.
People would like to perceive this as a personal/generational failing. People seem to really hate the real answer because it takes power out of their hands. Timing and location, which can surely be referred to as luck, has a big impact on whether people will be successful or not, but that’s a blow to many egos. They prefer to believe it’s only their effort that got them where they are. Truth is the standard of living is lowering, more effort equals less reward, and our economic system is at fault.
It was in West Philidephia where I was born and raised.
The playground was where I spent most of my days.
When a couple of guys, who were up to no good.
Started making trouble in my neighborhood.
I got in one light fight and my mom got scared and said
“You are moving with your Auntie and Uncle in Belair!”
I pulled up to the house about 7 or 8, and I yelled to the cabbie “Yo Holmes, smell ya later.”
Looked at my kingdom, I was finally there.
Time to sit on my throne, I’m the 53%.
I attended an exclusive private school on the east coast, but our family were never members of the country club.
Even though I attended Yale on a legacy admission, we have yet to be accepted into Skull and Bones.
All of my drug use and minor sexual offenses are readily overlooked by law enforcement, but apparently even they can’t avoid prosecution on a felony A&B of an elderly person when it’s been posted on Youtube.
What with maintaining my portfolio, including the different trust funds for the children I’ve considered having one day, I spend a surprising amount on administration fees. I have a feeling my lawyer uses it to buy cocaine. I haven’t had a cocaine dealer since the ‘80s.
Do I blame Wall Street for these problems?
Mostly, I blame my mother.
I am the 1%!
My grandfather and father worked hard, and put me through Harvard. After graduation, I started at the bottom of the family business, as a VP, and worked my way up to Chairman within a year through hard work and determination. My wife and I decided to celebrate our success with a holiday, during which we decided to take a quaint little three hour cruise. A three hour trip!
And now I’m stuck on this lousy island with the worst bunch of layabouts and lefty morons you’ve ever seen, and I think I’ve been here nearly forever. It seems my life is just one damned rerun after the next.
Where’s my handout? When is the government going to care about my pain? We are the 53%
(okay, so *technically* we’re only about 29%)
Piator @ 20: Is your comment single? ‘Cause if it is, I want to marry it.
At my age my parents had two kids, two cars, a three bedroom home. Both my parents worked in jobs with guaranteed pensions. There were generally vacations every year, and us kids had plenty of extra-curricular activities.
I have an apartment… and a dog. I can’t afford a car. I have twice the education of my parents but make half as much as they did when I was young. I have bounced around trying to find a permanent position since I graduated. I will never see a pension.
One shouldn’t neglect the benefit the so-called “Greatest Generation” received from the GI Bill. My father was from that generation, he had two older brothers and a younger brother. His father was a house painter. My father earned a doctorate on the GI Bill, and started life with no student loan debt. His brothers all had advanced degrees, one Chemical Engineer, one Veterinarian, and one Physician. All entered their careers with no student loan debt.
Piator @ 20: Is your comment single? ‘Cause if it is, I want to marry it.
Your ignorance is frightening.
“If we’re not supposed to blame Wall Street, who are we to blame?”
...well, let’s see.
During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, we would have blamed lazy Negroes, inscrutable/lazy Chinese immigrants, drunk/lazy Irish immigrants, greasy/lazy Italian immigrants.
The first few decades of the 20th Century, we would have blamed the legal and then illegal consumption of alcohol. Sometime in there, we added in blaming Hispanic immigrants and consumption of marijuana.
During WWII, we blamed Japanese immigrants.
During the late 40’s and the 50’s, we blamed Communists, foreign and domestic, real or fictional. And Hollywood screenwriters and actors.
In the middle 60’s we started blaming everything on hippies, and frequently we still do, although no one’s actually seen an actual living hippie outside of a movie about Woodstock in 40+ years.
In the age of Nixon and as the conservative Southern Democrats slowly transformed into conservative Southern Republicans, we started blaming libruls for everything (this naturally also included hippies, most educated people, people living in cities, people who thought the Vietnam War was wrong, people who cared even a little about the environment, etc.)
It seems right now that everything wrong is the fault of B. HUSSEIN Obama, dirty hippies, libruls, unions, abortion, birth-control, sex, feminism, terrorists, Islam, and unacceptable Christian faiths like Mormons. And, of course, Amanda Marcotte.
Whoever we’re blaming at the moment, the main thing is we can never blame those who are truly responsible for any given action that resulted in massive death/harm/looting/etc.
So, as a rule of thumb, as long as we’re not blaming anyone actually responsible, we’re on solid ground…
It seems right now that everything wrong is the fault of B. HUSSEIN Obama, dirty hippies, libruls, unions, abortion, birth-control, sex, feminism, terrorists, Islam, and unacceptable Christian faiths like Mormons. And, of course, Amanda Marcotte.
Has anyone ever seen Marcotte and Obama in the same room?...
@43
Hehe, I don’t either. I’ve seen a few trailers for those movies, so I recognized the face, but if you asked me who Dr. Evil was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, never mind recognizing the details of his upbringing.
Me ‘n DawnDarc, we are the 0.1%.
I am a successful businesswoman who started from nothing and now own one of the largest underground bum-fighting networks in the Northeast.
I bought my house, 2 cars, and cadre of nubile pool boys without any help from Wall Street (except for Al “Down-And-Dirty” Swinson, who I recruited on the corner of Wall and Broadway). I take full responsibility for the loans I have taken out to pay for the cages, chains, and cattle prods.
Last month I was forced to close up shop temporarily because big government started investigating those shallow graves near the railroad tracks. But I don’t blame Wall Street! Instead of wallowing, I have started an hourly employment service allowing interested parties to rent my poolboys for miscellaneous services. I have already begun investing in monitoring and recording technology so I can take this venture in-house and reduce risk.
If you’re one of those people in Zuccotti park, sleeping outside, relieving yourself in alleys, and you’re upset because you don’t have work, this Job Creator will be by shortly to discuss your options with you.
I am the 53%!