Whatever Happened to Earning It?

My tolerance of the Entitlement Class is growing thin.

A personal note: as I mentioned in my introductory essay, I have a full-time job that I take quite seriously. Between that, picking up as much of the workload as possible from my wife who was ailing from a seasonal cold bug a couple of weeks ago, and my ailing from the same all of last week, I was finally able to finish organizing that I wished to express in this piece.

…and awayyyy, we go!

At the risk of losing you, dear reader, to commentary on a development in collegiate (read as, the developmental league for professional) athletics, what follows is the latest example of how entitlement thinking is not only dangerous, but increasingly and destructively pervasive – please bear with me.

Exhibit #1

‘All season, our focus and goal have been on being the best team we can possibly become and reaching our full potential to give us another opportunity to compete, play for and win an NCAA championship,’ Davis said in a statement. ‘Although we no longer have that opportunity and this season wasn't what we had hoped for, I want to thank our players and staff for their hard work and love for Carolina Basketball.’

Good Lord! What entitlement. I don’t know whose decision it was to decline the invite to the NIT, but it seems to be the height of arrogance, and entitlement. True, the NIT National Invitational Tournament) is not the glamourous post-season event (though it was, at one time, the post-season event), but it is, at the very least, tournament play – and who knows? It might be the last opportunity for some of those kids to have that experience. Without knowing how many players will not be eligible next season or may not be coming back, for the freshmen and other newcomers to the team for next season, the experience gained by playing in the NIT would be valuable should UNC make the field of 68 next year.

It just seems so childish. It’s as if to say: “We didn’t play well enough to make the field of 68 teams in the NCAA Tourney. So, if we can’t play in the best post-season tourney, then we won’t play, at all.”

What isn’t being said out loud but being heard loud and clear is, “We’re an elite program. We deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament, every year. We’re entitled to it.” Well, if that’s true, then why not let the NIT borrow a little of that shine, give it a little caché.

The truth is, despite the outsized ego and arrogance that insists a bid to the NCAA Tournament was deserved, it is the NIT bid that was deserved, instead – otherwise, there would have been one to the glamour event. I’m still waiting for the coach or UNC’s athletic director to accuse the selection committee, or perhaps even the entire NCAA of being racist (personally, I don’t think he would be wrong, just not in the way one might expect) – that hasn’t happened yet, so perhaps I’ll be pleasantly disappointed.

Collegiate basketball isn’t the only segment of the entertainment industry that’s struggling with the entitlement mentality.

Exhibit #2

Once again, there were some performances by black actors and actresses along with some films that were directed by and produced by blacks, there were screenplays written by blacks, and I’m sure that there were some Special Assistants to any given black actor, actress, or director, that were not recognized by the Academy – cue the outrage. This, of course, is because of white supremacy – or the white patriarchy – or white people.

At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, it would appear that black entertainers and/or performers of a certain age and generation seem to think that they deserve not only a nomination, but at a minimum, one Academy Award, every year.

I’m presuming that this is to be done to satisfy a quota, or a set-aside of some kind, but it is to be considered the same as by merit. Are we to conclude that the egos of these black members of the entertainment industry (in Hollywood, at least) are so fragile, so delicate, that not only must the playing field be tilted in their favour, but that we call it level, and still expect to be taken seriously?

Philadelphia Magazine editor Ernest Owens claimed that the push for Riseborough’s nomination came ‘at the expense of two Black actresses who’ve been critically acclaimed this entire season.’ He called the campaign, ‘White privilege at its finest.’

Not to be outdone by a man…

Hours after finding out her film was snubbed by the Oscars, Chukwu penned a frank message on Instagram in which she called out Hollywood, and seemingly the Academy for ‘upholding whiteness’ and ‘perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women.’

I don’t suppose it ever occurs to anyone that after all is said and done, and despite its best efforts, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a meritocracy, does it?

Mindy Kaling, Donald Glover and Alan Yang are all alumni of NBC’s Diverse Staff Writer Initiative, for instance. NBC’s program funds the salary of a staff writer for three years; if a showrunner wants to promote that writer to story editor, then he or she need only pay the difference.

But the latest Writers Guild of America inclusion report makes obvious the glaring continued racial disparity in writers’ room ranks. In the 2019-20 season, 51% of staff writers were white, and the rest were people of color. That parity did not translate to the upper echelons: More than 80% of executive producers and showrunners were white, while fewer than 20% were people of color.

Yet…

‘The system is racist,’ says Black. ‘So the system is going to tend toward elevating white people and not elevating people of color. And the only way to fix the system is to attend to every single part of the system. So if you’re just getting people in the door and you’re not attending to how long they stay there, how quickly they’re promoted and elevated — the system, once they’re in the door, is going to tend toward kicking them back out the door.’

So, the opportunity isn’t enough? Everyone else knows that as difficult as it is, getting the job (any job) is the easy part – what takes even more work is proving you belong, staying there, getting promoted. Hollywood is different, I guess.

If it really is a matter of representation, and considering the fact that blacks constitute approximately 13% of the population, if that holds true in Hollywood, then the answer is likely offensively simple – find a way to increase the size of representation.

Were I to be so mean (and I am), I might point out that before Musk purchased Twitter, there was no shortage of conservatives pointing out that their representation on the platform was being forcibly diminished through censorship. The response of many of whom I’m certain are sympathetic to the complaints of blacks being under-represented in Hollywood, if not some of the very same, was, “Start your own Twitter, then!” It begs the question: What is preventing all of these black actors, actresses, directors, producers, and technical professionals from starting their own studios, and distribution companies? In other words, build your own Hollywood.

Exhibit #3

The narrative of racist Hollywood is even less credible when you have Halle Berry (whose net worth in 2006 likely wasn’t the $90MM it is today, but still likely placed her closer to the 1%ers than might have otherwise been the case), whining about how racist is Hollywood while accepting her Academy Award for Best Actress in 2006.

As she so clearly articulated in an interview that was published in The Sydney Morning Herald shortly after receiving her Academy Award, her sense of entitlement is exceeded only by her lack of self-awareness.

But the Hollywood A-lister says she has to audition for parts like every other actor.

‘I have to fight for almost every job I ever get…the ones that I really want to do,’ said Berry in Cannes, promoting her latest film, X-Men: The Last Stand.

Huh? She has to work for what she wants most? It isn’t just provided her? Isn’t that true for almost everyone else in every other walk of life? I’m guessing that every white, Asian, and Hispanic actress has to do the same. Does she, and other blacks in Hollywood, actually think that it’s just like what is portrayed in Eddie Murphy’s parody, White Like Me?

Exhibit #4

Then, there’s Jordan Peele who, courtesy of his privileged upbringing, is no victim of Hollywood’s racism – he just wishes he were.

Again, this narrative of racist Hollywood rings so utterly hollow, especially in light of his own racism being revealed by his remarks in this interview published in The Hollywood Reporter:

“I’m writing a movie where a black man is victimized and all the white people are evil…”

Nonetheless, I am compelled to include my favourite Key & Peele sketch:

Putting the benefit of black privilege on full display, he goes on to share how he will exercise reverse racism for the benefit of black talent in Hollywood.

I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie. Not that I don’t like white dudes…But I’ve seen that movie.

If a white director and/or producer were to ever publicly say the same, odds are he or she would never work in Hollywood, again. Ironically, Ms. Berry, and Mr. Peele seem to be disproving their own claims and rendering completely false the accusation that Hollywood is racist, for if it were as bad as they make it out to be, could either have even been as remotely successful as they are, and have been?

I’m tellin’ ya, this whining about racism in Hollywood and everywhere else is becoming almost as reliable calls and text messages from companies that have been trying very, very hard to reach me regarding my car’s extended warranty.

Exhibit #5

However, the single biggest display of entitlement mentality began on the evening of November 8, 2016, when Donald J. Trump won the election for the office of President of the United States. Make no mistake – it was rock-solid conviction of the strumpet from Hell, herself, that the presidency was all but hers. It was supposed to be hers. Never mind that she had never won an election for any elective office in her entire life. A mediocre attorney, at best, per this account from the Cato Institute:

In neither of his books does Zeifman say he fired Clinton. But in 2008, a reporter named Dan Calabrese wrote an article that claimed that ‘when the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation.’ The article quoted Zeifman as saying: ‘She was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.’…

In 1999, nine years before the Calabrese interview, Zeifman told the Scripps‐ Howard news agency: ‘If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her.’ In a 2008 interview on ‘The Neal Boortz Show,’ Zeifman was asked directly whether he fired her. His answer: ‘Well, let me put it this way. I terminated her, along with some other staff members who were — we no longer needed, and advised her that I would not — could not recommend her for any further positions.’

'So it’s pretty clear that Jerry Zeifman, chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate inquiry, had a low opinion of the young Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham. But because she reported to the chief counsel of the impeachment inquiry, who was hired separately by the committee and did not report to Zeifman, Zeifman had no authority over her. He simply didn’t hire her for the permanent committee staff after the impeachment inquiry ended. Kessler also notes that Clinton failed the D.C. bar exam in that period. She never retook the exam (passing the Arkansas exam instead) and concealed her failure even from her closest friends until her autobiography in 2003.”

Then, there’s this:

Zeifman’s specific beef with Clinton is rather obscure. It mostly concerns his dislike of a brief that she wrote under Doar’s direction to advance a position advocated by Rodino — which would have denied Nixon the right to counsel as the committee investigated whether to recommend impeachment.

I submit that the only reason she was made a partner in the Rose Law Firm was because her husband was the governor of the State of Arkansas.

Back to 2016, all the polls, all the readings of the tea leaves, all the advisors in the bubble whose job it was to tell the candidate what she wanted to hear because it would be released into the echo chamber by the media, and the image, the sense of inevitability would be made manifest. Why? Because the Democrats owned the media, they owned Hollywood, they owned the legal profession, they owned public education, they owned the Ivy League, they owned the institutions, they owned the pollsters. Surely, owning the culture meant that being elected the first female President of the United States was all but a formality, wasn’t it?

Except reality destroyed the fantastic dream. All the good foot soldiers were caught flat-footed. Legal election fraud was known to exist only in Philadelphia, Chicago, and in Palm Beach County, Florida, where the efforts were so transparent and so poorly executed that they revealed themselves to be the rank amateurs they were. So, the work of laying the foundation for rigging the next election began in anticipation of 2020. In the meantime, there would be hell to pay for the birthright lost.

First, the refusal to concede, then the public smear that Trump’s election was fraudulent, and by extension, Trump, as an illegitimate president. This was followed by a full-court press to prevail upon a number of a few delegates from blue states to become faithless electors, and cast invalid ballots in an attempt to deny Trump an Electoral College victory. All the correct Hollywood celebrities (oka the usual suspects, with a few new ones) turned out to do PSAs in support of the effort.

What followed was the longest, sustained temper tantrum in history – the “leak” of the Steele Dossier, and then the orchestrated campaign to hamstring the Trump administration with the Mueller investigation, Stormy Daniels, the alleged border crisis,

the Kavanaugh confirmation spectacle, the first of two doomed-to-fail impeachment trials – all deluxe nothing burgers.

Then came the plannedemic of 2020, the suspension of constitutional election laws in key states, the re-writing of election laws in others, the summer of violence, anarchy, destruction, and arson

and the blatantly harvesting of bogus ballots culminated in the “legal” coup d’etat to remove Trump from office – but was it the end of the tantrum? No, it was not.

The wrath of Hillary being denied what she truly believed to be hers by birthright continued with the theft of the midterm elections in 2022 (though I hold that far too many Republican candidates failed to communicate what it was they stood for, and relied on pollsters who told them what they wanted to hear, what they expected reality to be), instead of what it was.

The tantrum continues because those on the left cannot help themselves. The left wants to see Trump indicted, arrested, convicted without trial, and imprisoned, and it wants this so badly, it has completely lost touch with the world in which everyone else lives, works, and strives to survive. The left has become so unhinged, I’m reminded of the scene toward the end of the film, Justice For All:

Begin at the 00:01:24 mark

The entitlement mentality is not the problem, however. It is merely the result of a destructive paradigm shift in parenting, where corporal punishment (spanking) became all but outlawed, and the emergence of the helicopter, lawnmower, and snowplow parenting phenomena.

My sister and brother-in-law, and my wife agree that we each grew up in the best time, in the best place, in the best country. It seems ours is among the last to grow up without computers, video games, and other handheld devices that would later come on the scene. Social media was recognizing your friends’ bikes in front of another friend’s house, and everyone in the back yard playing a pickup game of some kind.

Some of us went to camp in the summer, or on vacation with our families. As we got older, we learned about responsibility and the value of hard work by having a paper-delivery route, de-tassling corn, maybe caddying at the local country club, or even working in a store owned by our parents or on the family farm.

We can never return to those days, but can parenting recover its authority, and in one or two generations, perhaps, begin producing children who can pass on the benefits of the upbringing of their grandparents, and great-grandparents?

I have to hope so.

Thank you, dear reader, for your time and your indulgence.