“Why can’t they just hire a lobbyist like everyone else?”

The above quote is the twenty-first century’s answer to “let them eat cake.”  Here’s the background:

As part of their ongoing protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the hacktivist group Anonymous has published the personal information of two of the most powerful media titans in the U.S.  That would be Time Warner CEO Jeffrey L. Bewkes, and Sumner M. Redstone of CBS and Viacom.

This is part of Anonymous’ “Operation Hiroshima” — the group’s war on high-ranking politicians and media VIPs who are pushing SOPA and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act.  As you probably know, these two bills would basically bring the Internet to a grinding halt in order to protect the profits of a few Hollywood and music industry CEOs.

Anyway, about the title of this post:  another one of Operation Hiroshima’s targets was a congressman (not named in the linked article).  One of this congressman’s aides, dumbfounded by the level of public anger and the use of such shocking tactics, actually did say:

“Why can’t they just hire a lobbyist like everyone else?”

Why indeed.  That’s exactly what I was thinking earlier today as I was driving my Ferrari from an investors’ meeting to the yacht club.  The above quotation reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago:

There was a kid from an incredibly wealthy old-money family.  He had the most sheltered pampered life imaginable.  He was now in his mid twenties, having gone to one expensive prep school after another and obtained several college degrees.  And now he was starting his first job — with an advertising agency.  On his first day at work, his co-workers were coming up with an ad campaign, and they decided to run the commercial on the following Sunday afternoon.  And the sheltered kid said “Sunday afternoon?  But nobody will see the ad on Sunday afternoon.  That’s when everybody’s out playing polo.”

OK, so it’s not the most side-splitting joke you’ve ever heard.  But that line always stuck with me as an example of someone being so sheltered inside a magic bubble that he actually thinks everybody else is equally sheltered and pampered.  And now an unknown aide to an unnamed congressman has shown — once again — that you can’t make this shit up.