I swear, after reading this article -- about how a woman with a $2.5 million home, a nanny, a gardener, a "pool man" and "someone to plow the snow from the quarter-mile-long driveway" is just "squeaking by" on $300,000 a year -- I'm pretty much convinced that the Washington Post has been taken over by staff of The Onion. I mean, c'mon, in the midst of a severe recession where 99% of Americans would be overjoyed to be making $100,000, let alone $300,000, we get a nearly 4,000-word article in the Sunday Washington Post about a family that finds humor in their "suffering" by throwing a "recession party" ("Entertainment: Any recession story, joke, poem, item, etc. guests might provide."). Ha, so creative and clever!Frankly, there's no way in hell that The Onion can top this article for sheer, snarky, satirical brilliance!
On a weekend when the kids are with their dad in Manhattan, Steins packs her overnight bag, ditches her Volvo SUV for her Pontiac Solstice convertible and heads for a party in the Hamptons. The invitation had been hanging on her refrigerator for weeks next to an invitation to the Shenorock Shore Club's "Nights in Bangkok" party, two defiant reminders that even in a recession, the show must go on.No, everything is certainly not "perfect" in America right now, with nearly 10% unemployed and nearly 1 in 5 Americans either unemployed, underemployed, or given up on looking at all. Then, there are the tens of millions of Americans without health care, in danger of losing their health care, at risk of losing their homes, etc, etc. But leave it to
Steins violated her no-shopping rule by buying a new black sweater at Ann Taylor with a 20 percent off coupon. She's now wearing it with a pink fitted blouse, pink earrings and black pants as she buzzes out the Long Island Expressway with John Legend on the stereo. Even if money were no object, Steins couldn't see herself hanging out midday at Starbucks with the Pilates moms, their BlackBerrys shining on the tabletops like silver guns. She has always worked. But when she passes a patio shop on Route 27 with rough-hewn wooden chairs, she looks longingly. "Not this year," she says.
A Sothebys realty office is advertising a summer rental in Sagaponack South for "695,000 MD-LD" which means $695,000 to rent the seven-bedroom estate from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The day is drizzly, but Steins rolls down the window to smell the ocean. "My connections here aren't people who bought multimillion-dollar houses," she says. "It's beautiful. It relaxes me. Everyone has been very successful, but that doesn't mean everything is perfect."
And the conclusion of this parody (it IS parody, right?) has got to have you rolling on the floor laughing:
"We might live in nice houses and drive nice cars, but we're just holding on," she says. Perfect looks perfect from a distance."
Ain't that the truth! Hahahahaha.
