‘Hollywood on Wall Street”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/opinion/sunday/bruni-occupy-wall-street-and-hollywood.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Nobody wants to think of his or herself as a “bad person”.  In particular, those in the public eye tend to make an extra effort to appear “good”.  Frank Bruni discusses celebrities visiting the Occupy Walls Street protests in his article “Hollywood on Wall Street”, suggesting that these people are hurting the movement with their good, rather than helping it.  Using diction and details, Bruni sets the rich and famous apart from the protesters, and then creates the aforementioned meaning using the idea of difference combined with syntax.

                The Occupy Wall Street protesters think of themselves as the 99 percent of the country, so Bruni does everything in his power to place celebrities in the other I percent.  Words such as “lavishly” and “extravagantly” help to convey the idea that celebrities have a lot of money.  These words give the idea not only of extensive wealth, but of excessive wealth.  Bruni creates the effect in the readers’ minds that these people have much more than they actually need.  This is a sharp contrast to the protesters, who base their arguments on a lack of control of money.  Details further isolate people like Kanye West, who made “$16 million or so last year”.  Bruni includes how much money each of the famous people he mentions make, looking very different from the well under $100,000 a year most Americans make.  These techniques force the reader to see the celebrities not as one-of-the-many, but as the hated 1 percent.

                Having established the difference of celebrities, Bruni goes on to couple this with strong statements, making the reader realize the true outcome of celebrities visiting the protests.  After describing the celebrity endorsement of a company that manufactures in China, Bruni asks “How does that serve the jobs-hungry young Americans in Occupy Wall Street’s fold?”  This question has punch, and makes the reader think.  These celebrities are role models.  If, for example, Jennifer Lopez, tells us to buy a certain brand, we probably will.  In this way, she, and people like her, are actually hurting the movement, since it supports an outside company. 

                Celebrities are not like us.  They get up every day and make movies.  They have paparazzi following them around wherever they go.  They have a lot of money.  Bruni does his best to establish this fact in his article.  Given this incredible difference, we see that by attending protests, though genuinely attempting to help, celebrities are doing the opposite.   Bruni leaves the readers thinking that their heroes are, unintentionally, cheapening the plight of the American people.