Let Them Eat Cake In the Wine Tasting Room

A moment of silence, please, for Candy Spelling as she struggles with the difficulties of residence downsizing. Leaving her current 56,500 square foot house, with its separate silver and china rooms, gift-wrapping room and wine-tasting room, she’ll be risking claustrophobia in her new 16,500 square foot apartment. As the eyes glaze over, some perspective might be in order. Candy’s apartment – let’s draw the veil of charity over her soon-to-be previous residence – is the equivalent of about seven average houses, according to 2006 U.S. Census figures. Put under the plow, but respecting the downstairs neighbors’ fear of water damage, Candy’s third of an acre could produce a non-irrigated wheat yield of some twenty bushels, or about 1,200 pounds of grain. Refining procedures and baking recipes vary, but it seems safe to assume this amount adequate for more than several two- or three-layer cakes.

You might charitably think Candy’s spatial requirements have at least in part to do with a large number of children, but not so. Her progeny commendably lead their own lives, which include in the case of her daughter, authoring a tell-all book describing the difficulties of growing up Spelling. No, we’re told, Candy has her eye on her two grandchildren. If so, she may come to regret the move-related reduction in her household staff from its current count of 20 to 10, a number which may prove inadequate to keep track of the kids when they come to visit.

But hold. Our topic today has only tangential connection with the hardships of Candy. Her sad story recently appeared in no less an august vehicle than The New York Times. On the front page. Yes, featured among reportage of the mayhem, follies, triumphs and tragedies that constitute our quotidian lives, we’re treated to this brief distraction.

Houston – and all points east, north, and west – we have a problem. Quite beyond the snarky question of what could possibly justify such brobdingnadian real estate excess, even beyond why it should vie for our attention with more real-worldly issues of the day, the problem is: This public display of wildly excessive consumption in a season when the national economy is near flatline, and increasing numbers of good ordinary people are is desperate straits risks stoking at least two dangerous trends.

The first, hardly surprisingly already manifest on the right of the political spectrum, is an unshakeable denial of any responsibility for the current catastrophic circumstances, and an attendant accusation of others for the mess we’re in. One could also mention the rampant hypocrisy of calling loudly for fiscal and moral responsibility while, in a growing number of areas and instances, spectacularly demonstrating anything but.

The second, with depressing symmetry most evident on the left, is an increasing pandering to the ever-sinking lowest common denominator of public opinion. Asked the age-old question of whether ends justify means, Gandhi replied that the two should be consistent – a perception apparently lost on candidates for public office whose eagerness to please seems to preclude any honest assessment of the situation, let alone any realistic remediation.

Meanwhile, maybe Candy will find someone to bake some bread. Or is that Henny Penny?