{"id":69,"date":"2010-09-01T11:57:46","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T11:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/09\/status-symbols-and-the-black-american-express.html"},"modified":"2010-09-01T11:57:46","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T11:57:46","slug":"status-symbols-and-the-black-american-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/rabbishmuleyunleashed\/2010\/09\/status-symbols-and-the-black-american-express.htm","title":{"rendered":"Status Symbols and the Black American Express"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a seventeen-year-old student at Rabbinical college, a riddle was put to me. A beggar is invited to a billionaire’s home for dinner. The homeless man has never had such scrumptious food. He throws his entire being into slopping down his soup and devouring his chicken. Meanwhile, the rich man puts a napkin on his lap, sticks out a pinky, and eats with meticulous etiquette. The question, which of the two men is more attached to the food? I answered, ‘Why, the poor man, of course. He’s wolfing the stuff down as if it’s his last meal.’ ‘Wrong,’ my teacher told me. ‘The rich man is much more attached. Want proof? Try taking the food away from each. For the poor man its easy-come-easy-go. He ate on the street yesterday, he’ll find a way to make do today. But the rich man? Just try taking away his meal. His butler will assault you, the police will be called, his lawyer will sue…’ You get the picture.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n


<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n


<\/font><\/p>\n


<\/font><\/p>\n

As America endures its worst recession
\nsince the great depression, a cleansing of sorts is taking place. All the
\nstatus symbols that give our lives meaning – designer clothes, fancy cars,
\nexpensive jewelry – are becoming outside our reach. Now status symbols are
\nstrange things. Who would have thought Dolce and Gabbana on our backside, Prada
\non our feet, and a $9000 Birkin bag on our shoulder would make us feel so good
\nabout ourselves. But, curiously, we spend our lives pursuing these ephemeral
\nand flimsy objects that somehow lend significance to our lives. Descartes may
\nhave said, “I think, therefore I am.” But in America we respond, “I have,
\ntherefore I am.”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But in this recession, our status symbols
\nare under threat. How attached have we become to these things? Will our egos
\nsurvive their absence? Most importantly, will we finally fill the void with new
\nstatus symbols of greater depth and more lasting endurance?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tiger Woods just lost his wife. His
\ncareer is also going down the toilet. Which makes him feel worse? The answer,
\nof course, depends on which was the real pillar of his self-esteem, his money
\nand celebrity or his family.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Values, of course, create character. A
\nlove of money creates a greedy character while a love of people creates a
\nnurturing character. But what is often overlooked is how values also determine
\na culture’s status symbols. A culture that values wealth will develop
\nsuper-expensive cars and gold encrusted watches that people compete to
\npurchase. And a culture that values virtue will develop status symbols based on
\npublic service.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After Ted Turner pledged $1 billion in
\n1997 to the UN, he made the valid point that the Forbes 400 list prevented many
\nof his friends from following suit. They feared that if they gave away a large
\nportion of their wealth they would fall off the list. For many, status is
\nattained through the hording of wealth. But a little over a decade later Bill
\nGates and Warren Buffet obliterated that model by creating a new status symbol:
\ngiving away half your assets in your lifetime, making it almost embarrassing to
\nremain on the Forbes list with all your assets intact.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A conversation last week with an
\nexecutive assistant to American Express CEO Ken Chenault, gave me an epiphany
\nabout my own susceptibility to shallow symbols of status, even though I decried
\nall such nonsense in my 2009 book about the near-collapse of the American
\neconomy, The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing
\nSpiritual Hunger.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1994, while serving as Rabbi at Oxford
\nUniversity, I took my wife for our wedding anniversary to the Winter Olympics
\nin Lillehammer. After an evening event we found ourselves in a freezing village
\nlate at night with no way to get back to our hotel in Oslo. I saw a bus passing
\nand it stopped to pick us up. Turns out there were several British executives
\nfrom American Express on board. One was charged with launching a new card – a
\nblack card – in the UK as a pilot. The Centurion Card was meant to be American
\nExpress’s most elite card and, though the necessary earnings and spending were
\ncompletely outside my reach, the executive and I became friendly and, having
\nheard that my organization regularly hosts world leaders lecturing to Oxford’s
\nstudents, he found what I do interesting and offered me the card. Since it was
\na few years before the card made it into the US, it was a novelty to all who
\nsaw it. I was reluctant to ever show it off. Still, I knew I had it in my
\nwallet.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Turns out that amid the status it was far
\nfrom the blessing I thought it would be. Every year American Express raised the
\nmembership fee it until it was completely outside our budget (unbelievably, the
\npolicy is to keep the fee even if they<\/i> cancel the card). Were they
\ncrazy? And especially for the abysmal service it offered. A concierge that was
\noften incompetent, travel ‘professionals’ who were well-meaning but so often
\ninept. Account managers who were impossible to reach. I complained numerous
\ntimes and was apologized to by the head of Centurion in the US, who
\nacknowledged the poor service I had received and promised to make it better.
\nRegardless, the mistakes continued and the service remained highly substandard.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Matters came to a head when a temporary
\nhold was put on the card because of a bicycle I bought from my brother’s
\nbusiness and American Expresses’ simple inability to distinguish between me,
\nthe cardholder, and my brother, an American Express merchant of many years.
\n The hold was, of course, quickly removed but rather than the apology I
\nhad requested from Mr. Chenault’s office, so that he be made aware of the
\nconsiderable problems with Centurion, what followed was a painful and arrogant
\nphone call from an insufferable corporate type in the CEO’s office which only
\nreinforced for me all the negative stereotypes that Americans have about credit
\ncard companies and their contemptuous treatment of those who make their
\nbusinesses possible.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was then that I had my epiphany. The
\nnext day, as I discussed my unfortunate  experiences with another of
\nChenault’s executive assistants, she asked me, given my abysmal experience with
\nthe card, why did I even want it? I went silent. I wished to give her an honest
\nresponse.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So here it is. For all the books and
\ncolumns I had written about how the viper of materialism had coiled itself
\naround the American soul, and for all the lectures I had given to audiences
\naround the world about how we are drowning our children in an ocean of excess,
\nand for all the resources I am prepared to put into giving each of my nine
\nchildren a Jewish education in religious schools so that they have a
\nvalues-based education, I somehow found this silly piece of metal edifying. I
\ncould not admit it to myself but, having fallen into a club outside my means, I
\nhad also fallen victim to a simple marketing ploy that told me that possessing
\na rarity reserved for exclusive members – however ridiculously exorbitant and
\nuseless – somehow made me special.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lois XIV, of France, the Sun King,
\nconfronted a dilemma as sovereign. Kings earned the loyalty of Dukes and Barons
\nby granting large tracts of land. But the grants depleted the holdings of the
\nCrown and the taxes they brought in. How could he sustain the loyalty of his
\nmost powerful subjects without giving away the realm? He came up with an
\ningenious solution: create a new status symbol that will cost him nothing and
\nwill simultaneously display the subordination of the barons to the King. Thus
\nwas born the almost laughable spectacle in Versailles of the daily royal
\ndressing, know as the levee<\/i> (rising). The King would awaken and the
\nnobles of the realm would compete to take away his chamberpot, remove his
\nnightshirt, and dress him with his britches. Incredibly, the nobles actually purchased<\/i>
\nthe privilege of grande entr\u00e9e, which commenced when the king’s nightshirt was
\npulled over his head. When it comes to status symbols you can make anyone your
\nsucker. My black American Express had become my own royal chamberpot.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My experience immediately called to mind
\na recent, brilliant op-ed by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal entitled,
\n‘We Pay them to Abuse us,’ which followed Steven Slater’s meltdown on JetBlue
\nwhere passengers were subjected to his profanity-laced harangue after paying
\nJetBlue to fly on the plane. Here, I was the sucker who had strained to pay a
\nmembership fee to be subject to corporate America’s shocking arrogance and to
\nendure degrading phone calls from their executive offices.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1980’s American Express conducted
\na smear campaign against the celebrated orthodox Jewish banker and
\nphilanthropist Edmond Safra, brilliantly chronicled by renowned journalist Bryan Burrough<\/span> in his best-seller ‘Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Banking
\nRival Edmond Safra.’ Safra, who was a major supporter of my work at Oxford
\nUniversity and sponsored an annual lecture for my organization that each year
\nfeatured a Nobel Peace Prize Winner, including Elie Wiesel and Mikhail Gorbachev,
\nwon an apology and $8 million from American Express, all of which he donated to
\ncharity. The case, with its insinuations of anti-Semitism from what was
\nperceived at the time to be a Waspy American Express, did much to tarnish the
\nreputation of the bank and ultimately led to a change in management. In 2001
\nChenault became only the third African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That is, of course,
\nsomething to be admired. But it would be nice to know that the executives of
\nAmerica’s most important companies change not only their personnel but their
\nattitudes as well. Every company has the right to promote their status symbols
\nand we, the public, have a right to either buy into them or rise above them.
\nBut in this age of Wall Street greed, corporate aloofness, and abusive
\nemployees, it would be nice to see companies that still believe, and insist,
\nthat the customer is king and should be treated with simple courtesy and
\nrespect.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is
\nthe host of ‘The Shmuley Show’ on 77 WABC in NYC, America’s most listened-to
\ntalk radio station. He is the international best-selling author of 23 books and
\nwas the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium. As host of ‘Shalom
\nin the Home’ on TLC he won the National Fatherhood Award and his syndicated
\ncolumn was awarded the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for
\nExcellence in Commentary. Newsweek calls him ‘the most famous Rabbi in
\nAmerica.’ He has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’
\nFollow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a seventeen-year-old student at Rabbinical college, a riddle was put to me. A beggar is invited to a billionaire’s home for dinner. The homeless man has never had such scrumptious food. He throws his entire being into slopping down his soup and devouring his chicken. 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