This story was hand-made for DougJ:
Chelsea Clinton, the 29-year old daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has become engaged to her longtime boyfriend, investment banker Marc Mezvinsky.
***Mezvinsky is a son of former Pennsylvania Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and former Iowa Rep. Ed Mezvinsky, longtime friends of the Clintons. Ed Mezvinsky was released from federal prison last year after pleading guilty in 2002 to charges of bank and wire fraud.
***The couple became friends as teenagers in Washington and both attended Stanford University. They now live in New York, where Mezvinsky works at Goldman Sachs and Clinton is attending graduate school at Columbia University’s School of Public Health.
Whenever you find the nexus of money and power, Goldman Sachs will be involved.
Alex S.
Goldman Sachs is like the Bene Gesserit.
DougJ
Actually, I’m just grateful that Chelsea isn’t on the Today show or writing for the Daily Beast.
Roger Moore
I guess they’re hoping that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Jay in Oregon
Holy crap, Chelsea Clinton is almost 30?
I feel really old now…
General Winfield Stuck
What else? Just one big happy family.
And I second DougJ/ It could be worse/
Just Some Fuckhead
Will Janet Reno be giving her away at the wedding?
Maude
Why do the Clintons know so may formerly in jail types?
It won’t be Al Gore giving her away.
John Cole
And I’m sure he got his job there because of his smarts. Had nothing to do with his lineage and his closeness to the Clinton family.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
What does that even mean any more in the financial sector? That you can lie, cheat and steal without getting caught? Someone needs to write a self-help book entitled:
“Everything I Needed to Know on Wall Street, I Learned in Prison”
calipygian
Jesus. This is a good, old fashioned dynastic marriage, with the ducal family inching their way up the royal food chain.
SiubhanDuinne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You is BAD!
Mnemosyne
My thought upon reading the story was, “Damn, he’s hot!” Of course, they’re using an older photo, but still … damn!
I’m sorry, were we talking about politics or something?
General Winfield Stuck
President Chelsea. I will likely be dead by then, and happy as a clam.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole:
It’s the same conversation I keep having with people about the movie industry. Yes, the people writing and directing TV shows are very smart, and they worked hard to get where they are. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t also enormously privileged in their lives. The one person I know who got a job straight out of our MFA program was the one who lived at home with Mom and Dad in Brentwood, so she was able to work full-time for a TV show free of charge for a full year while the rest of us dopes had to report to a day job.
I’m sure that Mezvinsky is very smart and works hard. That doesn’t mean he didn’t also use family connections to get where he is.
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne:
I do know one person from a small midwestern college who is now a VP at a major movie studio based on some of the scripts he wrote, but that’s the exception to the rule.
Didn’t Chelsea also work as an investment banker for a while?
Goldman Sachs needs to be broken up and scattered to the winds. Unfortunately, I’m sure that evil will just sprout in a new location.
Mnemosyne
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s what’s so frustrating about trying to explain it to people. I’m sure there are people working at Goldman Sachs who didn’t go to Ivy League schools, but pointing them out as somehow proving that it’s a meritocracy and it’s just a pure co-inkydink that everyone else went to Harvard drives me up the wall.
chrome agnomen
wait. i thought her name was chelsea clinton-reno??
good news for john mccain!
calipygian
At Goldman Sachs.
Which means that he is very smart and works hard at sucking every last bit of value out of America leading to her utter destruction.
Automatically a big, throbbing asshole in my book.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@calipygian:
Everything about the US today just reeks of Edwardian Britain. I just pray we don’t get into a Dreadnought building contest with the Germans.
chrome agnomen
@Just Some Fuckhead:
oh man, you beat me to it!!!
Dayv
I’m sure that it is only by a triumph of will and personal initiative that this ex-con has gotten a job in the financial industry.
Most of the ex-cons I know can’t even get someone to rent them an apartment.
calipygian
If the Chinese Army trades its Russian style furry hats for pointy Kaiser helmets, I’m checking out somehow.
arguingwithsignposts
@Dayv:
It’s the ex-con’s son we’re talking about here, not the ex-con himself, who just happened to be an elected official.
Dayv
@arguingwithsignposts:
Woops, my bad.
Reading comprehension is for the little people.
Martin
In her defense, what sort of guys do you think she would have had the opportunity to meet at Stanford? Remember, she was still under Secret Service protection when she started there – she graduated in 2001. My guess is that she mostly interacted with kids of other government officials.
And her fiancee isn’t the ex-con, his dad is.
Pangloss
If only Goldman Sachs could marry Skull N. Bones.
gwangung
@Martin:
You don’t need to say anything more than that. LOTS of financial and social elites going to school there. Has been the case since at least the 50s; will be the case in the future. Anybody on the ball will make connections there, like anyone else who goes to college or a frat or sorority.
(Of course, this doesn’t apply to me)(On the other hand, what little reputation I do have depended on riding a coat tail or two…).
Will
It’s the same as that new Washington Post columnist being drawn from the ranks of the D.C. cocktail party circuit. We’re a nation of more than 300 million people, but our national political, economic and cultural life is increasingly dominated by a small handful of people who know or are related to each other, but are insulated from everyone else.
It’s not healthy. It’s not smart. And I bet that it’s going to lead to some very dark days ahead.
gwangung
@Will: It was NEVER the case that connections weren’t a big part of people getting plum jobs. However, they used to try to take that into account and look for SOME people who were actually merit driven.
But the elite were never as blind as they are now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dayv:
I have a wingnut friend that insists the phrase is actually “my bag”.
arguingwithsignposts
@Martin:
Hmmm, one who wasn’t the son of an old family friend? And really, is it that different than Jenna Bush’s marriage to Henry Hager?
Dynasty is as dynasty does.
arguingwithsignposts
Why do all my blockquotes come out bold?
Church Lady
Damn. I was so rooting for that McDonald’s burger flipper she dated for so long.
Seriously, what career could he have that would keep you from being so snarky? Perhaps “Perpetual Grad Student”????
Just Some Fuckhead
@Church Lady: Inspiring inner city teacher and debate coach, battling the odds…………
TaosJohn
I don’t know about Edwardian England, but the reeking bit fits.
I thought I couldn’t possibly be any angrier today. Well, guess what!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Church Lady: Abortion doctor, maimed from a clinic bombing but still bravely performing reproductive services with the assistance of a monkey named Bear……………
Will
Chelsea Clinton = Snore.
Anyway, anyone else as creeped out as I am by the “Your Future Now” ad on the upper left corner? Lady, it’s great that you found the murder weapon. But the killer is standing right behind you!
Comrade Kevin
How DARE she marry someone like that!
arguingwithsignposts
@Church Lady:
I like JSF’s suggestions. I might add social worker, physician, even lawyer. Or just someone outside the immediate sphere of influence. Banker just doesn’t cut it.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I would go with Ninja Party Crasher. That’ll get CL’s concern rocks off fer sure.
PeakVT
@Pangloss: That would be like marrying your first cousin. I wonder what Guiliani would think about it.
Gwangung
@arguingwithsignposts: Ah, dude, most us Snodfarts end up as dickhead lawyers, dickhead doctors or dickhead MBAs. Inevitable.
arguingwithsignposts
@Gwangung:
Coming from a southern public school education, I’m not familiar with that term. Is it a term of affection for Stanford grads?
Steve Balboni
Looks like Taibbi bait to me…
MazeDancer
Wonder if the NY Times wedding page write-up will read exactly like this post. Sort of an “Onion does Society” impact.
Betsy
Oops! Looks like nobody told Chelsea she was obligated not to fall in love with and marry someone she’s been close to since high school, despite not being a politician or public figure herself.# I mean really. I fail to see why the relationship is so outrageous. Yes, it’s emblematic of the extreme class and power disparities that have been worsening over the last 30 years. But that’s hardly her fault. People tend to marry those with whom they have a lot in common. Of course we shouldn’t restrict ourselves to those of the same race/class/whatever background, but neither was she under any obligation to go searching out a poor immigrant social worker lesbian just because it would look better to the liberals. She lived through a harder adolescence in many ways than most of us can imagine (though easier in many ways too, of course), and I imagine finding someone with whom she was totally comfortable was more of a priority than making some kind of progressive statement via her love life.
We don’t know what this guy does at GS. Maybe he’s unmitigated evil, maybe he’s trying to do some good, most likely he’s somewhere in between. But given that we don’t have any idea, it seems pretty heartless to hold Chelsea responsible for the sins of the entire ruling class. Especially when, given her interest in public health, she may well be someone who is going to try to reduce such economic imbalances.
I’m Chelsea’s age, and simply could not imagine going through what she did as a child and adolescent. From being called ugly by national figures to seeing your parents’ marriage disintegrate (or close to it) in a spectacularly public fashion, I think it must have been like hell, at least at some points. She seems to have grown up into a decent young woman, and I hate seeing people crap all over her for no good reason. She can’t help being her parents’ daughter.
# With the exception of stumping for mom, which most candidates’ adult children do to a certain extent.
Betsy
Ack, that last part wasn’t supposed to be bolded; it was supposed to refer to what I said in the first sentence. Oh well.
gex
@John Cole: Who needs smarts? All you do at GS is get paid when you sell things that make money, and get paid by the government when you sell things that lose money. A fucking monkey flipping a coin could win with that arrangement.
jayjaybear
Right on, Betsy! I’m reading all these reactions and thinking “Good lord…what did Chelsea Clinton ever do to YOU?” Big surprise…she’s marrying someone she’s known since high school. Big surprise…he’s a member of a politically-prominent family. Big surprise…SO’S SHE!
There’s an incredible sense of entitlement going on with the comments on this…who the hell are you people to tell her who she should and shouldn’t fall in love with and marry? The fact that she was a president’s child doesn’t make her public property.
gwangung
@arguingwithsignposts: Affection, no.
(But seriously, some of us recognize our privilege and do the best we can, some of us are mediocre and some of us go for power and money. I know, slightly, some of the heirs to a local corp. Nice people in a lot of ways, they do a great deal of charity work no one else does, but they ARE privileged..and there was never any chance I could have married into the family).
Corner Stone
@arguingwithsignposts:
Cause you’re not afraid to take strong stances?
RedKitten
Chelsea’s always seemed to really have her head on straight, has exhibited a lot of class and maturity, and has grown into a remarkable young woman who does not appear to be spoiled by her privilege. I wish her every happiness and a long, loving marriage.
Betsy
@RedKitten:
Hear, hear.
arguingwithsignposts
@Betsy:
Look, if Chelsea Clinton finds true love with a guy she’s known since H.S., then more power to her. I’m glad for that. But the statement above is a little too rich for my blood.
Forgive me for not shedding a tear for her “hard” adolescence spent in private schools with Secret Service protection and a private staff cooking her meals.
New Yorker
Not necessarily. If you’ve read Michael Lewis’ book “Liar’s Poker” about life at Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, you read about Lewis Ranieri, who began in the mailroom at age 19 and went on the basically create the market for mortgage bonds and rake in tens (if not hundreds) of billions of dollars for the firm in the 1980s.
Of course, Lewis does talk about how things started to change in the 1980s, and how mail room clerks could no longer work their way onto the trading floor: that became reserved for Harvard grads. And then the firm imploded in the late 80s…….
Will
I think the snark is coming from the fact that we’re a nation of 300 million people, but the vast majority of our political, cultural and economic elite seem to be drawn from a handful – a few thousand, tops – who went to the same schools, attend the same parties and work for the same small group of elite banks, corporations and federal agencies.
And no, it’s not always been that way. You only have to go back to the 70s and earlier to find that our nation once celebrated famous writers, thinkers, made-from-scratch businessmen and peanut farmer Presidents alongside the monied East Coast elites and Ivy League hangers on.
arguingwithsignposts
@Will:
this.
Betsy
@arguingwithsignposts:
You’ll note that I said “easier too in many ways.” I’m not ignoring that. (And, just to be clear, I do not come from a family background that remotely resembles hers.) But unless you, as a junior high school girl, have had late night comedians making fun of you for being ugly, I’m going to stand by my point.
ruemara
Maybe I should’ve applied to be a designer at Goldman Sachs…but how do you capture evil in a font and a pantone?
Betsy
@Will:
I’m fully aware of that, as my comment above indicated. I just don’t think that she’s really an apt target for it.
I’m going to have to disagree with you here. A) We still celebrate those few individuals (ahem, Barack Obama) who come from non-elite backgrounds. B) The fact is that those have almost always been isolated cases. C) During the time in which they were less isolated, privileges of a different but awful sort were operating: in the West, some poor white men could rise to great prominence, for instance, but it was at the expense of blacks, native americans, the Chinese, and women.
Liberty60
And news like this is why I beat my head against the table when I see the meme that we have two parties, one the party of socialism, the other the party of free market capitalism.
The parties may not be EXACTLY the same….but distinguishing between the incestuous shrinking pool of oligarchs that comprises our political and business and media class is increasingly different. Like when I see Mrs. Greenspan solemnly give a discussion on the banking crisis.
Steeplejack
@arguingwithsignposts:
You’ve got to (1) butt them up against the last line of normal text above them (no blank line in between) or (2) put two underscore characters on the blank line above the start of the blockquote. (h/t Monkeyboy © 2009)
Will
Betsy,
A: Barack Obama at age 12 may not have qualifed, but Barack Obama as an adult is fully a product of that world. He may have entered as a scholarship student to an elite private K-12, but he matriculated as an Ivy League graduate and worked within the system ever since. I like the man, but he’s not an example of an outsider.
B: Most of the 19th century robber barons and early 20th century predecessors of our elite rich worked themselves from humble origin. They were bastards, but they were not old money bastards. They bought their way into old money and their children are now old money, but there was a huge amount of new blood poured into the aristocracy in that era.
C: It wasn’t just poor whites that made money from that era. A ton of immigrants – Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, etc. – became millionaires as well. And if you know your history of that era, you know that those folks weren’t considered “white” until much, much later.
Aside from that, you had a good number of black fortunes being made at the time. Women and Native Americans got the short end of the stick, but they still had their voices heard. Go back and read the newspapers of the day and you’d find they printed the entire text of speeches made by feminist thinkers, Native Americans, atheists and a ton of other radical voices. It sold copy and the press of the day was more interested in a good story than manufacturing a narrative that served the corporate interest.
If you take the long view, we’re in a weird place as a nation. We’ve never been at a point where so few have had so much control over all the levers of society.
Eli
Geez, so much class-resentment in this thread. You’d think we oughta have some real progressive taxation to try and level the playing field a tad….
err…
Lupin
Goldman Sachs = Wolfram & Hart
arguingwithsignposts
@Betsy:
FWIW, I never thought Chelsea was ugly, even as a junior high girl, but WTF? That’s “hard”? As opposed to?
drkrick
“Ahead”? Have you looked around lately? That’s the peak of the roller coaster about six years back. I can’t see the bottom from here.
eyepaddle
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
For the all time win.
Also,
eyepaddle
@Betsy
I like and presume I would respect Chelsea Clinton–pretty much always have, so yes, I agree that I don’t think she needs to use her marriage to make a progressive political statement.
I do think her husband-to-be could probably find a new career though. Seriously, if Goldman Sachs didn’t control most or all of the levers or power merely working there would be seen as an outright statement of inherent criminality.
Betsy
@Will:
First of all, I think we agree on the current state of affairs. There is an enormous gap in wealth and power between the tiny elite and everyone else, and I think it’s worrying that it’s growing. And it *has* grown since the 1960s; that’s unquestionable. But I do disagree with your interpretation of the history. I’m a historian of the U.S., so I am, in fact, rather familiar with subject.
As to your first point about Obama, that’s completely moving the goalposts (and contradicted by your own examples in point B). If working your way into the Ivy League and doing exceptionally well there, then using that to pursue a spectacularly successful career, isn’t an example of “working themselves up from humble origin,” I don’t know what is. The same applies to Bill Clinton, in fact. Is your requirement that in order to count, they have to become wealthy without any education?
As to B and C, I don’t know what to tell you. Everything you mention are still isolated examples. To suggest that because a few black people made fortunes in the late 19th century, that proves that it was more egalitarian than now is either disingenuous or naive. Blacks are unquestionably better off now than in the late 19th century, otherwise known as “Redemption” and the high point of lynchings, share cropping, and the Klan. Ditto Native Americans. Immigrants were better off in many ways than immigrants today, because there weren’t restrictions on immigration from most countries. However, it was still a tiny minority that went on to great wealth. We remember and pay attention to them BECAUSE they were so exceptional and because they fit the Great American Narrative of bootstrap-pulling-up.
I could go on and on, but it’s not worth it. Especially because questions about who can make it into the extreme upper echelons are ultimately beside the point – the problem is the distance between those echelons and everyone else in terms of well-being and political power. And that distance has grown and shrank throughout American history. It was much smaller during the 1950s than today, for whites. But there’s a reason they called the late 19th century the “Gilded Age.”
Betsy
@arguingwithsignposts:
Dude, I like and respect you and always appreciate your comments here, but seriously? You can’t imagine why that would be devastating to a 12-year-old girl? Did you *go* to junior high?
@eyepaddle:
I agree with you. I’m not really trying to defend the guy; I just was really put off for some reason by the rage directed at Chelsea. Don’t we all have friends who have married people with objectionable politics/careers/are generally assholes? I would rather judge her by her own deeds, which, at the moment look promising.
batgirl
@Mnemosyne: A day late, but I know someone who used to do college recruiting for Goldman and Goldman would only interview from a very, very small elect group of universities. If you didn’t attend one of these schools there was no way you were going to hired by Goldman out of college.
Evinfuilt
@Betsy:
So no other Junior High Girl was called Ugly, just Chelsea?
Junior High sucks for everyone, but at least she had a cushy landing outside of it.
gwangung
@Evinfuilt: Male, I bet.
That’s a rather asshole response, to be honest.
Betsy
@Evinfuilt:
In front of the whole country, for months on end? No. That did not, in fact, happen to other junior high girls. And as I have said repeatedly, I KNOW that she had a cushy landing on the other side of it. That doesn’t negate the unique ways in which she had a hard time as the daughter of Bill Clinton. But whatever. I can’t make you feel compassion for someone you don’t want to feel compassion for.
Steeplejack
@Evinfuilt:
Are you being deliberately obtuse? How many junior high girls are called ugly on national TV?