BrettHolmes wrote:

That said, I don’t believe that all rich and successful people are villains. Some of them aren’t snobs and can be on our side.

As someone coming from a working class background, I love how you put that.

But seriously, you are right of course. But I must admit that I was raised with a certain ... distrust for rich people (to put it mildly). Otherwise, I was raised with very liberal ideas. My parents wouldn't have minded it if I had turned lesbian but coming home with a rich guy would have made them sad.

That influenced me a lot. For example, my parents always made snide remarks about a Mercedes Benz whenever one crossed our way. So later in live, when we had an A-class for a while, I never felt comfortable in it. In the end, we sold it to buy a VW.

I needed quite some time to get over that attitude.

My mother came from a working class family where she was the only one of her three brothers and two sisters to go to University. We jokingly call them "the poor side of the family". She's gone on to earn quite a bit of money and now they'd probably be considered as middle class. They own a decent detached house in the country and two properties abroad. Because of that, I was then born as automatically middle class. I also went to a "posh" school, ie. My parents paid for it (private school).

Having said all that, I don't consider myself particularly "posh". Sometimes I act like it just because it's fun, and pretend to be a snob and a toff with my friends just for a laugh, but in reality I'm just a normal Labour voter. xD

In the UK it is called 'inverted snobbery'. Children cannot help whatever background they are born into- time travel is not possible so later, as adults, what are they supposed to do? BMW and Audi drivers are often a law into themselves and this has nothing to do with any privilege they may or may not have monetarily (often- and yes I am stereotyping- they are overly-aggressive male drivers of a certain age-bracket and income bracket); the very privileged tend to have different makes of cars than these. At its most extreme though inverted snobbery also leads to things like damage and destruction of items owned by the wealthier- a classic example would be someone 'keying' a car right down the side from front-to-back in a car park.

Back to Benedict however it does seem that certain sections of the press have a problem with him. Maybe it just comes down to his unusual name which makes him an easy target, since other actors with equally 'privileged' backgrounds do not seem to attract the negativity (examples would be: Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis, Laurence Fox, Helena Bonham Carter).

There are many perfectly nice, kind and compassionate rich people, likewise some people of middle income and who are poor are really nasty pieces of work. What matters is what people do. I try not to prejudge anyone solely on their perceived income level or any privilege, or underprivilege, they may have been born into ( at least I would hope I would not do so).

I come from a working class background. But because of the oil industry, me and my brother got well-paid jobs. My brother worked his way up from "nobody" to Country Manager, earning about 1,5 milliion NOK a year (aprx 150 000 GBP). 

In Norway, if you spend a bit of money on a cabin or a sailboat, everybody smiles and congratulates you. But he, having always been interested in speed and racing, bought R1 motorcycles and porsches. And of course people started talking. "Who does he think he is?"

It seems it's ok to have money as long as you spend it on the "right things", and it's the working class who decided what you are "allowed" to buy. I've experienced similar to a minor degree myself, and I severly dislike it. 

That's fantastic Harriet!

In America my problem is with rich conservatives who seem to have the attitude that if you're not rich it's because you're lazy.  That people who find themselves in need of some assistance are "takers."  I could get on my soapbox and rant for hours about the state of classism in America and it's affect on the plitical climate.......but I really like you guys so I'll spare you.