Twenty year old Rachael Sacks, a New School student at Lang, wound up on the front cover of the New York Post Saturday, October 19, after her blog post on Thought Catalog received international criticism. The article, titled “I’m Not Going to Pretend That I’m Poor to be Accepted by You,” argued that people should not feel ashamed for being wealthy. “People shouldn’t make others feel bad about their own personal finances,” she wrote. But many felt that her argument was shallow and elitist.
Gawker posted an article titled, “Rich Girl Not Going to Pretend She’s Not Rich Just to Make Poors Happy.” The UK Daily Mail used Google Earth to post a picture of Sacks’ family’s expensive home to accompany the article. “Miss Sacks lives in the affluent West Village neighborhood of New York City but can always retreat to her family’s vast $700,000 home in Bethesda, Maryland,” the photo’s caption read.
In response to all the attention, Sacks posted a second article titled, “I’m The ‘Rich’ Girl You Love To Hate And You’re All Idiots For It.” She insisted that the attention is unwarranted and is being used as “a scapegoat for the current issues in our economy.” According to her recent post, she continues to receive hate mail. Some, in the words of Sacks’, “haterz”, have even told her to kill herself.
Sacks acknowledged in a video posted by MailOnline that the article was snarky and attention-grabbing, and stated in her most recent post that she didn’t even believe Thought Catalog would accept her initial submission.
Shea Carmen Swan is a junior at Lang, majoring in Journalism + Design, minoring in Gender Studies. With 4 semesters of Free Press under her belt, she enjoys writing all things LGBTQIA and currently writes for Posture Magazine, a queer arts publication. Kyriacrchy.wordpress.com & Soilscript.wordpress.com host most of her literary work.
Who is worse, after all: a young rich girl who writes a vapid essay about being a rich girl—or a massive and well-funded newspaper that follows up a cover story mocking that rich girl with a cover story the very next day defending the criminal actions JPMorgan Chase?
http://scallywagandvagabond.com/2013/10/rich-college-girl-rachael-sacks-shit-poor-people-now-hiring-publicist/