Rich People Doing Crimes: The Case of P.G. Sittenfeld
Yesterday, Cincinnati City Councilor P.G. Sittenfeld was arrested on federal corruption charges for allegedly soliciting campaign contributions from a developer in exchange for help with the approval process for a project. In Boston you only get arrested for doing this if you’re Black, so hats off to the FBI for striking a blow for racial justice in this one particular case. (You guys are still on the hook for assassinating Black Panther Party and AIM members, though.)
P.G Sittenfeld and I went to the same high school. Though he is much younger than I am and I don’t know him (or his sister, bestselling novelist Curtis), I have clear mental pictures of his parents: his dad was chairman of the board for a long time and his mom worked at the school when I went there. So while I don’t have any personal insights into why he did what he did, I do understand the social circle he’s from. Indeed, as a broke kid who went to school with rich kids, I think I actually understand it better than a lot of people who grew up fully immersed in it.
Let’s start with this. The rich are not any less criminal than any other group of people. My classmates, drove drunk (boy, did they ever drive drunk!); bought, sold, and used marijuana, cocaine, and a variety of pills on school property; and did some shoplifting and minor assaults. When you’re white and rich, these crimes are considered adolescent hijinks and don’t ruin your life the way they do when you’re not rich and white. So: why does a child of privilege like P.G. Sittenfeld (allegedly!) commit crimes? Well, I don’t know for sure, but one possibility is because he can! Because they all can, and frequently do. Wealthy people in the United States are so used to committing crimes with impunity that it’s natural that some of them wind up feeling like they can do anything they want without facing any consequences.
But also: I looked at P.G. Sittenfeld’s LinkedIn, and, by the standards of my high school, he’s a bit of an underachiever. Again, I don’t know the guy, but here’s what I know — he went to Princeton and Oxford,(so far so good), then freelanced for the New York Times for a year and a half. Or so his LinkedIn says. I searched the Times and found exactly one article with his byline, so that was not a very productive eighteen months. He worked at Google for two months. He spent another year and a half as the senior director of a startup that failed. He wound up a city councilor, launched an unsuccessful bid for senate, and was being talked about as the next Mayor of Cincinnati. (In Cincinnati’s form of government mayor is largely a ceremonial position that was once held by Jerry Springer, so this is less of a big deal than it might seem.). He lives with his parents. In a 5700 square foot house, but still.
I don’t know what any of his other jobs paid, but I know that as a Cincinnati City Councilor, he was making $65k a year. This is a liveable salary in Cincinnati, where housing prices are low, but it’s a lot less than his Seven Hills and Princeton classmates are likely making. And rich people have a very warped idea of what constitutes an adequate amount of money. So it’s entirely possible P.G. was looking at Instagram or Facebook and seeing his classmates driving nice cars, taking twice- or thrice-yearly international vacations with their entire families, or soaking up the sun at their house in Hilton Head (That’s where rich people in Cincinnati used to have houses when I was in school, but things may have changed) and felt like he, despite being the youngest person ever elected to Cincinnati City Council, was not doing well enough.
Of course, you can compensate for a relative lack of money by having a lot of power. So he had his sights set on being mayor, not because being mayor of Cincinnati means anything in Cincinnati, but because it sounds impressive out of it. Was he eyeing Congress or the Senate (again) or the Governorship? Almost certainly. And now those things are, at least temporarily, out of reach.
It’s tempting to feel bad for P.G. Because the feeling that you’re never enough, that nothing you’ve done is sufficient, afflicts a lot of people in this country. Most of the rich people I know don’t consider themselves rich, not because they want for anything but because they can look at other people who are even richer and wonder why they don’t have what those people have. All of us have a problem understanding the concept of “enough,” and this keeps us working too hard and buying too much stuff we don’t need.
But ultimately I won’t feel bad for P.G Sittenfeld, and neither should you. He’s a human being, sure, but he’s had nearly immeasurable advantages handed to him and threw it all away out of greed and ambition. (allegedly!) And even in disgrace, he is protected in a way most of us cannot be. He will get excellent legal representation, and the worst-case scenario for him is a short stint at Club Fed, after which people will be tripping over themselves to hire him. After all, rich white people in disgrace often get nice redemption arcs. So P.G. screwed up, but he’ll be fine. All he did was subvert democracy for a few thousand bucks.
It’s not like he did something unforgiveable, like being a Black kid who sold a joint to a cop.
