The Karen Klein Crisis: Prompting Soul Searching in All the Wrong Places

It's hard to watch all 10 minutes of the now-infamous YouTube video of 69-year-old Karen Klein being tortured by school children. It's not hard to understand it.

Nevertheless, we're seeing all the usual arguments and finger-pointing—blaming parents, blaming the media, blaming the school. And of course, conservatives and liberals alike are using this as an excuse to bludgeon each other in online comment streams.

True to form, we're all going straight to the macro-level. Let's go to the micro first, shall we? In my opinion, this is unequivocal. The people most to blame for this behavior are the kids themselves—and to a lesser extent parents, the school officials and society. They did it, after all. What you see on the video is very deliberate and relentless cruelty. 

It's odd that we tend to reflexively to deflect blame from minors, given our competing fixation on the value of "personal choice." And once kids turn 18, most people don't do very much handwringing in this regard. Outside of circles human rights lawyers run in, few people stay awake at night trying to figure out what broad societal force compelled an . For adults who have been outed for swinish and cruel behavior, we tend to hew close to an unbending and even harsh adherence to the dogma of "personal responsibility."

Now that we have that out of the way, let's take the macro view, one that no one in the U.S. likes to talk about: There's an undercurrent of class tension here.

In moments of high hilarity, we in the U.S. have been known to call ourselves a "classless society," but anyone who has ever seen an adult publicly insult someone in the service industry should not be in the least surprised about what happened to Karen Klein. It's practically written in the job description that if you are a minor functionary or minimum-wage worker you will put up with all manner of crap from your more affluent peers, and that you'll do it with an unflinching smile. If you don't think so, then you've never worked in a mall or gas station before. And school employees—particularly lunch ladies, gym teachers, and yes, bus monitors—are also considered to be low on the totem pole.

The proof is in the video itself. Apart from harping on the woman's weight, the kids in the video make a special point of emphasizing how low class they think she is. They talk about how if they cut her Big Macs would fly out of her stomach (because poor people eat there). They talk about how she must have gotten her clothes from a garbage can behind a Walgreen's. 

Around the eighth minute they put their contempt for her economic status in the plainest, most brutal language.

"Karen, how much was that purse?" One of them asks.

"Why do you want to know?" She responds.

"Cause I want to know how poor your old (expletive) is," They say. "Oh my God you bought it at Wegman's. You're so poor. I'm surprised you know how to read." 

None of this is unusual. Take for instance, my own middle school gym teacher, Mrs. Shepherd. Mrs. Shepherd was very kind lady with a fondness for jokingly bandying about the French word "derrière." She had the misfortune of working in one of the wealthiest school districts in our city where she was mercilessly tormented by many of the kids.

One student was particularly biting, bringing her to tears in front of the class on more than one occasion. To my knowledge, he was never reprimanded for any of his nastiness. Even if school administrators had intervened he probably wouldn't have cared. That kid, progeny of a prominent family, went to an Ivy League school for both undergrad and his Master's. That kid now works at a large law firm. Guess we really showed him.

It's a small thing that speaks volumes—like the Klein incident. The only difference is that these kids got caught doing it on a Smartphone video. The lesson learned is the same: Unrestrained viciousness is a privilege of class, and those who have it are free to exercise it against anyone who is poorer and more powerless than they are, even if she is your grandmother's age.

And the worst part is, these kids have learned all this by watching the adults in their lives. Does it contradict my first point? Sort of, but it's still true. These individual kids are responsible, yes, but in an indirect way so is anyone who gets a good laugh at the People of Wal-Mart. We've created a culture that rewards people who heap contempt on those in the low-paying, thankless jobs that are necessary for our society to function.

So, next time you're about to leave a one-cent tip or toss a food item at the waiter, remember that what you're really telling your kids is this: "It's OK to treat these people like garbage and even put your hands on them without asking. What are they going to do about it? Hire a lawyer?"

Instead, take some personal responsibility, opt for the (polite, respectful) high road, and remember Karen Klein.