NYT SEES AMERICA GOING TO THE DOGS

The New York Times, America’s paper of record, doesn’t shout its social commentary from the proverbial rooftops. On Sunday, June 12, one of the paper’s seminal insights about what’s happening in America did make it to page 1, although disguised as a lifestyle tale about our country’s super-rich.

The story, “For the Executive With Everything, a $230,000 Dog to Protect It” by John Tierney is about Julia, a German shepherd guarding the life and property of John Johnson, the very rich former chief executive of a debt-collection agency. The three-year old dog commutes in a private jet between Johnson’s Minnesota estate and his home in Arizona. But don’t call her a “guard dog.” She is an “executive protection dog,” trained for three years in Germany before her Americanization at a K-9 security service in Aiken, SC.

Still, some question the price tag for this guardian of those who were really successful at wealth management:  “But $230,000?” Tierney asks. Well, this cani

ne displays qualities most of us can only wish for among our elected representatives: “exalted pedigree, child-friendly cuddliness (and) arm-lacerating ferocity.” Julia obviously represents Chancellor Merkel’s new Germany and its open, democratic and multi-cultural society. The “Schutzhunde” (guard dogs) of World War II Germany exhibited that arm-lacerating ferocity all right, but cuddliness was strictly verboten.

The message of the story doesn’t get expressed until the last two paragraphs, when Julia’s part-time trainer in Minneapolis, firefighter Jeremy Norton, “smiled a bit uncomfortably when asked to explain the $230,000 price.”  He said: “It’s in the eye of the beholder…that’s half my house. There’s no way to wrap your head around that.”

Well, the story could have added that the average salary of a Minnesota firefighter is between $45,000 and $49,000, so that we have just read about a $49,000 man working for a $230,000 dog owned by a millionaire or billionaire.