Guess what irks some liberals about Kim Kardashian?
No, it's not her behavior -- including her graphic sex tape with R&B singer Ray J or 72-day marriage with NBA player Kris Humphries, which now has the smell of a money-making publicity stunt.
No, Kardashian provokes the ire of some liberals because of a more serious flaw -- it's that she makes so much money!
According to a column in the Wall Street Journal by William McGurn, a liberal advocacy group called "Courage Campaign" thinks Kardashian's most unforgivable "sin" is that she doesn't pay enough taxes. Paying the legal limit isn't enough, says the group.
McGurn explains:
"In a video that presents Ms. Kardashian in some of her more conspicuously consumptive moments, Courage Campaign claims that while Ms. Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, she paid only one percentage point more in taxes (10.3%) than a middle-class Californian (9.3%).
"That's not OK," says Campaign Courage. And in their video, they get right to the point, calling on viewers to "Ask Kim to support the millionaires tax of 2012." The reference is to a proposed California ballot initiative that would raise the top income-tax rate to 13.3% from 10.3% on income over $1 million-and to 15.3% on income above $2 million."
Besides critiquing the liberal obsession with taxing the wealthy to the hilt and finding it flawed in several ways, McGurn makes an amusing observation about Kardashian's alleged sin (according to Courage Campaign) of paying only the taxes she's required to pay -- and along these lines, he evokes a famous line by conservative author Irving Kristol: "The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie -- but only if she is paid the minimum wage."
"Today," McGurn concludes, "women like Ms. Kardashian make much more money exercising that right. The only question progressives ask is about the size of the government's cut."
It's a column worth reading, and the YouTube video by Campaign Courage is good for laughs too.
Thomas Lifson adds: With all the Hollywood liberal gazillionaires like Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, and George Clooney to choose from, they go for a reality show star making comparatively small change. I guess Ms. Kardashian has a lower Q factor.
One more reason for the well-to-do to flee California.