Limousine liberal
Limousine liberal is a derogatory American political
term for a wealthy liberal person that expresses a deep concern for the poor, yet does not spend any considerable portion of his/her wealth to help poor people. It can also mean a wealthy person who does in some way want to help the poor, but is oblivious to the costs of doing so to the working-class. The term was coined by Democratic New York City mayoral hopeful Mario Procaccino to describe Mayor John Lindsay and his well-heeled Manhattan backers. Procaccino criticized the patrician Lindsay for favoring unemployed blacks over working-class white ethnics.
In the 1970s in the United States, the term was repeatedly applied to wealthy liberal supporters of open-housing and school busing. In the case of Boston, supporters of busing, such as Senator Edward Kennedy and Judge Arthur Garrity, either sent their own children to private school or lived in affluent suburbs. To residents of poor South Boston, suburbanite Garrity's requirement that their children attend schools with blacks, but refusal to do the same with his own children, seemed like blatant hypocrisy.
In Australia, a roughly equivalent insult of chardonnay socialist is used; in the United Kingdom the phrase champagne socialist is preferred, and in France such people are referred to as the gauche caviar (caviar left). In the United States, the synonymous phrase latte liberal is sometimes used.
Note that in the United States, liberal is used here in the same sense as socialist, while on the European continent, these two terms stand in opposition. This reflects the crucial difference--and a source of confusion--between the American liberals that find themselves opposed to conservatives (like Republicans), and the Europeans that roughly see part of the liberals (the classical liberals) as adherents to laissez faire economic policies, as opposed to social democrats.
In Dutch, a near equivalent would be "salonsocialist", and similar terms will be in use in many other languages. The point of a salon socialist, however, is not that he does not spend money charitably, but rather that she or he is not actively involved in the class struggle. Charity is seen as a capitalist and conservative project, because it leaves the alleged social structures of exploitation intact, and would even reinforce them.
See also propaganda.
