Reason #4: You're Rich

Historically speaking, the wealthy have always been prime targets on April Fool's Day. After all, there are few feelings as satisfying as sticking it to someone who has more money than you. For which reason the rich have been among the main opponents of the holiday and have done everything in their power to stamp it out.

The nineteenth century was the high point of this conflict. Back then April Fool's Day still very much retained its character as a lower-class celebration. Its traditions were embraced by artisans, apprentices, shopkeepers, street urchins, and penny-press writers. Not by the well-to-do (except for the occasional wealthy bon vivant). So any gentleman who was foolish enough to venture out onto the crowded city streets on this one day of the year dressed in his top hat and tails, handkerchief perched foppishly in his vest pocket, was considered fair game.

Nineteenth century newspapers occasionally detailed some of the abuses handed out to the wealthy on the city streets. There was the old gag of surreptitiously pinning a 'Kick Me' sign to their back. Or a lady's handkerchief would be dangled by a string from a second-story window so that it danced before the eyes of a gentleman down below, as if it were floating on a gust of air. When the gentleman tried to grab for it, it would be immediately yanked upwards, beyond his reach. Finally, a favorite prank of street urchins was to pull the coattails of a gentleman and then dash away. The gentleman, believing he had been pickpocketed, might chase the child for blocks before he realized the pursuit was unnecessary.

Elite papers such as the New York Times gnashed their teeth in frustration and poured opprobrium on the celebration, denouncing it as an "imbecile observance" and a "manifest absurdity." On April 1, 1870 the Times gave its readers the following warning:

Today is April Fool's Day. We hasten to inform the people of this great City of the fact, and to put them on their guard at the earliest hour practicable... On this, of all the days of the year, wicked urchins think to play their godless pranks on wiser people with impunity... Those who are fastidious of their personal appearance upon the street may well look to their coat tails, not literally and continually, for that would make them more ridiculous than even a long, dragging kite's tail or a hideous hieroglyph in white chalk; but they may as well steel themselves against the jeers of every juvenile rabble that may chance to gather at their heels. Ladies will not be exempt, and perchance may find, as they come in from a delightful promenade, that they have been coming up Broadway with a senseless placard pinned to their blessed backs.

April Fool's Day reputation as an arena for class struggle became muted in the twentieth century, principally because the wealthy hit on the brilliant strategy of abandoning their coattails for less conspicuous attire. But nevertheless, class consciousness still occasionally rears its head on the day. For instance, recently we've seen a group calling itself the Rich People's Liberation Front hosting an April Fool's Day march in Boston to show their support for tax cuts for the wealthy.

Rush Limbaugh even got in on the fun in 1992 by joking on air that the U.S. government should raise taxes on the poor since "they're the wealthiest poor in the world." Many of his listeners believed him and phoned up to voice their support. But perhaps his audience can be forgiven for their confusion, since the idea that the poor are undertaxed seems to have some currency in conservative circles. For instance, in 2002 the Wall Street Journal repeated Limbaugh's assertion, declaring that people who earned less than $12,000 a year were 'lucky duckies' who paid enviably low taxes and should be socked for more. But when the Journal made its announcement it wasn't April Fool's Day, and, to my knowledge, it wasn't joking.


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