White Pride

So I queued for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park the other day.
One queues from about 10 am to when the tickets are issued at 1 pm. They're free tickets and there's no telling whether one will get a ticket -- it all depends on how many tickets the people ahead of you need.
Anyway, there was a massive display of what Edna and I call "White Pride". The white yuppy-tai tai-young mother ahead of us in the queue was really irritating. Apart from talking loudly to her many friends on her cell and endlessly proclaiming how clever and cute her baby was, she tried to get her friends who came later into the queue. There are strict rules about the queue (as these tickets are highly sought after). You have to be there to get a ticket. You can't have a friend get there and camp out alone until 1230, then have five other people join you just as the tickets are issued (the 'rules' are repeated ad nauseum by the staff at the Public Theatre, and they do it every 10 meters down the line!) But this White Young Mother (who was picnicking there with her child and a friend) was scheming throughout on her cell phone (loudly -- so I can't be accused of eavesdropping) on how to beat the system. So when her first friend came later, that friends hovered and hovered then, viola, she merged "seamlessly" into the line.
Of course, this irritated me. Not because I wouldn't get a ticket but because there were people at the end of the line who had come much earlier and might be cheated out of a ticket. So after about an hour, when it was clear that they had broken the 'rules' (there was no sign that the friend was going to leave), I did the right thing and went to rat on them. I was pretty amazed that I did it cause I'm the last person to take action in moments such as these (I usually huddle down into a book and act blur). But when White People try to stamp their sense of entitlement on everything -- yes, even free events that are meant to open out the Arts to the less privileged-- that's sort of the final straw. So when I came back with the security people, Ms. White Pride glibly lied -- "Oh no, she's just here to baby sit ..." Yeah right. So security person didn't want to create a scene and just reminded friend to leave the line when 1 pm came. And later, another friend joined them and they ended up in a huddle deciding whether or not to try to go ahead with their plan of cutting into the queue. They probably figured that they've got a crazy chinese guy right next to them who's most willing to cry foul and so her friends left to go to the back of the queue.
Anyway, Ms. White Pride still got her way. When she got to the top of the line where the tickets were being given out, she acted all cutsey and cloyed and toyed with ticket people with the argument that "O, my baby's a PERSON, yes she is, oh she waited in line, she's a Person ..." and got tickets by using her child. Marx would have a lot to say about the parent-child relation and the way it has been corrupted by the commerical impulse of exchange that has become the very soul of the capitalist psyche (Yes, through her loud talking we -- meaning everyone within 20 meters, learnt that her husbands a lawyer and that she lives on a trendy street on the Upper West Side). Of course, child did not turn up for the play and Ms. White Pride didn't even stay for the entire thing.
By the way -- the play was "Macbeth".