Limousine liberal
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Limousine liberal is a pejorative American political term for a wealthy liberal person who expresses a deep concern for the poor, but is not actually directly engaged with them on a day to day basis. The term can also carry the connotation of expressing concern for the poor but not spending any considerable portion of one's wealth to help them.
The term was coined by 1969 Democratic New York City mayoral hopeful Mario Procaccino to describe Mayor John Lindsay and his wealthy Manhattan backers. It carried an implicit accusation that they were insulated from all negative consequences of their programs intended to benefit the poor, and that ill consequences would be borne in the main by those in the lower class who were not so poor as to be beneficiaries. In particular, Procaccino criticized Lindsay for favoring unemployed blacks over working-class white ethnics.
In the 1970s, the term was applied to wealthy liberal supporters of open-housing and school busing. In Boston, Massachusetts, supporters of busing, such as Senator Edward Kennedy and Judge Arthur Garrity, both sent their children to private schools or lived in affluent suburbs. To some South Boston residents, Garrity's support of a plan that "integrated" their children with blacks and his apparent unwillingness to do the same with his own children, seemed like hypocrisy.
By the late 1990s and early 21st century, the term has also come to be applied to those who purport to support environmentalist or "green" goals, such as mass transit, yet still drive large SUVs or literally have a limousine and driver, even for extremely short drives better served by walking.
A recent and related term is Lexus Liberal, which refers to leftists of the upper-middle class. Unlike the limousine variety, the term is usually used to deride a person's supposed lack of common sense concerning politics and society despite having completed some sort of higher education. "Lexus liberals" supposedly demonstrate naïve ignorance as opposed to hypocrisy.
[edit] Other countries
In Australia and New Zealand, a roughly equivalent insult of chardonnay socialist is used; in the United Kingdom the phrase champagne socialist or Bollinger Bolshevik is preferred, and in France such people are referred to as the gauche caviar ("caviar left"). In the United States, the synonymous phrases "latte liberal" and "lakefront liberal" are sometimes used.
In the Netherlands, a near equivalent of "limousine liberal" would be "salon socialist". The point of a salon socialist, however, is not that he does not spend money charitably, but rather that he or she 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 (by making the poor dependent on the rich for charity).
Note that in the United States, the usage of the term liberal differs from most of the world. American liberalism is a left-of-center politics; in many countries outside the United States, "liberalism" refers to right-of-center politics, and particularly to support for laissez faire capitalism, or libertarianism.
