The favorite parlor game of Aspen locals is to bash the wealthy visitors who over the last half century turned this dilapidated near-ghost town into a renowned place of beauty, recreation and money.

The gist of the bashing is that the visitors are “greedy.” Utterly lacking any self-awareness, those same locals simultaneously demand that the “greedy” visitors give them ever-more money, especially in the form of taxpayer-subsidized housing which the local insiders get for dimes on the dollar.

This hypocrisy reached a peak when a local wrote a column last year in the Aspen Daily News suggesting that the visitors should stop visiting. He apparently wants them to just mail their money in.

That same local has now written another column decrying a $17 million donation by a wealthy visitor to the Aspen Music School, which is graciously thanking the donor by putting his name on the music tent. That gesture of thanks, says the local, amounts to Aspen selling its soul.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Aspen Daily News about this. Here it is. (The local’s original column is at the link in my letter).