Wagner and the class struggle

Trueman must be in Oregon. I recall the occasion to which he refers vividly (and, by the way, the best dinner EVER!). At first I thought my name was being dragged into the Miss California debacle. I'm pleading innocent, having never watched a beauty pageant in my life.

But then, it was the Wagner issue that got my friend out of sorts. Strange, since the Ring is a a classic class struggle between the "haves" and the "have nots." In Siegfried, for example, the oppressed Nibelung dwarfs are living in abject poverty and the once-powerful mogul (the god Wotan) has been reduced to scavenging in a world ravaged by the greed of the powerful and wealthy (living in their golden Valhalla built on the backs of the proletariat).This a classic economic tale of oppression and mismanagement on behalf of the bourgeoisie, worthy of Marx himself. And the hero of the tale is a man raised by the plebs.

Is this not contemporary or what?