Can it be that they're trolling their readership?
How odd that the WSJ article should focus on the poor immigrant and portrays the rich white woman as grasping and superficial, while the NYT articles can't stop fellating the wealthy.
botox treatments, hope it has some side effects in the long run
Holy shit, the WSJ piece made that Sirof woman sound absolutely horrible.
Needlessly high energy bills at your second home -- your vacation home, where there should be no worries at all -- should not be on that list.
Certainly not on mine. Also, what read said.
…which would support Cala's hypothesis for both papers, except that we've seen so much of this from the Times that we must conclude that if it started off as trolling, it has become their true second nature. "Troll not with society twits, lest you buy into their value system", as Nietzsche said.
Anyone knows how upscale the NYT print readership is?
I think the author of the WSJ article should get together with the photographer from that Alex Kuczynski surrogacy article should get together.
6: When you stare into the abyss, the troll stares into you?
Applicant Alba Monterrosa, 31, showed up with a reference letter depicting the El Salvadoran immigrant as "honest, hard-working, loving, responsible and a pleasure to be around," as well as exceptional with children.
"loving"? "a pleasure to be around"? I believe I've seen an identical description on a cage at the animal shelter, except for the "hard-working" part.
11: really, you think "honest, hard-working, loving, responsible, and a pleasure to be around" sounds like a description of an injured dog, and not an ideal recommendation for someone whose job is to take care of children?
I have to agree with Barbar; that description sounds kind of benign.
My local radio station had their annual incomprehensible advice-session yesterday about how much you should tip your various service-providers this Christmas. Cookies for everyone!
||
OMIGOD! Biden got a puppy! Puppy!!1!!
Awwww, it looks so honest, hard-working, loving and responsible!1!1
Basically, the difference is that the NYT articles are themselves outrageous, while the WSJ article merely portrays an outrageous person.
i've read today that 70 yo mother gave birth to her first child in India, so strong an instinct
if the woman's not able to carry her child and advances in medicine allow that, the embryo transplantation or how it is called, maybe it's okay, if they all agreed to doing that, just the poor mother giving the unnatural birth is pitiful, she does not imagine to what she agrees maybe, one will develop motherly feelings for one's child born with pain
i think that pleasure to be around part is strange in that sentence
and that 'we are booked' piece is also very strange
but if they've really never cancelled any previous bookings before, maybe it's fair and like great, that there could be done no exceptions for anyone even for the presidents
if it's not like a hidden discrimination case of course
19, 22: Jem, n00bs. Besides, the Misfits were better.
I'd love to see a show about Jem taking on the Misfits, actually.
27: No, no -- I want to see an animated show in which a Welsh singer-songwriter gets involved with zany adventures fighting the comical machinations of schlock-punk impresario Jerry Only.
The most enduring legacy of Jem and the Holograms is that I can't hear the word "synergy" without thinking "showtime!"
Reportedly a homeless man in Kankakee had a tattoo that read, "We will hang the rich from their houses."
31: That fellow was prophetic.
The first link isn't quite so outrageous when you click through to find that Jodi's folx are middle-management types, and that she's started tutoring and babysitting for pin money. (Allegedly she clears $150 a week, which was about what I made at my first, real, 40-hour a week job in the early 1990s.)
The redoubtable Mrs. Sirof is quite a piece of work though, that's for sure. She's already a minor internet celebrity with all the similarly outraged blog posts. Those two kids of hers are going to be fucked up, that's for sure.
Maybe she'll read the article, now that it's out, and realize that she comes off like a vain harridan, and amend her ways.
32, 33: Reactions like the one Sirof is getting remind me that the best policy is to never speak to the press.
Especially considering your own horrible problems with the servants, Rob.
Especially for human interest stories. Being in a human interest story guarantees that you will be the subject of one or more of the following.
1. Piteous condescension
2. Righteous indignation
3. Amused condescension.
the best policy is to never speak to the press.
"Hostile, friendly, sober, pissed ... "
Wow, I can't believe she can't give up her botox to keep the nanny. She might not need one, but honestly. If the kid was missing her badly, that's absurd.
The poem Gonerill alludes to is great. I hadn't seen it before.
||
I just discovered that the cartoon Star Blazers is a veiled revenge fantasy on behalf of Imperial Japan. I may never experience happiness again.
Sir Kraab, since you're around, I'd like an official ruling. Is "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" by the Band anti-union?
|>
The US has been completely psycho about how we need to coddle rich people for years now. I'd like to think that people are finally starting to wake up that we don't need to live this way, but I think we're still a ways away from it spilling into meaningful political reform.
Kraab answered a little too quickly. What is she hiding?
36: But I like amused condescension.
It makes me feel charming and cared for.
I just read the lyrics and I don't see it as anti-union; just the opposite in fact. It doesn't come off as sarcastic, just sad. I even think you could read the last "King Harvest" as the union, or of the effects of being in a union, though I may be reaching on that.
44: My big brother was listening to The Clash in the years I otherwise might have been soaking up The Band and their kith.
I'm off. Emerson is going to have to pinch hit on any other union-related questions.
Ilk, Kraab.
Yes, I'm strict with you. But fair.
King Harvest is an outstanding song. I guess the lyrics could be considered anti-union.
But, I think I agree with Kraab that it is probably just sad, not anti-union. I think the Band was probably pro-union given their affiliations and backgrounds.
47: That's exactly the interpretation I have, but since I already like the song I can't be trusted.
Yes, I think just sad. It is a song about someone who is sad to be in the world of factories and unions--grateful, but sad.
51 -- See I would say that Dylan is of the Band's kith, but not its ilk. This also is kith: Stomp Dance.
(Turn it up).
And sad to have to be grateful, and all that.
I'd like an official ruling. Is "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" by the Band anti-union?
You can listen to the song here (thought I don't like how it sounds as an .mp3).
AMG doesn't think so and I'm inclined to agree with them.
Roberston says that at the time he was immersed in the novels of John Steinbeck (his The Grapes of Wrath most immediately coming to mind), at one time claiming, "It's just a character study in a time period. At the beginning, when unions came in, they were a saving grace, a way of fighting the big money people." ... Greil Marcus, when commenting on a song from perhaps the Band's strongest collection of material, posited, "To me, it is the most important song on the album, and while a handful of the Band's songs might equal it, none have surpassed it. "
On preview I see that the thread is moving quickly and that I am mostly pwned.
Robbie Robertson
"It's just a kind of character study in a time period. At the beginning, when the unions came in, they were a saving grace, a way of fighting the big money people, and they affected everybody from the people that worked in the big cities all the way around to the farm people. It's ironic now, because now so much of it is like gangsters, assassinations, power, greed, insanity. I just thought it was incredible how it started and how it ended up."
59: Think how much worse you might have been pwned.
Kin. Kith and ilk can also be looked up.
Kin: relations
Kith: homies, neighbors
Ilk: those similar.
Think how much worse. . .
I added something. The second part of the quote--which shows that it is an anti-union song.
59: Think how much worse you might have been pwned.
I slipped in just ahead of 60.
But I was slowed by burning and uploading a copy of the song, so I would claim that I added value in any case.
You are each special commenters.
Here, blow your nose. Yes, I mean it.
I was going to link a youtube of Robertson singing Stomp Dance with Rita Coolige at the opening ceremony of the '02 Olympics. Then I watched, and remembered how mad I still am at Bob Costas for blathering on all through it.
The link in 60 is good. I liked this bit at the end of the page about the ambiguity of the song, and the difficulty of seeing it as pro- or anti-union:
But after the song has ended, after the farmer's had his say, then in the mind's eye, we can see the hired strike-breakers already beginning to assemble round the bend in the road, huge men, batons in their hands ... and they're going to beat the shit out of him. Yes, the story continued for me after the song's lyrics had ceased. For Greil Marcus too, who saw the 'bitter steel mills' of the New South as the place where the farmer ended up, with no textual evidence. But he's right. The story does continue.
Greil Marcus: The guy that's singing the song, this scared person, whose farm has failed, and who is won to the union, the farmer's union for identity, for protection, for a way to make a living. The ambiguity of that, if you know anything at all about the story that's being told there, from other sources, it's a very, very confusing tricky song. And because it's so confusing, you just listen to the worry in the voice. I mean, the desperation in that singing gets stronger and stronger as it goes on. You can either embrace it or you can leave the room.
Super guitar playing in that song. Contextually pro-union.
I'm starting to wonder if the Style sections of major newspapers are turning into a plot by journalists to encourage people to storm the barricades
I used to excuse these types of stories on the grounds that newspapers had to produce stuff that allows wealthy and not-so-wealthy readers to laugh knowingly in recognition, or roll their eyes condescendingly about how the subject of the article is failing to epitomize traditional American values like hard work.
Now I see them as a classic example of dumbed-down aspirations. Journalists could do much better, and they're deliberately choosing not to. There are two dozen stories you could write about how the economic turbulance is affecting people who sit at the top of the heap. Some are pointed, some are investigatory, some are humorous, some are compassionate. None of them are as lazy or insulting as these.
I know we get the press corps we deserve, so my (partial) solution is to pester them with suggestions for better stories. IME people overwhelmingly follow the path of least resistance, especially when they're on deadline. Hand them a pre-framed subject and they're off and running.
(The poem referenced in 37 and linked in 40 is great, and I will have to work very hard not to quote it in the office.)
While I'm complaining about reporters, when you write an article about cultural ignorance it is best not to display your own:
Guests at the wedding last month of Daniel O'Connell, 31, and Karneisha Levi, 29, of Astoria, Queens, were treated to a cultural stew. It was Ms. Levi's idea to surprise guests with an African-American tradition known as jumping the broom, which the couple did directly after the ceremony. Mr. O'Connell, whose family is of Irish descent, is proud that they did.
When it was over, he allowed, his relatives were initially flummoxed. "It definitely sparked some questions from my side," he noted. "I can tell you that very few people on my side understood the significance of it."
Nevertheless, the tradition, which is said to signify the sweeping away of the old and jumping into the new, proved to be "a great way for guests who didn't know about the tradition to learn about it," Mr. O'Connell said.
You'd think they could at least have checked Wikipedia:
No form of marriage was recognized for blacks during American slavery. In its absence, the ceremonial jumping of the broom served as an open declaration of settling down in a marriage-like relationship within the slave community. Jumping the broom was always done before witnesses as a public ceremonial announcement to other members of the slave community that a couple chose to become as close to married as was then allowed.
I guess it would have been kind of a downer to explain in a Style section article that, y'know, this tradition stems from a time when black people were not considered fully human and did not have the right to legal marriage.
/sarcasm
Most wedding traditions aren't ultimately full of fairies and light, and the ones that are have been made up by the wedding industrial complex. (Plus, it's not clear why the slaves chose jumping over the broom to signify marriage, and that's as good a just-so story as "there's a vein in the left ring finger and the Romans believed wearing a ring would capture the love.")
NYT illustrates their theses with curiously expensive examples.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/nyregion/westchester/16evalwe.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
GREG AND SASHA SPOSITO expected their property taxes to go up when they demolished a dilapidated split-level house here a block from Long Island Sound and built an imposing three-story home in its place.
But they never thought their taxes would more than triple.
"It is a heavy tax bill that is creating a substantial hardship," said Ms. Sposito, who has three young children. Their property taxes jumped from $22,000 a year to $72,000, as much as twice what some neighbors in larger homes are paying, she said.
Unfortunately for the Spositos, finding comparable properties to see if their tax bill is equivalent is practically impossible because the tax rolls for the Town of Mamaroneck, which includes Larchmont, are based on 40-year-old property assessments.
Mamaroneck Weighing Move on Tax Inequities
By ABBY GRUEN
Published: November 16, 2008
Most Westchester municipalities use antiquated tax assessments that often result in disparities in property taxes on similarly sized, neighboring homes.
As I recall, the NYT readership also may aspire to have soundproofed homes with bowling lanes, too.
Most wedding traditions aren't ultimately full of fairies and light, and the ones that are have been made up by the wedding industrial complex.
So true. What's interesting is that the truly traditional traditions were quite explicit about the economics of the exchange, the terms of which now look quite humble (a featherbed and a couple of milch cows, or whatever), whereas the traditions invented by the wedding industrial complex involve vast amounts of cash, but attempt to hide the money aspect under cover of fairies and light and the importance of following "tradition."
The "two month's salary" for a diamond ring is among the more obnoxious of the new traditions, I think.
The "two month's salary" for a diamond ring is among the more obnoxious of the new traditions marketing campaigns, I think.
Hm. Is the outrage directed at the families profiled? B/c in the first two articles at first, what outrages me is that the NYT repeatedly writes stories like this about the impact of the recession, while ignoring much more important stories about its impact on middle-class people. (They do occasional stories about the near-destitute, and should do more, but they basically seem to divide the world into the "poor" and the "average (rich as shit).")
Whereas the WSJ article, god knows that quotation is heinous--less because the woman prefers Botox to a housekeeper than because she prefers Botox to her children's feelings--but once again we've got the Outrageous Rich Mommy With Household Help playing the villain. The issue here isn't that Rich Women Suck; it's that domestic workers have no fucking safety net whatsoever. (And if you want it to be all about the evilness of rich people, then you might keep in mind that Mr. Litigation Attorney apparently plays no role whatsoever in any of this.)
78: But the difference is that the traditional dowry (or jewelry, for that matter) are about the economic needs of the couple (or the bride, jewelry being about the only "property" women own), whereas the money aspect of modern "traditions" is about what people *pay* to get married. The tradition and fairies have to be there or no one would spend that kind of dough--they're just advertising. The old stuff wasn't.
But the difference is that the traditional dowry (or jewelry, for that matter) are about the economic needs of the couple (or the bride, jewelry being about the only "property" women own), whereas the money aspect of modern "traditions" is about what people *pay* to get married.
Where does bride price fit in here?
The issue here isn't that Rich Women Suck; it's that domestic workers have no fucking safety net whatsoever. (And if you want it to be all about the evilness of rich people, then you might keep in mind that Mr. Litigation Attorney apparently plays no role whatsoever in any of this.)
excellent point.
No, the fact that Rich Women Suck is part of the issue. Resources are limited. If rich people were spending their money on something more justified (student loans to pay for medical school, say) then maybe we couldn't justiffy diverting the resources to a safety net. But we can. Oh yes, we can.
80: I think the outrage is directed mostly at the papers. They do this all the time. If one read the papers to learn about education, for example, one would think that in the United States, one's high school was either private and a feeder for the Ivy Leagues, or that one's high school was impoverished, full of metal detectors and blow, with a 50% graduation rate. One either is remodeling their second home with Italian marble or living in a cardboard box.
"It's just a kind of character study in a time period. At the beginning, when the unions came in, they were a saving grace, a way of fighting the big money people, and they affected everybody from the people that worked in the big cities all the way around to the farm people. It's ironic now, because now so much of it is like gangsters, assassinations, power, greed, insanity. I just thought it was incredible how it started and how it ended up."
The second part of the quote--which shows that it is an anti-union song.
My reading is that is that Robertson was saying this during the Hoffa, Sr., days, when all unions were widely perceived to be run by thugs. That's the "how it ended up" part. "At the beginning, when the unions came in, they were a saving grace." I think that's the time period the song is about.
One either is remodeling their second home with Italian marble or living in a cardboard box.
That's the trend line, even if it's implausible to actually reach it. The erosion of the middle class in the US isn't only real, it's celebrated in a lot of media.
I think that's the time period the song is about.
So you think Robertson is in favor of the strike at the end? Why set it up with natural misfortunes, then? It seems like a bad time to strike.
Vis-a-vis the awful woman--not to excuse-make, but I have to wonder if the price of even regular botox injections would come anywhere near covering the nanny service? My first thought, though, was that if you're married to a really rich guy you've probably got to get botox and all that stuff; he's probably going to trade you in on a younger model eventually, but you can postpone the evil day a bit with cosmetic intervention. And I assume all the other wives in their social set botox away with abandon, so if she doesn't she'll look much older by comparison. Seriously, just thinking about being married to a rich guy and not working makes me extremely nervous, like watching a horror movie before the gore begins. It seems so precarious, not to have money or any work history of your own.
That's what struck me about the surrogate-hiring woman too; her body (just like the surrogate's, but with better compensation and less wear-and-tear) is her capital, and she has to preserve it to the degree she can.
It's the whole situation that's so awful (much worse for the nannies and surrogates, of course), where everyone is just completely another commodity. Gah. I'm telling you, my collective and I are packing up and moving to the woods any day now.
I'm telling you, my collective and I are packing up and moving to the woods any day now.
I think you're running out of time. If you mean that (which I wonder), the sooner the better.
The thought of marrying a rich woman and not working makes me think, "sign me up!".
the fact that Rich poor Women Suck is part of the issue. Resources are limited. If rich poor people were spending their money on something more justified (student loans to pay for medical school healthy food instead of McDonald's, say) then maybe we couldn't justify diverting the resources to a safety net.
Herein lies the problem with emphasizing "individual responsibility" to address systemic problems.
t seems so precarious, not to have money or any work history of your own.
::waves::
92: But B., you have lots of work history; you're just not working right now. If you had to get a job just to pay the rent, you wouldn't be absolutely gobsmacked by the situation. It's not not working that's scary (although I freely admit that it makes me personally uneasy); it's my-career-path-has-defaulted-to-wealthy-kept-woman.
90: Dunno. I think I have genuine candidates lined up for a couple of years down the road, plus available land and family connections in the remote northeast. We wouldn't be starting from absolute zero, so that gives us a little more time.
Why set it up with natural misfortunes, then? It seems like a bad time to strike.
It's not a propaganda song. It's a song about someone in a hard, hard position. That's when it matters.
it's my-career-path-has-defaulted-to-wealthy-kept-woman.
These days that doesn't sound too bad, provided the kept-woman has a good lawyer.
There's some nice swamp up around here that will go cheap, Frowner. You can hunt ducks and live off that.
They're vegan ducks, you can eat them guiltlessly.
96: The answer: go to law school while you're being kept. Specialize in family law. Photocopy all records starting when you're about 30.
