quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

fuckin h8 doctors

and just an addendum, now that i've mentioned britain. i never noticed this until i moved here, but there is something - and this is very hard to describe - something just a little acquiescent about normal american newspaper writing (for which the times bears the standard). in britain i think people who work at newspapers see themselves as legitimate agents in the field of play - actors in public life whose stories can actually affect reality. in the u.s. there is instead an ideology of non-intrusion, of absolute neutrality, which of course leads to the familiar problem of "one one hand, on the other hand" false equivalences but also i think more insidiously leads to reporters and editors taking a more stenographic role. "here is what was said."

― Tracer Hand, Saturday, January 23, 2010 11:31 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

american journalese is not to my taste because i've been brought up on the somewhat spicier fare we get here, but the british press has its own problems. the hacks certainly *do* see themselves as actors on the field of play, but how legitimate that is -- how legitimate, in other words, is the influence of murdoch or lord rothermere in public life -- is open to question. (in britain the bbc has this problem of faux-neutrality, written into its charter.)

on the question whether US healthcare purchasers are being looted, and are paying two-three times more than other countries, the second point sounds very unlikely, but it is hard to say whether you're comparing like-for-like. in the UK taxpayers are certainly ripped off: the NHS is an ever-expanding, hugely wasteful bureaucracy, famously bad at negotiating deals and overpaying for drugs. (and in terms of like-for-like comparisons, there are all sorts of problems around which drugs the NHS is willing to pay for.) it grossly overpays GPs, and it certainly overpaid me, an 'umble bureaucrat, to do very little when i was there.

wouldn't want to be rid of it, and obviously it doesn't run death panels, but it's best to be honest. "looting" is a nice yellow-press term though.

do you think the two aren't related? leonhardt seems to think so. the next-to-last sentence of his article:

But the alternative to those decisions is the system we have now — one that features unacceptably spotty care, a Medicare program on the path to insolvency and insurance premiums high enough to eat up workers’ pay increases.

it seems pretty clear that he judges waste and inefficiency in the actual provisioning of care as the cause of high premiums.

anyway this is a massive derail and i don't want to be too hard on leonhardt who i think in general has done a great job on his assignments. but it's a sign of how utterly our newspapers have failed us that otherwise reasonable people are letting insurance companies off the hook for the high cost of premiums!

history mayne - so the NHS massively overpays, has a giant bureaucracy... and still costs about half (per person) that the u.s. "system" does

history mayne - so the NHS massively overpays, has a giant bureaucracy... and still costs about half (per person) that the u.s. "system" does

"it is hard to say whether you're comparing like-for-like"

think you get higher level of service, cooler drugs, clean and non-lethal hospitals, etc., in the US? could be wrong.

"letting insurance companies off the hook"!

tracer youre taking leonhardt to task for not indicting a part of the system that isnt even within the scope of his article!

but it's a sign of how utterly our newspapers have failed us that otherwise reasonable people are letting insurance companies off the hook for the high cost of premiums!

dude! hes not really letting them off the hook - the article isn't abt premiums - saying that ballooning costs willl increase premiums =! saying the only reason premiums are high is because of costs!

max - i'm taking the NEW YORK TIMES to task for not indicting the main villain of runaway insurance costs in ANY of its articles

yeah i think the point is that insurance companies are NOT the "main villain" of runaway insurance costs!

"runaway health care costs" are the "main villain" of "runaway insurance costs"

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/Runaways1976.jpg

Insurance companies sure have a bad reputation.

if we could tie insurance premiums to greenpoint hipsters we might have something

well i just linked 5 recent things i found on two-minute search. point is that the times has written a lot about health care, from a lot of different angles. but if you want indictment of insurance companies, there is that, too.

and i agree about the differences between american and u.k. journalistic style, and yeah i think there are pluses and minuses both ways. i prefer a somewhat more pointed, freewheeling approach myself, which is one reason i'm returning to the ever-dwindling field of alt-weeklies. when i first started writing for an alt-weekly after leaving a daily paper, it was liberating in a lot of ways. but the discipline of the daily just-the-facts writing and reporting was good for me too.

and on the iraq war, there was lots of bad stuff done, with judy miller as the most egregious but not only culprit. (btw her copy always needed such heavy revision that it looked like a sea of edit trace by the time it got anywhere close to publication.) the one thing i do try to point out is that the editorial page (headed at the time by gail collins, fwiw) was always against it, which i think made it the highest-profile anti-war platform in the country.

that's true. and I guess that means we have collins to thank for krugman.

Evan, you bring up my other huge beef with the NYT, which their habit of publishing just about any story they deem as being related to "women's issues" in the style section, regardless of the actual content.

― she is writing about love (Jenny), Saturday, January 23, 2010 1:05 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

wow - there was a pretty interesting article about working wives and its effect on divorce rates, and I was scratching my head as to why it was in the style section, then I remembered this post.

This is not from the Times... but it feels at home here.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/

The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you.

rong

it's certainly rite for some people I know

and I mean I guess their personalities/upbringings are to blame for most of it, but going to certain 4 year institutions def doesn't help

i remember some discussion of that article when it came out, either on ilx or elsewhere. anyway, i'm sure there's truth to what he's saying, but he's also tarring an awful lot of other people with his own brush. i know ivy league grads who are perfectly comfortable talking to plumbers or waitresses or whatever. but if his central point is that elite institutions help foster elitism, well NO KIDDING.

but i mean, my dad went to stanford and i guarantee you he'd rather talk to a plumber than another standford grad.

enh there are probably like a dozen things wrong with that essay including as tipsy points out lots of ivey grads can talk to plumbers but it kinda feels generally true 2 me like:

Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed.

the school i went to for undergrad wasnt an ivey but its probably comparable and this was and kinda is still a big problem for me and a lot of the things he says abt the interior life of a student at yale rung v true to my xp

I think the article doesn't spend enough time talking about the social background of the kids at these schools...I mean my gf went to Columbia but grew up in a middle class FL suburb. most of her classmates were prep school kids + rich NYers who went to the same high schools - even if they overlap, there is a difference between the academic 'elite' and the social 'elite'.

these people would have trouble talking to plumbers not because they took too many great college classes, but because they honestly think they're better than plumbers (which can be a side-effect of going to some of these schools, but which a lot of these people would have thought regardless.)

i have trouble talking to plumbers because i am mute

I have trouble talking to plumbers because it means I'm about to have to write a big check.

i have trouble talking to plumbers because i am from the future where all of our plumbers are robots

I have trouble talking to plumbers because I am an elitist prick.

Most people who have trouble talking to plumbers really only have trouble talking about plumbing.

Best friend was raised by nonconformists and now finds herself in the middle of an entitled upper middle class life, having to manage relationships with people who are working for her in the home. The reason she has difficulty is because she can't make up her mind to treat them like friends or like employees; when she was at work she did not have problems with how things ran.

http://herobuilders.com/images/1%20Joe%20The%20Plumber%20web%20(1).jpg

won't anyone talk to me?
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/famecrawler/2008/10/08-15/joe-the-plumber.jpg

we are all plumbers now, in obama's america

It was less Timesy for the whining about Ivy elitism than for his general despicableness. OMG I never realized that there are intelligent people outside of my immediate social class!

at least five of my horrible ivy league doucher classmates now work as builders/firemen/poorly paid guides

fwiw

I smell a style article in that

haha one of the smartest ppl i went to school w/is a shipbuilder now

It was less Timesy for the whining about Ivy elitism than for his general despicableness. OMG I never realized that there are intelligent people outside of my immediate social class!

ugh

I smell a style article in that

― Tracer Hand, Monday, January 25, 2010 2:45 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you are not wrong

that guy was my professor (for a lecture class) and was kind of a personal hero to me and my friends! I think he's largely on our side though, but the criticisms of him are pretty warranted. last I heard he wasn't doing so well - his contract ended and no other schools would hire him, probably because he didn't give in to the pressure to publish and instead tried to use his position as a pulpit to teach and nurture from. iatee otm though; for most of these kids an ivy/first tier college is just another stop on the gravy train express.

the other reason why ivy kids can't talk to normal people is because most of them are borderline aspies who were like that well before they ever went to college!

also I find his final message, that it's okay not to be successful by the traditional metrics of the term, to be very reassuring in a jonathan pryce-at-the-end-of-brazil kind of way

They get their education wholesale, from an indifferent bureaucracy; it’s not handed to them in individually wrapped packages by smiling clerks.

ohhhhhhh brother plz

the other reason why ivy kids can't talk to normal people is because most of them are borderline aspies who were like that well before they ever went to college!

i think this has a kernel of truth, in some disciplines more than others. but i also think it has something to do with age. most people get a lot better about it as they get older and just wind up becoming more comfortable with talking to more people in life. it's just kind of a life skill combining "be friendly and courteous" with "pay attention to what's going on around you."

also, i am definitely dropping out of grad school if i ever get to a point where i am dividing the world into "ivy leaguers" and "normal people."

“So are you saying that we’re all just, like, really excellent sheep?”

is this where niles crane excitedly flusters and announces that we may just have experienced a breakthrough, a necessary epiphany?

the other reason why ivy kids can't talk to normal people is because most of them are borderline aspies who were like that well before they ever went to college!

hellllo, gabbneb!!!

If they make it illegal to serve egg-white drinks, that would be Hurricane Katrina for us

i feel cheated that the author abandons his faux noir paperback tone somewhere in the third paragraph

Haha. Okay I made it to the end, and I have to say this part seems valid? I mean hell I just had some pretty shit-poor Hollandaise sauce a couple of weeks ago (I should have known better but I was jonesing for Benedict) and no one warned me that it contained raw eggs, and in that case it probably should have come in 22-pt type.

Bartenders are also asking why the city was concerned about bars and not restaurants, where raw-egg staples include hollandaise sauce, mayonnaise, Caesar salad and ice cream. “They use raw eggs in béarnaise sauce and steak tartare,” Ms. Saunders said. “Is it that they think chefs are O.K., but bartenders don’t know what they’re doing?”

Baaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrfffffffffff

(at the comparison, not at drinks made w/ egg whites, which are a-ok with me.)

Eggs aren't raw in a hollandaise, just not cooked very much.

tbf i think most people will realize that steak tartare contains raw egg given that it is served with a big honking raw egg right in the middle of it