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

navigate the fine lines between observation, satire and snark

new ILE tagline?

“She’s a sharp-tongued writer whose columns are only to a secondary degree service journalism,” Gabriel said. He said she is more of a social critic whose “style is to quite exaggerate things. She goes over the top.” Gabriel, who was on vacation when the Penney’s review was published, said he read it in the paper and did not anticipate the strong reaction that followed, though he now understands how some readers were offended.

Anita Leclerc, the fashion editor, said she was so used to Wilson’s “stream of consciousness writing style that is so full of barbs” that “the alarms weren’t set off that should have been.”

so as long as nobody complains her "edgy" writing is fine?

If a writer is edgy in a digital forest and nobody gives a fuck...

Wilson told me she usually writes about “obscure stores that don’t exist outside of Manhattan,” and she thinks of her audience as “1,300 women in Connecticut and urban gay guys in Manhattan.”

I mean this is most likely true.

(xpost) the sound of one hand clapping is giving me a headache

Zen Koans by Maureen Dowd

probably more people read this article than the usual style section fare, isn't that kind of the point. "controversy sells magazines" as a former boss once told me. the editors could just as easily defend her "edgy" writing as an exercise of personal opinion and uh style -- criticism remember? -- while saying they don;t agree with it and giving some JC Penney defenders equal time. guess they're worried about losing readers in the suburbs.

well, yeah, and they should be

i really didn't think the article was as bad as it was made out to be but that probably says more about my expectations of the style section than anything.

just cant believe that a contracted writer for the 3rd-largest daily newspaper in the united states is under the impression shes writing for, like, new york magazine

i mean i also cant believe that the times has TWO style sections every week

if i was carlos slim, those fuckers are the first to go

tbf most of the stuff the nyt publishes in its arts, style, and lifestyle sections would def not dissuade her from that impression.

TBH the Times does not give a runny shit about pissing off JCP shoppers, paper is probably engaging in contrition so as not to piss off an advertiser.

Everytime my wife and I see a hipster with a pot belly, we whisper to eachother, "dudes sportin' a Kramden!" Thanks style of the times!

i'm the biggest cintra wilson stan there is but it's true that this article fits the brief of the thread

as far as the "controversy" goes, it's her editor's fault. this is the kind of column that she's written for years. if it's not going to fly in the nytimes style section, don't run it, or don't hire her. hoyt's post-mortem (itself very very worthy of inclusion into this thread, on its own merits) dodges this completely

I think maybe she's too old to be writing this kind of thing.

he doesnt dodge it, tracer...

Although Trip Gabriel, the Styles editor, said the lines can be blurry, it seems to me that they were crossed and left far behind in this case. Wilson’s editors should have saved her, themselves and the paper from the reaction they got from readers, who concluded that the humor was at their expense, not for their benefit.

does this count?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/sports/tennis/24rackets.html?_r=1

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/24/sports/24rackets_190.jpg

How is this not an Onion photoshop.

What an oddball.

woops i missed that bit, max

it would have been nice to have her actual editor actually named rather than just "her editors" although the overall styles editor is named and what a perfect styles name it is too - "trip gabriel"

but yes hoyt did his job. i am a bad mang.

Mueller, who has a Ph.D. in chemical physics and a sideline in daffy showmanship in the persona of “Dr. Bones,”

what a stereotype

He spends some of his spare time calling newspaper editors looking for publicity for the unsanctioned sport.

and it works!

lol

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/business/26lawyers.html?_r=1&ref=business

After he lost his job as a television reporter two years ago, Derek Fanciullo considered law school, thinking it was a historically sure bet. He took out “a ferocious amount of debt,” he said — $210,000, to be exact — and enrolled last September in the School of Law at New York University.

“It was thought to be this green pasture of stability, a more comfortable life,” said Mr. Fanciullo, who had heard that 90 percent of N.Y.U. law graduates land jobs at firms, and counted on that to repay his loans. “It was almost written in stone that you’ll end up in a law firm, almost like a birthright.”

Good lord.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/08/26/business/26lawyer01-650.jpg

"I keep looking for this green pasture on here! They said it would be here!"

He looks like the work study I had to fire because he went psychotic and threatened one of the librarians.

The American Psycho route to success.

Like Ms. Figurelli, many students say that for the first time, they are considering and seeking work with government and public-interest groups.

Oh the agony.

http://tkfiles.storage.live.com/y1pn3iPCe2784hGENMC0F59kNjaWoKtdak1iDkvAoeMqgrCV2vn43NGugnJMPVBPvhmj-7kU1WpmL48MX2pwnmXpQ

Hahah

"Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom"

They may be the "juggernaut" of NY, but I've never heard of them. That's the kind of law-firm name someone would make up on the spot in a sitcom script meeting, then have it rejected for sounding too improbably stupid.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/23/skadden-merger-takeover-business-cx_df_0123skadden.html

uh, seems like a real place to me?

Yeah, Skadden Arps is like THE M&A law firm, and has been for several decades. Not just in NY, but in the world.

Skadden, Arps is definitely real! xpost what Pancakes said!

“It was thought to be this green pasture of stability, a more comfortable life,” said Mr. Fanciullo, who had heard that 90 percent of N.Y.U. law graduates land jobs at firms, and counted on that to repay his loans. “It was almost written in stone that you’ll end up in a law firm, almost like a birthright.”

Apart from the very bad choice of the word "birthright," I have sympathy with this. Top law schools are really expensive and not exactly all fun and games; the draw of going through them is that you may well get to work 80-hour weeks at a huge firm for the loads of money it takes to pay off that debt; I think it does genuinely suck right now for people coming out of those schools and finding nothing, jobwise, especially since it disrupts the usual course of those careers.

I mean, that can be less of an "I'm fundamentally entitled to these things" mentality and more of a "holy crap I put all of this energy and debt into walking down this path and suddenly the end goal has disappeared"

people pursue dumb goals all the time but few get indulged with such steep debt to do it. as always, the personal kvetching is less important that the systemic problem -- how can so many schools promise so much, charge so much, and deliver so little? what's the benefit to their students, or to the rest of us?

the word "birthright" is 93% of why i posted that quote

If you want to see "I'm fundamentally entitled to these things" go check out the comments on abovethelaw.com. Bunch of insufferable whiny ass titty babies.

Top law schools are really expensive and not exactly all fun and games

yeah, the "birthright" is a big weird gaffe, especially since the sense of the whole quote seems to be that he thought going to law school was the thing that would make it all better -- people vs being-precise-in-use-of-language, what can you say

I mean, this is just a trickle down thing - my friends who are going to not top law schools are in a lot more shit than these Yale law ppl who have to settle for not-their-#1-choice law job

who had heard that 90 percent of N.Y.U. law graduates land jobs at firms, and counted on that to repay his loans.

the other 7% was this quote (especially the "had heard" part--who knows if it's actual anecdotal information or just the way the NYT writer phrased it) + taking out 250K of debt to reach the green fields of stability.

and yeah, this is a trickle down thing--it sucks for these people who took big risks and loans, but it sucks all over, and lots of lawyers are out of work

btw with this --

how can so many schools promise so much, charge so much, and deliver so little

the answer is that your upper-tier law schools mostly have delivered, no? quite reliably, even in proportion to the price/debt? it's not that they generally don't deliver, it's just that right now is a relatively unlucky moment to be coming out of one, if your goal is a high-salary start at a big firm around here.

agreed, yes, that the same is true for people coming out of lots of law schools, really schools in general, for the moment.

(I don't know if I've talked about this here before, and it's sort of a bullshit generalizing statement, but one trait I feel like you can maybe identify in the "type" of people who go to top law schools is, like, markedly high standards about themselves and achievement -- something that can be both admirable and also weird -- and probably part of the flipside of that can be a much deeper concern about failures or obstacles.) (I know this is a gross dumb generalization, I'm just tossing it out there as a feeling.)

yeah, i'm not going to mourn a breakdown of the pay-for-placement racket of high-ticket law schools tbh

xpost. Sorry for not being clear. I didn't mean I didn't believe it was real - just that I'd never heard of them and the name made me laugh. But I laugh at excessively long names of law firms and ad agencies all the time. I'm easily pleased like that.