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

lol working for Nike is probably good training in willful ignorance

~Jenny Holzer voice~ it is unnatural to live in isolation

The op-ed format has been perfected. This is the Great American Op-ed. A cutesy argument for liberal complacency and parochialism using Italian food as a metaphor. Frank Bruni is Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Saul Bellow in one person. Bravo! https://t.co/7DaV0pg8Oq

— Shuja Haider (@shujaxhaider) March 13, 2018

that is terrible & I sb'ed myself for clicking on it

I don't want to click on it because I don't want Trump to ruin pasta for me.

well I hadn't heard of pasta alla gricia (I don't know italian food that well) and I don't like carbonara because of the egg so I did learn of something valuable from the article

well, and never to read nyt opinion pieces ever ever ever again (I am a slow learner)

I seem to recall Bruni being a good food critic but it's every bit as awful as you could imagine, maybe worse

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/your-money/white-collar-criminals-wives.html

And that’s where Lisa Lawler comes in. Ms. Lawler, 60, is the founder of the White-Collar Wives Club, a blog she started in 2013, three years after her husband of 26 years was sentenced to 24 months in jail for embezzling $2.5 million dollars from a health care company in Massachusetts. In 2014, she took it a step further and created the White-Collar Wives Project, which includes the blog and a private online support group called “The Secret Lives of White-Collar Wives,” with about 70 members from around the world. Her mission was twofold: To raise awareness of the stigma and financial ruin facing the families of white-collar criminals, and to help guide women through their trauma and legal morass.

She wishes she had something like this when she was going through her ordeal. As she quickly discovered, the wives of white-collar felons are often the last to gain sympathy. Most people assume they were complicit, or that they deserved what they got for being spoiled, entitled and leading lavish existences.

I call it an act of domestic terrorism.

Financial ruin = having to lead a normal existence.

Maybe not first against the wall but definitely a group near the front of the line.

Growing up, Ms. Trump was not a particularly distinguished student. She attended the Dwight School on the Upper West Side.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/style/vanessa-trump-divorce.html

xp I love how the woman is like "People think we must have known, but we were totally oblivious!" and then she continues to be totally oblivious by doing this sympathy plea.

xp from a week ago I guess: CTRL-F Berlusconi

Gabbneb didn't even get the good pull quotes

In the late 1990s, Ms. Trump and her younger sister, Veronika, became fixtures of the Manhattan party scene, hanging out at bottle service clubs during the era of Moomba and Veruka.

The couple made headlines with their engagement in 2004. The younger Mr. Trump proposed with a $100,000 ring that he got for free by agreeing to stage his proposal before paparazzi at the Short Hills Mall where the jeweler of the ring, Bailey Banks & Biddle, was located. The move frustrated his father, who complained about it on “Larry King Live.” (The publicity ploy ultimately didn’t work. By 2009, Bailey Banks & Biddle was in bankruptcy and the Short Hills location was closed.)

There were a great many good quotes as I considered noting but decided was superfluous. My personal favorite was characteristically something I thought others would not note because of their relative unfamiliarity with the world of NY private schools (the real one, not the made for middle-americas tv version).

so very characteristic

Moomba and Veruka?

The era of aborted Dyson products

I think the most telling thing is actually that the Times assumes its readership knows what those are.

“the world of NY private schools”

quiddities and agonies of the ruling class

There were a great many good quotes as I considered noting but decided was superfluous. My personal favorite was characteristically something I thought others would not note because of their relative unfamiliarity with the world of NY private schools (the real one, not the made for middle-americas tv version).

― Moo Vaughn, Monday, March 26, 2018 4:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe your moo-iest yet, firing on all cylinders

xoxo, moo vaughn

The era of aborted Dyson products

― louise ck (milo z), Monday, March 26, 2018 11:48 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Year of Moomba and Veruka

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/03/29/i-am-tired-of-being-a-jewish-mans-rebellion/

🙄

it's got that unmistakable tang

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/11/02/is-he-interested-in-me-or-does-he-just-want-hamilton-tickets

same author lol

"One of the musical’s most famous lyrics states: “I am not throwing away my shot.” I wish these men would realize that when they ask if I can get them tickets, they have already thrown away theirs."

So Carrie Bradshaw

What an exceedingly boring and generic person. And writer.

Wait, there’s someone even worse
https://amp.thecut.com/2018/04/what-its-like-to-be-a-really-beautiful-woman.html

how is that person worse

without the final paragraphs of anti-Semitism the first author should just feel embarrassed about printing that in public but the second author...

One of the worst things about being beautiful is that other women absolutely despise you. Women have made me cry my whole life. When I try to make friends with a woman, I feel like I’m a guy trying to woo her. Women don’t trust me. They don’t want me around their husbands. I’m often excluded from parties, with no explanation. I imagine their thought process goes something like this: “What does it matter if I hurt her feelings. She has her looks and that’s more than I have. Life has already played favorites …” It’s kind of like being born rich, people don’t believe that you feel the same pain. It’s a bias that people can’t shake.

Throughout my life, competitive, attractive, wealthy, entitled women really hated me. At my first job after college, my female colleagues conspired against me. They planted bottles of half-drunk booze on my desk so that it looked like I was drinking on the job. Two women were obsessed with me. They told my boss lies to get me fired. I talked to some of my superiors about it and they put it to me straight: Look, it’s pure unmitigated jealousy. They really do hate you because of the way you look.

People were conspiring against me - because of my beauty. No one really liked me, definitely not because of my personality but because I'm gorgeous.

without the final paragraphs of anti-Semitism

uh

in no way is a piece about the pitfalls of being very pretty worse than mainstreamed anti-semitism, but i guess if you say "without the anti-semitism" then who knows?????

the piece you posted is a little rote but i don't get horrible person vibes from it. the fact that you do, like worse than the racist guy, is um interesting i guess.

i think there's a plausible scenario in which the woman in the cut piece is not terrible and feels genuinely depressed about things (if we believe her account), whereas the WaPo piece is probably getting shared on whatever dark web forum ex-st0rmfr0nt users have crawled to.

One wonders about the basis of the woman's belief that she's 'beautiful' in a way that other people are not (or at all)

this made me genuinely sad. the final sentence in particular :( ageism is stupid and she seems like a decent person, more or less?

Here’s the really sad part. It doesn’t matter how beautiful you were in your youth; when you age you become invisible. You could still look fabulous but … who cares? Nobody is looking. Even my young-adult sons ignore me. The irony is that now that I am older I am a much better person. I went through some suffering in my 40s — raised two kids, dealt with an alcoholic husband, watched my parents get sick and pass away — and I really grew. But as far as the world is concerned? I’ve lost all my value.

otm

One wonders about the basis of the woman's belief that she's 'beautiful' in a way that other people are not (or at all)

― Moo Vaughn, Tuesday, April 3, 2018 6:38 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know by the way you get treated. vanity is an internal estimation, beauty is determined socially. if a person isn't vain to begin with, it isn't that hard for them to take a measure. insecure, spiteful men like to blur vanity and beauty.

i get a lot of attention from gay men to the point where it surprises me. i've never thought i was particularly good-looking. i like to work out so that probably boosts my desirability. it's a flattering thing to be viewed like that and it's fun and you can get laid etc. but after a while it just gets to be a pain in the ass if you're looking for something more substantial.

The last paragraph is sad but there are some side-eye lines in that article. As Drag Race says, she rested on being pretty.

after a while it just gets to be a pain in the ass if you're looking for something more substantial.
you also know that it won't last and wish people would like/appreciate/venerate/validate the other, more interesting sides to you because you KNOW the physical part won't last and hope you don't reach invisibility in a few years.

insecure, spiteful men people like to blur vanity and beauty.
:( otm

one of the most physically beautiful women i know is my mom's friend polly and she always seemed to hate it. people assumed a full range of awful things about her before she even had a chance to talk, and it made her shut down to other people. it makes me sad. she is a really cool illustrator/cartoonist and that is clearly the most salient part of her individual self. it's disappointing to have to climb over hurdles of what people assume about her in order to be known. no wonder she likes to draw.

The idea that beauty is something of a curse for its possessor was already fully developed in Callirhoe, a Greek novel of circa 100 AD. But many people are still surprised when they hear it, because how can someone you envy be unhappy with the very thing you envy most about them?

Yeah if you haven't read Callirhoe by now, I don't know what to tell you

Just say the idea's been around a long time.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/a-woke-civil-war-is-simmering-at-the-new-york-times

I was hoping people would be done saying “woke” in 2018 but that’s an interesting read otherwise.

*white people

"Journalism is not about creating safe spaces" is the worst fucking take when the NYT's staff is upset that the paper seems intent on hiring a bunch of fucking Nazi sympathizers to write for their opinion page!