Rich journalistic portraits

Roy unpacks the latest Times piece to limn the hardships of our current Repression through the eyes of the rich, in this case, kids whose fallback to not finding a job is attending law school.

That is, I was roused to contempt for Nicholson's whole generation based on the example of some rich kid.

Were I a more paranoid sort, I might think that by using Nicholson as an avatar of disenfranchised youth, the Times was trying to minimize the situation of all jobless young people by making me think of them as slackers. But having been inside the sausage factories I know better. The story is more likely to have had its genesis in a specific access opportunity than in a memo from the Committee for Manufacturing Consent. But a clever editor who heard of it may have foreseen how it would come out, and looked forward to a wave of outraged and dismissive linkage from across the internet. So far I've only seen this, from an apparatchik who can read but still wants to believe ("On the other hand, this story shows that even the privileged, spoiled, affluent youth are hurt by the ObamaEconomy"). But give it time.

I'm not so sure that that's entirely the Times' motives. The economy's effect on the children of the wealthy is simply of inherent interest to the readers of the Times. They know these kids. Good lads who did all the right things, attended the right schools, made the right connections and still cannot find a job that meets their expectations and their location requirements.

I was similarly struck by the story in today's paper about the widow of Robert Parker who assuaged her grief through...redecoration. I wondered, why do editors come up with these stories? Why do they think New York Times readers care?

Then, I notice it's the ninth most emailed story of the day.