I need to confront the fact that I’ve thoroughly become a cliché of the urban, well-educated, upper middle-class, cultural elite. I came to this realisation the other day at a work get-together as we discussed the return of Mad Men, the welcome geographic authenticity of The Americans, food blogging, and our shared obsession with NPR’s Tiny Desk concerts.
At least I can hold onto the fact that I have zero interest in Downton Abbey.
The cherry blossoms are out, and in D.C. that means one thing: the start of tourist season. And I want to put all those visitors who walk like a mall-store-garbed phalanx down the street, clog the sidewalks snapping photos, tie foot traffic in knots by abruptly stopping to consult their maps, and — the ultimate sin — stand on the left on the Metro: I am not being rude. You are costing me money and time. Seriously:
As one possible explanation for the relationship between city size and foot speed, the researchers suggested that economic factors might play a key role. When a city grows larger, they wrote, wage rate and cost of living increase, and with that the value of a resident’s time. As a result, “economizing on time becomes more urgent and life becomes more hurried and harried,” Walmsley and Lewis suggest.
I love this Diana Vreeland quote: “People who eat white bread have no dreams.”
It gets at the social politics of food, one that I think about every time I log into Facebook and see the divide between those who post photos of their organically-grown, made-from-scratch culinary masterpieces and those who check in at the Olive Garden. While we conceive of this as a modern dilemma, Aaron Bobrow-Smith effectively argues that this is hardly a new debate. Processed white bread, so scorned by the Whole Foods crowd, once was freighted in a wholly different way, Bobrow-Smith writes. (And don’t get me wrong, I shop at Whole Foods, sometimes, and my main association with white bread is how my brother and sister and I used to squish it into disks to “play” Communion.) What we now think of soul-less and of little health value was originally marketed as a product that not only freed women from the drudgery of breadmaking but as healthy, a food made in a sterile and clean industrial factory, rather than in the questionable basement bakeries where, god forbid, whole immigrant families laboured. And ate. And slept.
So, what does this tell us? That some day in the future, people will be dismissing our arguments for humanely-raised grass-fed beef as equally quaint?
Today I turned on the radio for the first time in a week. No, I wasn’t trying to break myself of a Wait, Wait habit. I was taking my biannual time-out from NPR, otherwise known as the pledge drive.
I know what you’re saying. I’m a freeloader. I’m selfishly enjoying the dulcet tones of the on-air talent while not paying. But here’s the thing, we all are paying already, taxpayers. And I’m not entirely sure why.
Look, I get the concept of public broadcasting. But if it’s going to be public, fully subsidise it. None of this half-assed, we’ll pay part and you make up the rest through begging, Congress. (And don’t even get me started on the costs that result from the schizophrenic nature of our public broadcasting profile: television and radio, domestic and international, propaganda, news, Britney Spears.)
The simple fact is, there’s no need to go begging. NPR has an audience advertisers will pay for, just like they shell out for spots on Mad Men. We’re upper middle-class, we’re educated, we have disposable incomes. We’re affluencers.
Would but could I affluence this situation. Until then, during pledge season, it’ll be radio silence from me.
In a victory for introverts everywhere, psychologists are questioning the accepted theory, that in order to get the best, most creative thinking, workers ought to cluster.
I can be more than a little antisocial myself, so I’m completely copacetic with the idea that solitude can fuel creativity. It’s not like I write my articles, or even these blog posts, by committee. I do my best writing, in fact, before even the early risers are stirring.
Still, like so many things, there’s no either-or. I might do the heavy lifting of hammering out sentences alone with my computer, but there are other aspects of what I do that is highly social. There’s reporting, of course. Refining and sharpening ideas, clarifying, polishing — that’s all stuff for which I rely on my editor. She thinks clearly when my mind is muddy, asks the right questions, and prods me onward.
In other words, ix-nay with the groupthink on groupthink.
Was I ever as young or as pretentious as this group of 20-somethings, who opined that they could not translate their intellectual musings into a paycheck? Instead, they decided to turn out a literary magazine since “their social circle was filled with overeducated, underemployed postgrads willing to work free to be heard on subjects like Kanye West’s effect on the proletarian meta-narrative of hip-hop.”
Should we really pay someone to write about Kanye West’s effect on the proletarian meta-narrative of hip-hop?
In my Serious Journalist real life (as compared to my Snarky Blogger online life), I occasionally talk to this guy named Richard Florida, a University of Toronto professor whose signature idea is that cities are on the rise and the reason for their success is that they are magnets for smart, creative young people. The concept of the creative class is one that intersects some of the stuff that Professional Me writes about, and I find the theory pretty compelling.
Still, I’m not sure what to make of Mr. Florida’s hypothesis about reality-television, that it’s a reflection of the suburbanisation of the American television-viewing public. Sequestered in McMansions, he posits, viewers are looking for connection. “These are people who want stories about people and who used to rely on gossip, or on the little mini-dramas in their community,” he tells New York. “And when you’re isolated in the suburbs, you don’t have that.”
I’m not here to be an apologist for the Kardashians or the Jersey Shore. But I do question the demographic and viewing assumptions underpinning his conclusion. I think the ubiquitousness of reality televison suggests that, despite those who claim only to watch Masterpiece Theatre, it’s not so easy to separate viewers neatly into urban-suburban, red state-blue state boxes. That’s not to say we’re all watching the same thing — the medium is pervasive enough that there’s reality programming for everyone, from pawn-shop shows to ones that delight in making contestants go splat to Top Chef. Indeed, there’s an entire network, Bravo, pitched at squarely at urbanites, right at the creative class.
I’m going to go watch some Real Housewives on the treadmill now.
Last night I attended a pop-up “cultural dinner series.” I had high hopes for the event, which was billed as intelligent conversation over food and drink prepared by the city’s top chefs and mixologists. It was — theoretically — organised around the idea, “Ask a friend to join you on your next voyage.” Sadly, though, the food was too heavy — veal-and-octopus terrine followed by beef tongue followed by rabbit belly and foie gras — and the conversation too shallow. I mean, I’m super-sorry that Marie Tillman lost her husband in Afghanistan, but it never was clear what that had to do with friendship, and with all the dropping of the word “journey,” I thought I should have been playing a Bachelor drinking game.
I’m a tiny bit angry, in fact, because I can think of so many interesting trains of thought. The obvious: How traveling can reveal aspects, good and bad, of a relationship. Or, the friendships one can build when crossing country or cultural boundaries. What about looking a lifelong connections and how they mature and mutate as one, yes, journeys through life? About how paths can diverge, sending friends on very different experiences?
This one, though, was a bit of a road to nowhere….
