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

fuck dogs, gimme a sidewalk cafe

tbh nabisco your dog annoys me and i hate tripping over its leash when i'm trying to get a gyro.

why can't you just take your dog to the park where there is room for dogs and designated dog spaces? are you afraid he will beg you for ice cream and youll have to give in then he'll get fat and never be prom king?

how do I get the dog to the park without walking up the street?

Carry the dog LOL?

Then again it's not like the people screaming against ice cream haven't used the words 'inappropriate' and 'reasonable' in thrilling combinations designed to create compliance for quite some time, and if it works...

put it down, get a cat

how can the gyro vendor sell his gyros if he is not on the sidewalk i ask you nabisco.

i don't get this lunch cart thing. it sounds like he has literally walled off the entire sidewalk!

maybe an ascii diagram would help.

at 2am i can't walk past a taco truck w/o hipsters begging me for some greasy treats

choke up onna leash dude. no one wants po but a screwdriver in a dog's eye for trying to bite of a guy's lunch.
and
how come bitches always wanna walk so slow, side-by-side on the subway steps?

I mean, look, I know we all have different levels of where we think people are unreasonable about trying to control their environments. But part of what I think is cool about civic life is that there's a realm where, if you care a bunch, you can actually go make your preferences known. Like you can go to community board meetings and complain about sidewalk seating permits, or the number of liquor licenses on your block. Half of the people who bother doing that are just batshit and weird and entitled, it's true! But on the other hand the whole point of it is so normal people can go and say, you know, I live here, and just for the record, I'd kinda prefer it this way. That's kind of a cool system.

xpost - he doesn't have gyros. The problem is that he sets up at the narrowest part of the sidewalk, right next to the line/smoking area for a nearby venue. (And he sets up there on nights when the venue's full.) So the sidewalk is totally impassable. Between the two things, traffic is actually walled off. Which makes one think: hey, this is dumb and a nuisance, and he needs to move down past the venue.

never mind your dog, what about parents having to navigate their strollers down those blocked sidewalks?

glad to see someone's thinking of the children

name names; we need google maps ref

\<-width of sidewalk->| 
\                     |
\  CART  v VENUE ROPE |
\ .----. |            |
\ |    | | people in  |
\ |    | | line or    |
\ .----. | smoking    \
\        |             DOOR
\        .-----------------
\                     |
\<-width of sidewalk->| 

is the cart there primarily to sell to people at the venue?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lnkm9ReVyo

haha Sarah, is there any answer that question that doesn't make the cart's placement really, really dumb, traffic-wise? it's partly aimed at the venue but it's also a busy street at night in general. I have like zero doubt that someone who's not me will make it move (probably the venue), because look at the diagram, that's just idiotic, nobody can walk by.

definitely, if it's selling to people other than those at the venue, then moving a bit wouldn't really hurt business much, is why I'm asking.

nabisco that diagram exceeds all of my expectations!

though it's hard to work out what the first steps towards the kind of citizen engagement you're limning would be, were you to spearhead the drive to rationalize the current sidewalk situation, but yeah that's some bullshit

I love the way that all these stories have to feature a half-arsed disclaimer like this - "The relative struggles of the rich may elicit little sympathy from less well-off families who are dealing with the effects of the worst recession in a generation" - before returning to crying about the guy who had to sell his Cessna.

― Dorian (Dorianlynskey), Friday, August 21, 2009 5:31 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

I would love it if they'd quite literally make this a disclaimer before every such article: "The following details the relative struggles of the rich, which may elicit little sympathy from less well-off families..."

Or if such pieces were folded into a regular feature called Boo Fucking Hoo. They could have a logo - the world's smallest violin, playing just for them.

I don't know, I think it's a little unfair to target that McAfee article -- the phenomenon of boom entrepreneurs suddenly losing huge chunks of their net worth is interesting in its own right and need not be seen as a plea for sympathy. I mean that's the guy that invented that anti-virus software I have on my PC. I don't feel bad for him at all, but it's striking to see an era of lavish wealth ending and he makes a good symbol of that.

Sure, if it was an isolated example but there's a steady stream of this stuff. It's like all the Madoff coverage in Vanity Fair - an excuse to say fuck the average victims of the recession, what about the super-rich?

One where-did-all-my-money go story that I do love is NY magazine's Annie Liebowitz feature, largely because it accepts that she's been stupid with her money. I think you can point out folly and still elicit sympathy, but these NY Times pieces don't display that kind of rigour and nuance.

tbh I think a more accurate disclaimer/intro would also include "GET YOUR PIPING HOT SCHADENFREUDE HERE," cuz they've gotta know people like us follow these things just to gawk and sneer!

(also yeah Tracer it should be clear that I would feel like an idiot calling 311 about a food cart. pretty sure the venue will handle it so as not to be accused of being a nuisance.)

is the other side of the street blocked off? do you live on the block? can you get to a crosswalk with a puppy and cross the street to avoid the crowded sidewalk? i mean i have to walk in the road leaving work almost all friday/saturday nights due to the crowd outside of Sea (of all places.) but i'm not about to write them an angry letter asking them to better control their patrons.

what happened? i am confused.

how do get foxes and chickens on boat?

xpost Do they realise that though? I like the idea of the writer typing that Cessna line and thinking, "heh heh, the schadenfreude crew are going to love this shit! Maybe I'll throw on a line about his tattoos and tinted hair," but I'm not sure these writers are that self-aware.

BTW, I'm trying to draw some flak away from Gyrogate here but it's clearly not working.

first you take the chicken iirc, then come back & take the wolf, but when you get to the far bank you drop off the wolf and take the chicken back, and when you get to the first bank u exchange the chicken for the grain & take the grain to the other side and leave it with the wolf, then u go retrieve the chicken? xp

yeah sorry, I was going to respond to Ian's question but there is no point in belaboring the very minor cart example

but your anger will not go away if you refuse to work through the problem, nabisco.

Talk to the venue people? They might move him along for you and might be pissed off about i, but you'll never know until you ask them in a noncommittal way.

When the billionaire wives were gnashing and wailing over Madoff like they were protesting the local pedo (calling for the amputation of body parts, effigies, OTT demands for revenge expressed in twisted, sadistic ways) I have to admit my limited sympathy went right out the window (I'd be interested to know how hard these women worked for the money lost but that's another thing). Today an American woman on R4 who'd lost her daughter in the Lockerbie Pan Am explosion said that her life had been destroyed, explained that she was Jewish and the guy the UK sent back to Libya was as bad as Hitler. Hearing this made me think OH NO YOU DID NOT JUST GO THERE and re. destruction of life NO, YOU ARE ALIVE AND VERY, VERY ANNOYING. Yeah she was in total vengeance mode but even if rhetorical, it was not exactly helping her campaign for wider sympathy.

i = it. They won't be cross with you for asking about it.

where do bury survivors?

haha guys it's okay, I am not on a food-cart crusade, it was just an example of how sometimes there's dumb stuff in your vicinity where you're like hmm, that should be corrected

Was this Susan Cohen, Suzy? She's the voice of vengeance in most of the Lockerbie coverage I've heard, and she alienated me as well, without even hearing the Hitler comparison.

there's a traffic light that I have to go through to get home, that is somehow outfitted with sensors and timed, such that after a certain time of night, if I'm in the lane it would make the most sense to be in to go home, the light will not turn green. Should I complain?

yes, probably

I'd feel like those cranky whiny people at community meetings.

We have a BPDish guy in my building who's even made himself the head of an imaginary resident's association and xeroxes bi-monthly missives, badly spelled and composed. Insults local councillors in all our names sort of thing. Nobody here could be that guy.

xpost Yes, Dorian. It is some testament to her attitude that I was getting to the point where I thought dead daughter actually had a lucky escape.

haha yeah, this is the thing, the actual crazies that show up and provide input on everyday civic things are, like, actual crazies -- it can only help when normal people find time to share more rational preferences.

(I guess my thinking on this changed a bit last year when I went with some people to support a friend in getting a liquor license -- I think all of us spent the whole time listening to applicants and having opinions, like ... oh, a karaoke bar over there would actually be awesome! That other place is full of douchebags who piss on the sidewalk, don't expand their license, it'll get worse! This poor guy just wants to serve wine at his kosher restaurant, cut him some slack! It becomes tempting to actually involve yourself in such stuff, just to balance out the kinds of people who show up every week.)

the actual crazies that show up and provide input on everyday civic things are, like, actual crazies

this is just reminding me of the day I spent watching restraining order hearings.

DETAILS

the most entertaining one involved two residents of low-income senior housing ... they were seeking restraining orders against each other (this happened in half of the cases - both parties wanting orders): apparently the old man (who was sporting an almost cartoon-like head bandage) had gone into her room without permission and he'd also screwed with her food in the kitchen or something and said mean things, and she had hit him with a skillet.

Not that our local council hasn't done some questionable things (the usual doing shit nobody wants after a joke consultation where it becomes clear the shit is unwanted) but when dude comes to me to sign his latest petition of THE GREEDY COUNCIL ARE DEVILS, DEVILS I SAY I try, in the nicest possible way, to get him to think about spellcheck and the responsibility involved when you insult others in print.

All this reminds me of the recent story in which an Orthodox Jewish couple living in an NYC co-op complained because motion-sensing lights had been recently installed in the building, and they felt that they therefore could not leave their apartment during Sabbath without violating the law against turning on lights. So they complained to the co-op board and asked if the lights could be either turned back to the old type, or turned off from Friday night to Saturday night. To which the board responded, "Actually, no, but you can sell your place and GTFO."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/nyregion/22hotdogs.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=food%20carts%20at%20the%20met&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23pubed.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1251064876-IPv95qmDLGyPcsgZkwWrFA

The Insult Was Extra Large

By CLARK HOYT
Published: August 22, 2009

THE J. C. Penney Company opened a new department store in Midtown Manhattan at the end of last month. It was greeted in The Times’s “Critical Shopper” column with what many readers perceived as offensive condescension.

“Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops” without even a makeover of its logo, asked the columnist, Cintra Wilson, a virtual sneer seeming to drip from her keyboard. She said Penney’s “has always trafficked in knockoffs that aren’t quite up to Canal Street’s illegal standards”; “a good 96 percent” of the clothing is polyester; the racks are full of sizes 10, 12 and 16, but not Wilson’s 2; the petites department has plenty of clothing “for women nearly as wide as they are tall”; and the store “has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on.”

Helen Berkeley, a reader from Baltimore, said she was dismayed at the column’s “fat hatred, class bias and nasty humor.” Kristin Anne Carideo of Seattle said that mocking people who want fashion but cannot afford designer clothing “is myopic and offensive.” Sarah Looney of Harrisonburg, Va., said the column was “saturated with disdain for the type of clothing that the average person wears, and, what is more troubling, the size of the average woman.” Others found the column “a voice for class privilege,” “hateful,” “genuinely cruel” and “smug.”

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, was unhappy, too. The column, he said, “would make a fine exhibit for someone making the case that The Times has an arrogant streak.” Keller said his mother was a Penney’s shopper for much of her life, and she would have found the review “snotty.” He told me that he wished it had not been published.

The column raised an issue that The Times and other news organizations sometimes struggle with: What is the difference between edgy and objectionable? Or, as one reader, Daniel Harris-McCoy of Boston, put it: How do writers “navigate the fine lines between observation, satire and snark,” and when should editors step in to restrain them?

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.

Keller said, “The key, I guess, is to imagine that you are writing for an audience with a broad range of views and experiences, and to write with respect for them.” Dismissing a point of view “with a contemptuous sneer is not only bad manners, it’s bad journalism.”

Wilson, a freelancer who has written the “Critical Shopper” under contract for about two years, alternating with Mike Albo, seemed shaken by the angry response to her Penney’s review. “Ouch,” she said when I called her.

She pointed out that the column had good things to say about the store — an enthusiastic sales associate she encountered, “big, clean and well-tended” dressing rooms and a “remarkably smart” strategy of catering to larger-sized women and men. “This niche has been almost wholly neglected on our snobby, self-obsessed little island,” she wrote. “New York boutiques tend to cater to the stress-thin morbidly workaholic, Pilates-tortured Manhattan ectomorph.”

But by the time the column got around to some praise for Penney’s and the caricature of the kind of Manhattanite who does not shop there, the damage had already been done.

Darcie Brossart, vice president for communications at J. C. Penney, said, “We found the review very offensive to our customers.” The average American woman, she said, wears a size 12 and weighs 150, and the company stocked the Manhattan store initially just the way it stocks its others in the metropolitan area. Smaller sizes sold out quickly, Brossart said, and the mix will be adjusted to meet demand.

After the review went up on The Times’s Web site and even before it appeared in print, Wilson issued a sort-of apology on her own Web site. As bloggers began reacting strongly, Wilson wrote, “You know I didn’t mean it that way, so please remove the knot from your panties and when you’re ready, join me for a cigarette and several Pucker martinis.”

Two hours later, she wrote, “I very much regret that my J. C. Penney article in The Times caused any wounded feelings whatsoever, particularly to people who already feel they take more than their share of abuse from our very shallow and ridiculous society.” She said, “I sincerely apologize.”

If there is a surprise here, it may be that Wilson’s reviews haven’t created more of a controversy before now. “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.”

Past Wilson columns have had a real bite: “Tory Burch clothing inhabits a privileged, prim, declawed, deodorized look that culturally symbolizes a state of voluntary submission to the males of her tribe.” And they have contained cutting references to size: a size 14 caftan “looked like a shower curtain Berry Gordy would have bought for the Shirelles.” That sort of arch tone is pushing it even when reviewing the highbrow likes of Christian Louboutin, Gucci or Christian Lacroix. It really doesn’t work when taking on a mainstream retailer like J. C. Penney.

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.” She said it was “kind of provincial of me” not to realize how big The Times was and how her audience would expand when she reviewed a store like Penney’s. She said she also thought she hit a raw nerve with people already disposed to think of The Times as disconnected and unsympathetic. “It was dumb on my part not to see this coming,” she said.

Keller said, “I’d like to think this will be, as they say, a teachable moment.”

The lesson, I think, is that it is O.K. to have fun with your readers. It is not O.K. to make fun of them.