Sunday, February 12, 2012

The Economist as Celebrity

Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson sound like nice enough people and good public citizens but I can't think when I've read anything so hilarious as the slackjawed gushiness of Motoko Rich's joint profile in this morning's Times, all presented in a tone that would qualify the author for the assignment to do Kim Jong-un.   She describes a life which, one suspects, is every underemployed Ivy grad's dream:  two baby strollers!  Nanny with a master's degree!  And oh look,Noguchi coffee table (and he doesn't even have to cut his long hair!)!    Note to Motoko: read the journalistic mission statement again: it's afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted.  Dear god woman, whatever happened to that essential requisite of the good reporter, the crap detector?

No, wait, here is something even funnier than Rich's uncritical admiration: Tyler Cowen's even more gushy endorsement, in which,  however, he cannot  forebear to remind  us that he, too, has Noguchi, and that his kids' nanny, has a PhD.  

4 comments:

marcel said...

Sounds like good help is not so hard to find these days. It's about time!

Taxmom said...

I took cohen to be indicating the phd nannies were the grandparents. Still I agree, lots of smarmy self-congratulatory stuff all around.

marcel said...

Unless, or perhaps especially if, it is a Freudian slip, mistaking "Cowen" for "Cohen" (G-d help us Jews) strikes me as a subtle form of anti-semitism, but I think you are right in re the grandparents thing. Otherwise, it makes no sense to me.

Taxmom said...

I gleaned the bit about the grandparents from reading Cowen's own comments at marginal revolution. And re-reading Tylers comments I see that the PhD nanny was not grandma or grandpa; they were the linguist and the engineer nannies. Having misquoted both name and content, I will now quit for the evening.