Monday, May 19, 2008

Pet peeve:

Why is it acceptable to state what everybody thinks and present it as though it is not merely original, but also provocative? Are you a hipster who is also pro-Palestinian? Yes, this must be lonely. Or, again, the supposedly revolutionary fact that a tall, blonde, conventionally-attractive woman, really, the definition of conventionally-attractive, won a modeling contest. A victory for the everywoman indeed. The prize, however, goes to Philip Weiss for declaring, contrary to popular opinion, that middle-aged husbands have sexual thoughts about other/younger women. Weiss's ground-breaking discovery includes some equally courageous comments about how in Europe men can have mistresses and it's like fine and everything. Weiss gets extra points for making his a crossover piece that not only states the obvious but humiliates at least one member of his immediate family in the process.

3 comments:

Withywindle said...

This, of course, is one reason to be conservative. Since we prize the Ancients, we don't feel so great an urge to be Original ourselves. Therefore, we don't actually talk about ourselves, merely silently and complacently acknowledge our unoriginality. When I say "we," however, I mean "them." True conservatives don't write blog comments like this one; I'm a poseur.

But someone surely has said this before.

Anonymous said...

If you're not careful, you're going to find your Francophile credentials revoked, Phoebe.

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And FWIW, writing the obvious is how to get published in NY Mag. That's what they specialize in.

Anonymous said...

I was inclined to leave a comment similar to the previous poster. After watching Weiss get skewered on the Colbert Show, part of me was thinking it was his just desserts.

But another part of me wonders why Weiss takes the heat and not the New Yorker for printing (perhaps even requisitioning) such "old news" just because Spitzer makes it topical.