Gawker Takes A Well-Deserved Stab At Kurt Andersen
Gawker is annoyed by Andersen’s new book, Reset, where he tells us measly serfs that we should enjoy the recession. After all, it’s a learning experience. Writes Andersen:
It’s time to ratchet back our wild and crazy grasshopper side and get in touch with our inner ant, to be more artisan-enterpriser and less prospector-speculator, more heroic Greatest Generation and less self-indulgent baby boomer, to return from Oz to Kansas, to become fully reality-based again…. Yes, we must start spending again, and we will. But we’ve all known people who, having survived the 1930s, never lost their Depression habits of frugality. And so it will be again.
And it gets worse:
[E]ven after the economy recovers, deciding to forgo that third car or fifth TV or imperial master bathroom or marginally cooler laptop will come more naturally.
Fifth TV? Christ. Thankfully, Gawker sums up our thoughts to a tee
But we’re getting tired of hearing cultural and economic evangelizing about the upside of the fact that people literally can’t afford to eat from well-heeled, comfortable intellectuals whose book parties probably cost more than the median income in a lot of the decimated towns across this country whose misfortunes they are fetishizing as some kind of return to bedrock values.
Go read the whole damn thing here.
so someone is condemned because he looks at one of the few upsides to this recession just because he might be better off than others? he is right after all, so why get pissed off?
also, he’s obviously not digging in to those that can barely afford to house themselves (from what i read here). i highly doubt those people are buying new flatscreen tvs and the latest iphone. are you saying that people should be wasting money on new crap when they have perfectly good versions of it already?
LOL Jesse. I didn’t read everything, but based on your comment, you have a lot to learn. YOu may be levelheaded, but often I see these people that can barely afford housing spending their money on other “necessities” ie – flat screen TVs. Oh and I also saw Section 8 residents with 5 kids that are “poor” with 4 flat screens, when I didn’t even have 1 yet. Most of the generation and average people today are way off base with their money habbits.