Jezebel
Love it or hate it as they say, Sex & The City wasn't just a television show. It was a lifestyle. It was a movement. It was a vodka-fueled engine of demand for name necklaces, absurd stilettos, brightly-colored baubles and other accessories that theretofore might have been considered too frivolous/tacky/infantile to ever comprise a serious industry, nevertheless an economic wave, an entire worldview, which is what it has now, according to a new theory called the New Girl Order, which apparently arose from the "Bridget Jones Economy" and yesterday made its way to the wonky quarters of the Nation magazine. Which is interesting because, before all this, Sex & The City was, of course, just a curious little weekly newspaper column full of retardedly-written exchanges between inane made-up people doing blah blah blah Hamptons, that we revisit once a week because the New York Observer reprints it for some reason, I think it may be "to torment us with its crapness." But yesterday's column was different. It was actually about the sort of people who write for The Nation. And it was not very nice.
James and Winnie agree on just about everything. They have definite opinions. "There's something wrong with people who don't have informed opinions about things," Winnie said to James, when they met for the first time, at a party in an apartment on the Upper West Side. Everyone at the party was "in publishing" and under 35. Most of the women (like Winnie), were working at women's magazines (something Winnie never talks about now)...Here are a few of the things Winnie and James agree on: They hate anyone who isn't like them. They hate anyone who is wealthy and gets press. They hate trendy people and things (but James just bought a pair of Dakota Smith sunglasses, and they drive a BMW). They hate anyone who has appeared on TV, with the exception of Michael Kinsley and Ted Koppel (everyone else is a "lightweight").
They believe in the poor. (They do not know anyone who is poor, except their Jamaican nanny, who is not exactly poor.) They believe in black writers. (They know two, and Winnie is working on becoming friends with a third—whom she met at a convention.) They hate music. They think fashion is silly (but secretly identify with the people in Dewar's ads). They believe in women writers (as long as the women do not become too successful or get too much attention or write about things the Diekes do not approve of, like sex—unless it's lesbian sex).
James says he is a feminist, but always puts down women who are not like Winnie (including her sister). They put down women who do not have children. Who are not married. Winnie gets sick at the sight of a woman she considers a slut, a gold digger, a whore.
Okay, anyway, James wants to do Winnie's dilettante sister because she has implants, and the whole thing is "To Be Continued," and yeah they're pretentious and don't drink enough but they are definitely the most finely-drawn and least reprehensible people ever to appear in one of her columns. I mean, I know couples like this; everyone in New York knows couples like this although they're a dying breed, and yes, they can be tiresome but Jesus Christ they are sooooooooo highly preferable to the Bitchlorette publicist Scoop-shopping Scary Sadshaw crap Candace Bushnell ushered in.
Which is, obviously, why Her Heinousness decided to render them extinct.
And to think this whole "New Girl Order" thing was just a fluke enabled by strong actresses and good writers with a backdrop of a booming economy and post-Starr Report era of sexual frankness!
Yeah, she must die.
Sex Lives Of Serious Journalists [Observer]
Comments
They're not extinct--they're in "Four Blondes." Sadly, I know this.
From the article, "And three, their leaving home to live in big cities to do so."
Apparently, the nation needs to work on "their" language skills.
Nice job calling those types out, CB, but why is "fuck the poor, and let's not do any--gasp--book learnin.' Instead, let's buy shoes!" a more appropriate lifestyle?
"Now that I've got my right arm back on, could you hand me my small intestines? They're in that canopic jar over there."
Wow, she looks like Blythe Danner's mom in that photo.
i love how the article says that "serious financial hardships are a bedtime story told by grandparents."
sure, i'm young, make good money, and am technically unmarried. but as i watch the economy head to the shitter, i'm more likely to squirrel away my cash, than spend it on shoes.
EW. I give myself props for NEVER watching an entire episode of this show. Of course the only people she feels threatened by are the ones who call her out on her shallow rich girl ways. GROSS. Yeah I'm so sure reporters at the Nation "hate music" and "hate sex." Did somebody make Candy feel bad?
Also, looking at a picture of her is proof that old rexies look awful. Scary chin! scary neck! Scary wrist!
@Susan B.: from the SITC column: "(his term, and he'd never too her he uses it)."
I hate typos, bad writing and bitterness. I should stop reading these, shouldn't I?
@titania1285:
No kidding. This single career woman is putting her money into the 401K, not shoes. Ok, maybe a few pairs of shoes, but mostly savings.
she's silly, trite, boring and a social x-ray. candy, from me to you-- go fuck yourself.
@J.D.Regent:
I give you props too. I watched a third of two episodes and promptly threw up on my shoes.
@charlotte corday: brav-o.
Heh. That was one of the books I read when I was up breastfeeding in the wee hours. I disagree that these people are preferable to the NGO; I think I'd die trying to decide which were bigger boring anti-intellectual fucks.
What the hell did you just link me to, Jezebel? Oh my God, what did I just read, and why did whoever wrote it believe it MEANS anything?! If you want to excoriate a certain group of people, at least, in the interest of literary integrity, do no make their lifestyle read like a grocery list of banality! Even if you're going for that effect, it's PAINFUL.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: Amen to that. I'm not a fan in self-righteous white people in general whether they "believe" in black writers (is that like believing in Santa?) or believe that spending $500 on a few straps glued to a flap of pink leather is the only way to live.
As one would expect, this makes living in New York quite taxing sometimes.
Also: Since when is Smith an Ivy League college?
@ambitious: wasn't it a "seven sisters" school, aka girl-ivy from pre-coeducational days (ie something like 1975 for princeton)?
@ambitious: It's a Seven Sisters school. The others are Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Holyoke, Radcliffe, Wellesley, and Vassar. They were the women's equivalent of Ivies, when such a distinction was more necessary.
It IS one of the Seven Sisters. As is Barnard which some people do consider to be an Ivy (CU wasn't coed until '83). But still. Not you, Smith. Not you.
Must she hate on Ivies in order to make her point anyway? We get it! People who care about anything-tinis = cool. People that care about anything = drool.
The thing is, Sex in the City (the show) eventually became an annoying parody of itself and hugely contributed to demise of originality and affordable anything in Manhattan by unleashing upon us hordes of wannabe Sadshaws. That said, it was once a well-acted, written and produced show.
Bushnell's writing, on the other hand, is disgracefull. She represents all that is wrong with aspirational chick lit: shitty language, characters who are all so uniformely reprehensible, that it's impossible to find at least one to barely like and an appeal to the lowest common denominator of "life's only worthy goal is a sugar daddy, a share in the Hamptons and shoes". God, I can't stand the woman!
@kshenkshen: @ambitious: Why yes, thanks for asking. It's a Seven Sisters (Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Barnard, Wellesley, and Vassar). As you can see from the list, several of these schools are now co-ed or combined with their brother Ivy, so it's fairly irrelevant and basically another one of the annoying anachronisms involved in attending college in New England.
I read the first page or so, it's like a really terrible short story. Just statements about these "people" and shallow "insights" (like she KNOWS what he's thinking) about them. How did such a terrible writer get so fucking famous?
Oh yeah... that's right.
Sex and the city... sigh. Isn't this crap over yet? A lifestyle? Yeah yeah, and SJP is goodlooking.
I can't take it anymore...Not sure which came first, the book or the columns (prob the columns natch) but all of this content comes from the book, "The 4 Blondes," which probably a lot of people on here have read. (It was a NYT bestseller back in the day.) Vapid, non-entertaining book. Vapid, non-entertaining Observer columns. And not a funny or witty Jezebel column either. Spare us, please!
Candace Bushnell is to women as Norman Mailer was to, well, women.
@twoscoops: The Ivy League is actually a sports association of academically competitive schools that accept boxes of rocks if they come from rich families. It's a finite list. It bugs me when people try to change the parameters of the Ivy League, just like it somehow bugs my roommate when I try to claim that upstate New York is in New England . . . but everyone's got her pet issues.
@sheistolerable: why is upstate New York part of New England?
I'm not sure if the female mentioned in this column exists (maybe, maybe not), but if this is the truth, I've never been so ashamed to be a Smithie.
Darren Starr must be some type of fricken genius. The terms, silk's purse and sow's ear spring to mind after reading these dreadful columns!
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