You’ve Heard of the “Royal We?”
I give you the “wealthy asshole” we.
My favorite bit:
Modern life has become a three- and often four- or five-meal-a-day restaurant habit. There is the breakfast meeting. At one time, egg-white-only breakfast meetings were a behaviour limited to fat cats – but fat-cat rituals are what we all emulate. So now it’s unthinkable for the rest of us to begin a day without a breakfast meeting (the most important meeting of the day). We are all would-be entrepreneurs, or creative collaborators, or producers of you-name-it, trying to woo potential partners over porridge.
Leaving aside the familiar, if always irritating, conceit that “modern life” is lived only by a subset of rich Manhattanites, I doubt the premise even as it applies to said subset. Hell, even provincials are capable of securing restaurant reservations over the so-called “intar webs.” Next thing you know we’ll even get yoga studios, people with tattoos and bartenders that make cocktails!
$5 will get you $50 says this asshole wasn’t even born here. No self-respecting native New Yorker would be caught dead at an egg-white-only breakfast meeting unless his job depended on it.
Fucking foreigners, and by that I mean anyone who crossed the Hudson and took good American executive jobs from native New Yorkers.
+1 (1 bagel with a shmear, that is.)
So far nobody has invited me to any breakfast meetings over koko and bread. Sometimes there are lunch meetings. But, so far no breakfast meetings. I haven’t seen any yoga studios either. Occasionally I see an obruni exchange student with more tattoos than a Hell’s Angel. But, they self-deport back to Obrunistan after a semester.
Modern life has become a three- and often four- or five-meal-a-day restaurant habit.
“Titans of industry” is all about girth.
I want to know why we’re not seeing more Style pieces on the scourge of gout.
Insert obligatory “But $250K is barely middle-class in Manhattan” reference here.
Delurking briefly to note that, as someone who goes to fancy restaurants in New York, the column does not strike me as the thinking of someone who is plugged into restaurant culture in New York as much as the muttering of a rich person who mistakes his status anxiety for taste.
Agreed, this sounds squarely in the grumpy old man rant tradition of Mamet and Woodward.
As I read it, I kept hearing Christian Bale’s voice asking me “Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?” over and over again.
I’m rather tolerant of the peculiarities of the 1%, but this does strike me as his own personal fixations than anything else.
He’s not so much a rich person, more like a rich person’s suckerfish. I remember his New York magazine columns and, regardless of the topic, he always came off as a buffoon.
This criticism section on him is spot on.
No can do, got an 8:30 res at Dorsia. Great sea urchin ceviche.
Would you like to hear the specials?
Not if you wanna keep your spleen.
people with tattoos
Now that everybody has one (or more) my lack of tattoos makes me an edgy rebel.
Take that hipsters! Now you’re the conformists!
Makes two of us.
My tattoos were all done in invisible ink so that they will only be visible, very briefly, in the crematorium.
Rather like when the previous gen all had to grow goatees to assert their individualism.
I thought the actual design and intent of the tattoo was the point, not the actual act of getting one. Since a tattoo isn’t just facial hair in the same place on everyone, it’s ink, actual creativity and individuality are possible. I like the fact that tattoos are popular.
I thought the actual design and intent of the tattoo was the point
Most of the time the point is to demonstrate that you’re willing to get a tattoo. It’s a freak flag. That they can be great is a side benefit.
Maybe if you’re over 30. Nearly everyone I know has one and few of them would even think of doing it for the freak flag aspect.
I’m sure they’re all unique people with design sense.
Also get your inked ass off my lawn
I somehow never did get around to getting my tattoo (I was on the cusp of the goatee/tattoo generations, to use md rackham’s analysis). My unhip laziness finally paid off a couple years ago when I was taken to a fantastic onsen in Tokyo, as the capper to one of the most enjoyable days of my life. Had I ever bothered to get myself inked, I wouldn’t have been allowed in. Sometimes being square pays off.
Linking to Gawker is almost as grave an offense as the quote.
shouldn’t this be the Royal Wa, not the Royal We
There’s this room called a “kitchen.” I rather enjoy my time there. Maybe if Mr. Wright were less self-important and invested in keeping “the help” “downstairs,” he could find some joy there as well.
I’d bet nice money (for me, anyway) that this gawkster has a kitchen with granite countertops and stainless appliances.
But not a scratch on either, because the kitchen is just a room to house the granite countertops and stainless appliances, not for actual food preparation.
Also. Beer. Too.
But not just any beer. Belgian Hefelweiss brewed by elves in the Ardennes and delivered by truck driving unicorns.
It isn’t historical unusual for a lot of urban dwellers to eat their meals out or do take in. Lack of cooking space has long been a feature in urban homes.
Loomis, why are you accusing him of being an “asshole”? Only because he’s very wealthy? The “we” this guy is says using ain’t a royal we but is referring to the community this guy belongs to, the “imagined community” he is living within.
Now stop being such a bully.
Hey dipshit, why don’t you look and see who wrote the post?
He’s using the ‘Royal Loomis’.
I wish I could upvote this comment.
Watch your mailbox. Your internets will be delivered within 4-6 weeks.
This is worthy of becoming part of all internet traditions.
I want to have sex with this comment.
Dude, your love of the rich is unhealthy. Have some self-respect.
“Modern life has become a…habit” is a strange formulation.
A bad habit. He should try quitting.
We should stage an intervention. You bring a Zippo; I’ll pick up a gallon of gasoline, and he can learn what a real problem is.
Give a man a match and he is warm for a minute.
Light him on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
I don’t think it is possible to overstate the dominance of restaurants in urban life.
Oh, it’s very possible to do so. For example, there was this one article in British GQ where this one dipshit went fucking on and on about restaurants and how securing the right lunch place is practically a full-time job and bore absolutely no resemblance to “urban life” as I’ve been leading for most of the last 18 years.
Scott “fat face” Lemieux, stop trying to be a bully à la Loomis
You have reached new depths of clueless flailing and cognitive dissonance.
I start to think that the purpose of these kind of articles is to troll their readers…
His Twitter feed right now is a great companion to this post.
https://twitter.com/MichaelWolffNYC
Damn, what a smug, arrogant asshole.
I think the correct phrase is “Christ, what an asshole”
What a bizarre article. It’s all about restaurants, but at no point does this fucking CLOWN mention the FOOD.
Here’s a little tip, guy: If you’re enjoying restaurants for the same reason people enjoy expensive cars or jewels–as a status symbol or cultural marker– UR DOIN’ IT RONG.
Michael Wolff is, according to his twitter, “not going to curry favor with the young who can’t afford decent restaurants.”
Something something never step on people on the way up because eventually you’ll meet them on the way down. Something.
Nor will he mince words.
i’m torn. at points, i thought, “this is a parody, and a pretty damn good one at that.” then, i would read further, and think, “no, this twit is for real.” upon finishing, i’m convinced it was for real, but it should have been parody.
It would be nice to think so, yes.
Rich assholes are self-centered everywhere, but when you put rich assholes in a city that residents call “the City,” and expect everyone else to know what that means, it takes things to a whole other level.
That’s standard. Nobody who’s from here ever calls the place “New York City”. It’s either “the city” or “New York”.
Uh? Everybody knows that “the City” is London.
Most people from NJ, Upstate NY, Conn., etc., call the entirety of NYC “the city.” When people from the outer boroughs refer to Manhatten, they call it “the city.” No one here is talking about London. Context is everything.
“The City” is a particular, not very large, neighborhood within London.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh, that’s not completely true.
I’m 55 years native born. The City is Manhattan. New York City includes you bridge and tunnel folks.
Given that the Tunnel folks are from New Jersey, I’d assume they are not actually included.
Remember that old New Yorker cover? That’s flyover stuff.
Remember “sniglets”, words made up just to describe some particular person or thing (Strumble: the invisible item One and glares at after stumbling over One’s own feet”). I’m trying to think of a sniglet for faux-intellectual conservatards… fox-conservatives isn’t clever enough.
Hey, I’m creative! An entrepreneur! Never a collaborator. And you would never see me at a breakfast (or lunch) meeting. I like to sleep to 10am at least.
If you are creative, do you have a tattoo? In invisible ink?
I’ve gotten as far as:
And, knowing that he’s discussing a city with a million residents with a family income under $10,000 a year, I don’t think I can go on. Seriously, does he ever passingly suggest that he’s aware of the fact that the life he describes of “an adult in the city” is the life of a relatively small number of the country’s richest people? I mean, he seems aware that assistants whose jobs consist of procuring lunch reservations exist, but does he recognize them as fellow humans?
No.
This has been another episode of SASQ
You mean everyone doesn’t bring their lunch!?
Jesus. How do you afford to eat out in Manhattan every day. I would lose money by going to work. And I’m in the upper-middle-middle-class.
Expense accounts, mostly.
I miss mine. As you point out, it’s not cheap to eat out in the city, not even if you go buy a sandwich and a soda. That’s ten bucks right there.
When I used to semiregularly have a breakfast meeting at Claridges*, I used to hate it because it reliably involved “getting up early” but not “eating any breakfast”, as opposed to “working, while watching rich guy eating breakfast”.
*yes, I agree, humblebrag
It’s already been said above, but Christ, what an asshole.
With the crackers applying it here, “bullying” has lost all meaning.
I’m bullying RIGHT NOW. What are you wearing?
LGM–it’s a bully pulpit.