i’d like to thank the academy.
17 December 2006
In the context of You, [Middle Class Or Higher] Person Of The Year: Read Regina Schrambling’s pointing out reporters’ cluelessness about Taco Bell’s ingredients, and its reflection on the class origins of today’s journalists, and then head on over to yesterday’s Times piece on overpriced vodka and bottle service. If you can read it without ripping out your eyeballs (I’ll be honest: the fawning bit about Bong vodka–Paris Hilton was at the launch party ZOMG!–almost did me in), I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it; as someone who tends to avoid bottle-servicey outposts, I was a little disappointed that the only part where there’s any inkling that this whole idea of super-premium spirits might be a money-bilking ruse is the headline.
I know I shouldn’t be surprised– the idea of “objectivity” often means “swallowing press releases whole without so much as one inquisitive bite,” particularly in the business section. But the overwhelming credulity of this piece got to me. Read between the lines and you can almost see the reporter being seduced by the gold-plated and bong-shaped bottles of touted-as-super-premium vodka, being offered free drinks as her way of tasting of the high life. It’s the whole idea of classy-with-an-ass all over again, and as I read more and more food press I’m amazed at how more stuff that is just cheesy is being touted as worthy of checking out. Because it’s expensive, I guess. Or because it can be expensed.
Which is where Schrambling’s rant, the bottle-service scourge, and the idea of “every” American being bestowed with the Person Of The Year designation collide: sure, the user-created content “revolution” is here, and I’m going to guess all the media professionals at Time, thanks to the fat pipes flowing into 50th and 6th, devour YouTubings and blogs in an effort to figure out where their next trend piece is coming from. But how many people who don’t work in the media–shoot, how many Time readers–are online, and how many are creating content? Remember that one percent that uses podcasts? I know that chronicling early adopters of technology is important, but the rhetoric of “You: The Awesomest Awesome Guy Of The Year” is more techno-utopian than even the most noxious press from the first bubble, encouraging even more navelgazing and insularity among a group of people who, on a few fundamental levels, would be agreeing with one another in the first place. (See also.)