NYT readers are so mad that burger entrepreneur has been successful

Today, Frank Bruni wrote a column on a restaurant entrepreneur in L.A. who has made it big. He founded his chain at age 38, after a couple of prior failed careers. It's not the greatest column ever written, but it's OK. Bruni actually does a little reporting, which practically calls for a merit badge in this age of punditry. He writes about an entrepreneur in something other than tech, commendation No. 2. And he has a theme he's advancing: Find an unfilled niche and go fill it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/opinion/bruni-upon-this-burger.html?hp&rref=opinion

Reading through the comments, though, readers aren't having it.

A sampling:

Frank, great story. Did you have to start by reminding those of us who rent with kids that in this country we are the definition of loser?

Success?
At what?
Clogging arteries with fat, raising cholesterol levels and causing heart attacks?

In the various places I've lived the most "passionate" business men and women have been those who run a local bookstore. None will ever have two houses. Most likely they drive a years old car. None of that matters because their first love is the bookstore. And when you patronize this kind of establishment most will make you feel you are very important to them.

Oh great. Another self-indulgent, nutrition-less, junk food implicated in multiple lifestyle diseases killing millions and predicated on a supply chain of cruel, inhumane factory farming and very substantial environmental degradation. Do they have a to-go window too, so more fast-food trash can be deposited on the landscape?

Interesting article, but something is missing. In spite of all the recent talk about inequality and low wages, there's not one mention of how much someone who "owns two houses...one with six bedrooms and a makeshift vineyard...[and is] toying with the idea of a third..." pays his employees.

Reminds me a little bit of some of the comments I see on here regarding a certain coffee machine repairman and his business.

I don't get it. Why the contempt for another's success? This guy didn't sell fraudulent financial instruments to unsuspecting, unsophisticated consumers. He's not a patent troll or an ambulance chaser. He's not taking bribes from big pharma like doctors in the news this week. He built a business from the ground up. He is the American dream.

And people hate him for it.

Why?

 

Newspaper commentators hate everything. That's why they shouldn't be read. Umani burgers are delicious, BTW.

 

I guess there are people who resent others who get rich by doing little to contribute to society (in their minds) or to help their employees succeed.

 

After the sports section I've spent the past 40 years immediately going to the Op-Ed section of both the NY Times and Washington Post. In the past 10 years, maybe more for some, all I need to do is look at the name of the columnist and the 1st sentence and I know what the column will say.

Krauthammer, Will, Robinson, Blow, Collins, Cohen, Zakaria, so many columnists are so predictable that their opinions are worthless. They may be right but if Obama cured lung cancer Krauthammer would complain that he failed to cure heart disease.

I like Bruni, Dowd, Friedman and Krugman enough to continue to read more often than not. I wish Rich never left the Times havent read a column since he went to NYMag.
Dana Milbank is, however, a must read possibly because he still reports on politics and doesn't just opine on it.

 

If I ran a newspaper, I'd get rid of the op-ed section and the editorials, too -- on the same grounds of predictability, also known as boredom.

 

Good point. I go to the op-ed pages looking for something good and usually find a bunch of predictable, boring stuff.

 

The comments expressed by the readers are awful and are sign of a trend ever since papers allowed comments. There is a stream of people who just hate everything and insist on letting the rest of us know it. I don't read these reader comment things much any more. You wonder if, say, Ray Kroc, were in the position of the restaurant owners profiled here, if comments about his new venture would be worse than what I saw here.

To quote one SJ'er's thread title (Can't remember who's exactly), "What the hell is wrong with people?"

 

Jealousy, lack of self-esteem, bad manners.

People suck.

 

Any pattern, or just looking for high quality writing?

 

I don't care if columnists get on a soap box as long as they have something interesting to say and say it in an interesting way (quality writing). A sense of humor or wit is important but Krugman has neither (as a columnist) but he still has great things to say even if he does have a political/economic philosophy. Winning a Nobel Prize though does add some gravitas to your opinion. But Eugene Robinson has a Pulitzer and is as predictable and boorish as a Rob Deer at bat. Gail Collins has wit but often she has nothing interesting to say.

 

Especially when your opinionating runs counter to the research that won you the Nobel Prize!

 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.