This is the country we live in...and I am ashamed of a story like this.

I love NYC. If I hit the lottery, I'd like to live there ... for about three months. Then I'd need to get out of the city and into the country.

For $450k-$500k, here's a listing of rural property you can get...

http://www.unitedcountry.com/search06/SearchResults.Asp?SID=44569275&Lcnt=&AU=N

 

Who declared that it has the best restaurants? Certainly not the same person who declared that people who appreciate the MoMA and the Guggenheim are "cultural snobs."

 

Agreed. I'm ashamed of it. When a "free market" can make people on both sides of the financial transaction act like complete boobs, I am ashamed of the market.

 

The paper's done some good reporting on the plight of people in flophouses. But there is a difference between being a watchdog for the disadvantaged and trying to gear your product around them. My impression is that when the NYT reports on the poor, it is not to build circulation in that demographic, it is done because that's what a good newspaper does. It is a story about the poor, and it is meant to hopefully bring attention to a condition so those in power might do something about it, but it is not written for the poor. It is written for the paper's readers, who tend to be educated and affluent. Most of the paper is geared to their interests, yes. But it's not as if the NYT has abandoned its role of comforting the afflicted.

 

Nobody suggested that they were better because they were in New York. I would suggest that New York is better for it because those museums are in it.

 

Another gold-plated argument, implying I said something I didn't actually say. Of course, there are museums in other cities. I've been to some, in Paris, London, Madrid, Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh. I would rank New York's museums second only to Paris's. As a cultural snob, however, I do not consider museums to be interchangeable commodities.

 

frank, i certainly see your point. and i stand by mine that, more and more, i am reading about topics in the ny times that carry a hefty pricetag, a pricetag that seems unreasonable even for educated and affluent new yorkers. those stories are nice every now and then. i'm just not thrilled with the frequency lately.

 

That's fine, Funky. When I read the NYT, I have to accept that some of the sections are not written for me. For instance, I like food, I like to cook it, shop for it, read about it. But I think the intended audience of the NYT's food section is a bit more upscale and cosmopolitan about food than I am. And that's OK, I don't need to read the whole section, just what I find interesting and/or useful. I'm pretty sure the intention of the parking-spaces story was to provoke a "things are getting ridiculous" response rather than provide "news you can use" for the wealthy.

 

A Rolls-Royce is not "so much better" than a Camry that it deserves to cost $350,000 vs. the $25,000 you would pay for the latter.

And Jack Nicholson's Lakers seat is not "so much better" than John Q. Public's that it deserves to cost $1,500 vs. the $30 the latter pays.

To those who can pay for things like that, the concept of the value of a dollar vanished many years ago. It's simply "give me the best you have, and here's a blank check because it really doesn't matter what you fill in."