Last “brand” thing before I go write this piece: when you see people who are where they are in part because of privilege (even if they have ability as well) and they don’t like overt self-promotion, it’s because they think it’s gauche and that’s a position they can take …
Because they’ve never had to do it. It is convenient to say “the work speaks for itself” when you have a junior audience team of professionals promoting yours. And a circulation team ensuring that more people read it. And marketing people etc.
People who do not have and have never had these things to lift them into a prestige career have to make sure their work gets seen themselves. That cannot pretend that it’s beneath them.
It’s a class related affectation, and one that I’ve written about before, for—ironically—The New York Times!: google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…
If anybody sneers at you for promoting your own work, it’s important to ask yourself why it bothers them so much.
Also, this is specific to Taylor. There are people at the NYT who didn’t like that she was getting as much attention as she was. But that was because she was being targeted by tech people and getting barraged. People who don’t cover this beat didn’t get that dynamic
And there was probably some jealousy from the pay your dues lifers because she had a suddenly higher profile, but not because she was shouting LOOK AT ME. She came in without some of the prestige credentials the Times likes.
She didn’t have a traditional path. That rankles some people. Also for class-related reasons!
And those people don’t consider it relevant that she probably had to work harder to get there. They just think she’s not playing by the rules.
Btw, this isn’t just the Times in my experience. All large traditional media companies are like this.
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People who value work for its own sake are invariably people who only have to do work they like and have no concept of what it’s like to work ungodly hours at a job you hate and never feel secure.
Or worse, work multiple jobs and still struggle to make ends meet.
Since we’re talking about pay on #InternationalWomensDay my best pay disparity story comes from the NY Observer. When I was editor in chief, my salary was $125k. I’m told that my successor Ken Kurson (who you may remember from his presidential pardon re: cyberstalking) made $350k
And even then I had far more journalism experience than Ken. And frankly, I’m a far better editor. Though like this, that’s not really a high bar: google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…
If you need a break from terrifying world events I give you the alt narrative my six year old is getting right now which is that if he eats any more cheese puffs, he will turn into one and this is what will happen:
He’s mostly coming up with this himself but so far: he would get rolled to school and if he looked tasty enough his classmates might try to eat him but worse the pizza place across the street would pretend to be friendly but then offer him as a delicious cheese-a puff-a!
But their plan would be partly foiled because customers would find it “sus” that the cheese-a puff-a was talking about Fortnite so much. And their customers care about food safety.
Vance and his cohort arrogantly think they would be able to contain and control that kind of chaos. I don’t think it will get to that point because there are too many forces aligned against Putin but…
I think they really believe their Davos network is smarter and more powerful than a couple of millennia of global nation-state building and resulting dynamics. And you test that when you think you can operate entirely outside of it.
Someone who knew Mark Zuckerberg well once told me they had no concerns about Zuck running for president because Zuck already thought Facebook was a potential nation-state substitute. It’s easy to see where that kind of delusion comes from (and why it looks very silly now).
If you want to understand right wingers cheering on Putin right now, you can read my Orban column, replace “Orban” with “Putin” and 90 percent of it holds. Starker example, same rationale.