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Recently in Salon Media

Alt
The have-nots
Left-leaning journalists explore how the other side of prosperity lives. Plus: The "S" and "F" words, Rick Springfield and a tell-all psychic friend.
By Jenn Shreve
[07/23/99]

Brand X
The contrition peddlers
When you're a big corporation and you step in racial doo-doo, you call Chisholm-Mingo -- your full-service agency for repentance, prevention and brand-burnishing.
By Ruth Shalit
[07/20/99]

Alt
Mundane titillation
This week's stories prove that a good writer can make the most mundane subject riveting, while a hack can turn the sexiest topic into a colossal snooze.
By Jenn Shreve
[07/16/99]

Media
Top-heavy
Playboy's Miss August tips the scales of centerfold history.
By Jenn Shreve
[07/13/99]

Media
Talk of the town
Tina Brown's new magazine hits newsstands Aug. 2; here's a look at the chatter about Talk -- and what may be in the first issue.
By David Carr
[07/10/99]

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I was swiftly and publicly berated for my lack of imagination. Who needs education when there are yachts to buy? How about a nice diamond necklace? An island? My God! Poverty would be wiped out if we all sold Amway! Heal the world through cleaning products! It was all so laughable.

Yet here were are, seven years later, and the dream of Amway hucksters -- buckets of easy money -- has infected America like never before. Employees are trading in hours of free time for the promise of a stock option bonanza. Advertisements berate clueless proles who haven't jumped on the e-trade bandwagon. And who doesn't know somebody with more paper wealth than the GNP of some unfortunate country? Even those who aren't making it big are doing nicely for themselves in this moment of unprecedented spending power.

So where are the critical voices? The media is bursting with nothing but bigger, better product reviews and gushing profiles of 28-year-old mega-millionaires. "Lifestyle" is the new editorial mantra. And those few articles that buck this journalistic trend appear in periodicals that address their readership as "comrades." This week, however, two articles take hard looks at the new Gilded Age.

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S.F. Weekly, June 28-Aug. 3

"Revenge of the Leisure Class" By Jack Boulware

In this pithy and well-timed piece, Jack Boulware profiles Thorstein Veblen, the economist and rabble-rouser who penned the lovely phrase "conspicuous consumption" a century ago. An outspoken critic of the leisure class and all its trappings, Veblen argued that self-esteem had become directly linked to the possession of material goods. Interest in Veblen, named earlier this year by -- of all places -- the Wall Street Journal as one of the 15 "Best and Brightest Economic Thinkers Who Made a Difference," is on the rise as new wealth is generated at mind-boggling speed and the ideas laid out in his major work, "The Theory of the Leisure Class," become relevant once more.

Boulware makes a strong case that Silicon Valley is infected with the same conspicuous consumption Veblen despised and neatly ties together Veblen's Gilded Age worries with today's economic realities and social behaviors.

But Boulware's fine piece can't overcome my secret dread that Veblen's ideas flourish most luxuriantly at times when they are sure to be dismissed. The bigger the leisure class, after all, the more time to read "The Theory of the Leisure Class." In evil dreams, I imagine Veblen's books adorning Pottery Barn coffee tables, next to gleaming, new copies of The Communist Manifesto and a must-have Allagash River Canoe replica.

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Seattle Weekly, July 29-Aug. 4

"Rising incomes, rising tastes" by Bruce Barcott

Speaking of Pottery Barn ... From the land of Microsoft millionaires, Bruce Barcott discusses a trend he calls Pottery Barn Nation -- "the marketing downward of 'good taste.'" The newly flush middle class is flocking to products that befit an upper-class lifestyle -- Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, W Hotels, Michael Graves' Target line of housewares -- yet skirt the label of conspicuous consumption. Hence, Restoration Hardware, sports utility vehicles, Pottery Barn. Barcott's observations about Abercrombie & Fitch-clad shoppers and clueless sales clerks are amusing, balanced nicely against penetrating insights on the subtle marketing and cultural forces that convince post-IPO couples that they need a $1,395 black leather club chair.

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