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Lipman says it's dumb to suggest that Journal is simply pandering to the
basest instincts of its readers. "Weekend Journal represents a natural evolution of where the Journal has been
going for the past 10 to 15 years. The line between business life and personal
life has become blurred, and I think that we understand the interplay between
business and culture. The impetus for our section is appealing to reader's minds,
not just their pocketbooks. Some of our readers are very successful and have done
very well for themselves, but they are more than the sum of their pocketbooks." Lipman emphasizes that the journalistic standards that made the Journal a
reliable brand in the first place are firmly in place at Weekend, but how
rigorous can you be when you are writing about overpriced antique arcade games? Newspaper sections didn't always serve as obeisant Baedekers for yuppie scum.
It used to be that if you wanted to skim expensive tchotchkes, you'd spend the time
on the margins of the New Yorker magazine, finding both basic and frivolous goods
at impossible prices. Now, large parts of two of the nation's biggest papers are devoted to
hat lore. Weekend Journal has a column on catalogs, meta-journalism for a
meta-consumeristic age. Do we really need instruction in how we should look at
the catalogs that come flying into our mailbox? That's not the point, as managing editor Paul R. Steiger un-self-conciously points
out in his Weekend Journal review of "Selling Dreams: How to Make Any Product
Irresistible," written by the CEO of Ferrari's North American unit. "You must own the customer, make him aspire to possess your product until he has
it, and immediately want the next version after he does," says Steiger,
paraphrasing the author. And there's nothing like the name of a serious publication and
some august bylines to legitimize the fetishization of product. Both the Journal
and the Times suggest over and over that it's OK to sink your net worth into
pointless doodads, as long as the doodads are quality. Even when you drift out of the didactic place- To hell with mom and dad's country club -- why not, ah, Portugal? Amid the
all-night flamenco parties and the ponies with hydrangeas woven into their manes
-- did I mention the Chateau Lafite hand-carried by some of the vineyard's family
members making the scene? -- the reporter and the newly betrothed conspire to
conjure fabulousness with smutty glee. "The couple, both New Yorkers, have no family in Portugal, nor have they ever
lived there; they simply wanted an unusual and exotic location, and in this day
of casual jet travel -- not to mention a galloping economy -- the extravagance of
going to Europe for a long-weekend wedding did not seem far-fetched," wrote
Monique P. Yazigi in the Times on July 11. "Who wants to go to another wedding at
the Pierre?" said the groom. The answer is everybody else on the planet, except the swells who have been there
a jillion times. For that .0001 percent of the population, domestic
manifestations of out-of-hand wealth provoke a Gatsby-like shrug and a round of
so-what's-next. That crowd alone, of course, wouldn't be enough to fund a daily
newspaper section, but there's an army of readers who don't mind coveting someone
else's fortune. (If more readers lingered over the pictures in the Weddings
feature at the back of the section, they might think twice about the pursuit of
wealth -- rich people generally have very ugly children and they grow up to marry
other people's ugly children.) | ||
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