On New Yorker Elitism

Perhaps I just don't appreciate enough that satisfying sensation that some people must get when they thrust their hands deep into their mailbox, sifting through all its Ethan Allen, Pottery Barn, and Sharper Image catalogues in order to pull out the week's newest New Yorker. I don't chuckle with thoughtful and ironic understanding after seeing the mostly incoherent and stupid cover art that graces each issue. And I hardly ever notice the pen and pencil cartoons flush with that short unrhymed poetry and those Italian villa rental ads. Instead, I peak around Talk of the Town and skim the longer articles (I never read Fiction--too long!)

Given my plebish reading orientation, it makes sense that I'm not well disposed towards paragraphs like this in David Owen's "Playing Out of the Snow" (a too-long article about City golf courses--in the boroughs, no less!):

Ten years ago, I had to fly overnight from Phoenix to Newark by way of Las Vegas.

Thanks for clarifying that; I'm sure you wouldn't want your readers to think you were actually visiting Las Vegas on your own volition!

The crowd that boarded the the plane in Las Vegas consisted mainly of guys with beards and leather jackets who hadn't brought anything to read and women with arm tattoos trying to jam bottles into the mouths of crying babies.

Whooh, I lucked out! I always have something to read. Sometimes, I even bring a New Yorker to read on the airplane. Double Score. But, yikes! What a horrific description of these tattooed women, forcing food down the gullets of those mewing youths.

The plane smelled of cigarettes, even though no one was smoking. These passengers, I decided, represented three filtrations of human desperation: they had elected to use family vacation time to travel more than two thousand miles to lose money playing slot machines; they had decided to fly home after midnight so that they could get in as much money-losing as possible without having to pay for one more night in a hotel; and they lived in or near Newark.

Thank goodness that some distanced and detached observer is willing to provide us with his all-knowing interpretation!