Genteel New York Times Turns Up Nose At Hoi Polloi Rabble Spoiling the Hamptons

The New York Times is nothing if not bourgeois to the core. (Check out its “Styles” and “Home” sections, where it's most obvious.)

Page One of the Sunday print edition is the most prominent and important slot in the Times universe. So it is reserved not just for what they consider the most important breaking stories of the prior 24 hours, but also more general news that they consider of particular significance and worthy of maximum attention.

So here's a story from page one, Sunday May 26, 2013, which I think lets us see a bit too much of the NYT's class bias beneath its facade of “objectivity,” rather like a glimpse of petticoat momentarily exposed beneath a lady's long skirt by a careless movement of her leg: “As Boozy Invaders Hit Beach, Hamptons Sound a Snooki Alert.” The dateline is Amagansett, NY. (Published online a day earlier, as with most NYT articles these days.) [1]

The article take up another half page inside, although that includes a large photo and a smaller one (p.17). It's not worth reading, I can attest. I'll just point out the prominent aspects of it, which is sufficient to make my point about NY Times snobbery. [2]

The headline on the continuation inside adds a word and deletes an “a:” “As Boozy Invaders Hit Beach, Hamptons' Residents Sound Snooki Alert.” So it's basically the same.

Apparently the “Snooki” connection is the purely hypothetical possibility that the TV show on which “Snooki” appears might shoot an episode in the Hamptons, based on the fact that they've gone to beaches in the state of New Jersey. In fact,“Snooki” is only mentioned in passing until the last two paragraphs of a 28 paragraph story, which is mainly about angst over crowds in summer. (WOW! Beaches have crowds in summer! Who knew? Stop the presses!!) Each of those paragraphs consists of a single sentence. The upshot is apparently that MTV has no plans to shoot in the Hamptons, but they don't rule it out. So the headlines took a bit of pure speculation as an excuse to use “Snooki” as a hook for the story. Hey, that's just good editing! Shows how topical and relevant and with it the NY T'imes is. I mean, just because the paper is run by sycophantic apple-polishing dweebs, the kind of people who were teachers' pets in school, doesn't mean it isn't hip to pop culture. It knows how to go after the “youth demographic.” Yeah, “Jersey Shore” watchers are sitting around in their bathrobes on Sunday, sipping their home-made cappuccinos, reading the NY Times, I'm sure. (To see what I mean about the kind of people who run the NYT, check out their pictures online. I think some can even be found at nytimes.com) [3]

Then there's a subhead on p.17: “A wealthy haven cringes at potential visitors from Jersey Shore.” The besieged rich people are cringing at the invasion of their haven. So it's Big News that some rich superparasites are in a tizzy about some unwashed masses spoiling their exclusive retreat by their mere presence on the beach. Apparently the ocean is properly reserved for the sole enjoyment of billionaires like NY City mayor Michael Billionaire Bloomberg and various multimillionaires. Wouldn't want someone of a lower class spoiling the view.

Finally the caption description of the large photo claims that it depicts “a rowdy crowd began showing up [last year] at Indian Wells Beach in East Hampton, adding to the crowds and transportation bedlam.” Bedlam! Look up “bedlam” and see what it means. It's a fancy synonym for chaos, with the added implication of madness. I guess there were some traffic snarls, maybe even traffic jams. Don't have a fainting spell, NYT! [4]

Well here's that photo. I can see what the NYT means.

See how “rowdy” they are? Look at all those people lying there! And sitting! And even standing!!

And as if that weren't bad enough, it looks like a couple of guys are actually walking!!! Motion!
That's kinetic activity! Man, they're out of control! Call in the National Guard!

Hey NYT, bible of the bourgeoisie- we live on this planet too. Get used to it.

1] A little background for my non-American and other readers who may be unfamiliar with some of these terms. “Snooki” is the nickname of a “reality TV” “star,” one Nicole Polizzi, on a show called “Jersey Shore” on MTV, which presents a mixed gender group of young people who are stereotypical New Jersey Italian-Americans, and by stereotypical I mean gross caricatures of people who are derogatorily called “guineas” in common parlance. (“Wops” is an even more derogatory term.) The cast has the exaggerated mannerisms, speech patterns and behavior of crude caricatures. “Snooki” is a short, big-breasted character/cast member. Naturally these aren't refined or sophisticated portrayals.

By the way, the only thing actually Italian about most Italian Americans is their ancestry. The Italian-American is really a type of person unique to the U.S. that evolved here, same as Irish-American. They don't even speak their ancestral languages. It's the same with African-Americans. These are all varieties of Americans, with no more than vestigial commonalities with the inhabitants of the lands of their mostly distant ancestors. Thus they are pseudo-ethnic “identities.” Yet their tribalism and conflicts between the groups are real. Like religious conflict, which is similarly based on nothing- there are no “gods,” and religious dogmas are virtually entirely myths from start to finish. Thus is real economic and political competition masked in both cases by bullshit. [Which is not at all to deny the grotesque racist oppression black Americans have been subjected to, and their current imprisonment in the socio-economic cellar of American society.]

“The Hamptons” is a series of seaside towns on Long Island, New York, east of New York City, where wealthy elitists congregate in the summers. (Amagansett, the dateline on the story, is one of these towns.) The homes there cost many millions of dollars, and summer rentals of those homes go for hundreds of thousands a dollar per month.

These rich people are mostly based in Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City that includes the financial district at the lower end of the borough (“Wall Street,” which is an actual street) where the New York Stock Exchange and New York Federal Reserve are located, along with various financial firms. The rich themselves mostly live on the “upper east side,” an area that is really more midtown geographically, and is basically the area to the east of Central Park over to Lexington Avenue, running north and south between about E. 60^th and E. 90^th Streets. (The south and west sides of Central Park are also areas of rich people. In fact more and more of Manhattan is being colonized by the upper classes, including many non-citizens who buy residences, helping squeeze out the “lower” classes, who cannot afford multimillion dollar apartments or exorbitant rents.)

2]  The NYT is what's called a “broadsheet,” as opposed to “tabloid” newspapers, which have a smaller format. A half-page of the NYT is about 12 x 11 inches, a relatively large acreage when on your lap.

3]  To be “fair,” obviously this story will be of gossipy interest to rich people, an important part of the NYT's constituency. It's influence with such people accounts for much of the NYT's power and influence. But with a Sunday circulation of around a million (that's for the physical print edition, the actual newspaper) most of the readers are obviously not rich. They're just standing outside the charmed realm of the bourgeois elite, with their noses pressed to the glass, voyeuristically gazing at the imaginary perpetual dinner party inside.

4]  A day earlier, the web edition used the word "log jam" instead of bedlam. So they amped it up for Sunday print publication.

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