The Trap

My replacement at work is in her early twenties and used to work at E! Entertainment Television. I had to goad her about all the lame E! True Hollywood Stories about TV shows (what happened to the sex and drug scandals?) and the dumb "news coverage" of magazine covers. Even their "juicy" stories these days are nothing but regurgitated retreads from the other networks, and don't even get me started on all the reruns of SNL episodes that weren't funny the first time around.

Two words: litigious celebrities. I tell you, you can't even get good trash anymore.

I asked her if it was true that salaries were really low there, and she concurred. She had to work two jobs on the side just to make ends meet, but she said that all her friends in the entertainment industry were in the same boat, just barely paying their bills.

She also said that even though she wasn't consciously worried about starting a new job today, she couldn't sleep at all last night. I said, "Welcome to my world."

Astra Taylor of Salon reviewed an interesting-sounding book today called "The Trap" by Daniel Brook. An excerpt from the review:

After reading "The Trap," I'd wager the future we're facing overflows with anxiety and self-loathing. When a generation reared to revere the idea of a meritocracy finds that a college degree -- even one with honors from an Ivy -- doesn't guarantee middle-class comfort, let alone career fulfillment, cognitive dissonance ensues. Parents blame their offspring for failing to succeed (they gave them every advantage, after all), the offspring blame themselves (they jumped through all the right hoops), and few blame the system. As the competition to join or stay middle-class becomes fiercer, solidarity disappears and the barriers to membership in this insecure and apprehensive class grow higher. According to the New York Times, 2007 was the "most selective spring in modern memory at America's elite schools." You can bet that next year another record will be set.

After attending the 9/11 panel last night, I would have to agree that the activist community is tending toward the senior citizen set. In reference to the smaller number of young participants:

Public service and penury, Brook demonstrates, too often go hand in hand. As a result, "the activist community has become an assemblage of idealistic young people taking a few years off before professional school or a corporate job, a handful of liberal trustfunders, and a slew of eccentric nonconformists.