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You're Not Rich Enough To Read The NY Times
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 19, 2011
Modified Jun 19, 2011
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jun 19, 2011
Modified Jun 19, 2011
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In case that paywall didn't tip you off already, the New York Times wants you to know that you're too poor to be laying your calloused, peasant hands on its newspaper. Two stories in today's Times are for Rich People's Monocles Only, and make that whole "bartenders make a house party sophisticated" trend seem tackier than forgetting coasters on your Gulfstream.
Have you heard of a private club called CORE? Of course you haven't, you can barely read! According to the Times, it's for those who earn at least $3 million annually. A founder says it's based on the "quintessentially American conceit" which somehow happens to be "the gold digger's recipe for marrying money: mingle with the rich and marry for love." Yes, there's nothing as American as being a vacuous, consumerist whore, swallowing everything and everyone you see with impunity until you die on 500-count-Egyptian cotton sheets and your head is frozen in the CORE club's lobby "networking."
So what does your membership get you? "You're not going to find an unhappy person in the Core club," the founder of the club's parent company tells the paper. "We don't have negative energy entering the Core club universe." Right. This rule is presumably enforced on the staff via the innovative "Smile Or Cattle Prod" code of conduct.
And in case there was any doubt that you were a failure as a parent, good parents buy their offspring apartments in New York City "as a way of helping them become independent." Wait, where was the A1 story on the change to the definition of the word "independent?" Thanks to the "tax exclusion on gifts and estates" that "has been raised to $5 million from $1 million until the end of 2012," parents can give their kids the tax-free gift that keeps on giving: a place of their own.
One parent all the way from California said that given the price on a studio on West 34th street for their son, "we couldn't not do it…The ultimate goal is for him to be up on his feet and then take it over." It's a brilliant strategy: skip over the pesky "years of frugality and sound financial planning" right to ownership! He's bound to learn something.
Some of the commenters seem to disagree with the decisions of the parents, with one noting:
Why are parents coddling their grown children? This practice is inconsistent with a parents job to prepare their little ones for adulthood. This practice is inconsistent with a normal adults inclination to be independent of their parents. Parents: this practice will always backfire in a bad way.
Another is decidedly more zen:
People, all you have to take away from this article is.....NOTHING! Work hard, work smart, love your family and friends and find contentment in life. 'Things' wont make you happy.
Spoken like a true plebe. We're off to CORE! We need someone to pop our zits for us.
Tagged
core club
housing market
new york times
nytimes
rich people
trend pieces
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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