"Once, this face belonged to a villainous class of elites in sci-fi depictions of a dystopian future. In 'The Hunger Games,' residents of the capital city who revel in luxury and excess at the expense of other impoverished districts often wear sculpted, altered faces. In 'Doctor Who,' a wealthy socialite from the distant future has gone through so many face-lifts that she becomes little more than a stretched face on a thin sheet of skin mounted on a frame, maintained with constant moisturizer."
"The ultrawealthy seem less and less concerned with hiding their excesses. They’re richer than ever, and figures like Lauren Sánchez Bezos and President Trump give them permission to flaunt their neo-Gilded Age spoils. After all, the unspoken appeal of cosmetic work is that it’s not just about looking 'better' or 'fixing' something or trying to remain competitive in ageist workplaces belonging to an elite, all-powerful clique that gets to operate under a different set of societal norms and rules."
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67 comments:
Is Althouse posting this to show us how utterly banal the NYT is. The only glimpse of the NYT I get is from her blog. Trump bad, rich people bad - silly, predictable, boring. Who would pay for this?
I sense a new angle. “The rich are different these days.” That’s why the past failures of Marxism and the French revolution don’t hold sway today. We should try it again because the current rich are different. (When did the Uber Rich ever hide their excesses?).
But is it Trump's fault?
@Althouse, you subscribe to the Times while trying to maintain a grip on reality. Is there a point where you realize that you cannot possibly do both?
The paper that is kept afloat by a mexican billionaire carlos slim heliu says what
Or powell jobs of the atlantic another etch a sketch for progs
Katherine Helmond in Brazil had her face stretched like that photo, too. The dystopia was like the way lefties feel right now…
Been that way for a long time now. Remember going to NY and South Florida 20 years ago and shocked by all the obvious plastic surgery.
I just find the times lack of awareness (who signs their checks amusing)
How much Botox did Biden have, or is the NYT denying that he had work done?
The 18th century french elites used urine as a haircare product. Plus sa change....CC, JSM
Shes a biographer of wintour the real miranda preistly
“Who would pay for this?”
Wordle
"The ultrawealthy seem less and less concerned with hiding their excesses"
In what world has this ever been true? I'd say she's been in a fallout shelter for decades, but the ultra-wealthy weren't hiding excesses even long ago.
There's whole magazines and television shows (Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous...) going back decades that are exclusively about this very topic.
Such a weird, obviously untrue, thing to say.
"While there is no official ranking, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post are widely recognized as the three most important and influential newspapers in America. These publications are often referred to as the country’s "newspapers of record" because they set the national news agenda and are frequently cited by political and economic elites.
Big Mike said...
"But is it Trump's fault?"
"@Althouse, you subscribe to the Times while trying to maintain a grip on reality. Is there a point where you realize that you cannot possibly do both?"
Big Mike, you are constantly maintaining that Ms. Althouse is a big NY Times fan, hanging on its every word.
The NY Times (and WaPo) are considered "papers of record," and while Prof. Althouse may have once been an acolyte, it should be obvious to a frequent blog visitor that she fisks and often mocks these papers for their relentless TDS and leftist spin. She exposes and critiques the legacy media brilliantly. Read her posts through this lens and enjoy.
Trump was an example of the trend decades before he apparently started the trend?
Don't anyone tell her about Graceland or Jackson's Neverland, either!
Those who take the Times pronouncements serious as we know contributors must tow the line: see tom cotton
It's amazing how petit bourgeois our supposed progressives are.
that she fisks and often mocks these papers for their relentless TDS and leftist spin
…yah, then she often propagates Times’ critical leftie propaganda without comment leaving it to the commentariat to set the paper of record straight. I’m not going to help your side. We got it…
How much Botox did Biden have, or is the NYT denying that he had work done
That wasn't Botox, it was embalming fluid.
At one time, you could actually get the news from the NYTimes. During the '64 Presidential election, if you read the news part of the paper you could find out that what the opinion part of the paper claimed that Goldwater had said was often NOT what he'd said. I think that was called "journalism". I think it's now regarded as passe.
"The ultrawealthy seem less and less concerned with hiding their excesses. They’re richer than ever, and figures like Lauren Sánchez Bezos and President Trump give them permission to flaunt their neo-Gilded Age spoils."
I wonder how this author would describe Buzby Berkeley's movies from the 1930s. The Depression era was taking a heavy toll, yet the public flocked to movies with Fred and Ginger in fancy dress dancing the night away. It was all about the excess that was beyond reach for most but not beyond imagination.
Hard to believe Lauren Sánchez Bezos would think she represents the epitome of wealthy style, but I suppose she does. To me she represents a walking catalog of what wealth cannot buy. And I suppose, as the poor people have become fat because of the diet they can afford, the rich people must now become thin to maintain the juxtaposition of their distinctiveness.
Looking at you, Governor Pritzker, the exception to the rule for reasons, big enough to orbit.
"figures like Lauren Sánchez Bezos and President Trump"
The New Odd Couple
The people are fat because of the wrong diet, an expensive diet, consumed in excess, which sabotages their metabolic function.
@baghdadbob, yes sometimes Althouse pushes back. Often she does not. It takes no great leap of faith to presume that when she does not push back that she is in complete or very substantial agreement with the content of the article she references. And that’s before we consider that she will not see what the Times and the Post choose not to print.
Barclay (torygraph) independent (liubimov ex kgb) any others that come to mind
It's more that the media doesn't publicized the excesses of the rich when Democrats are in control. Was there really more extravagance in the 1980s than there was before or after, or were the media just on the look out for more?
"A 'rich face' is stretched taut, often incapable of varied expressions and plumped with filler or implants or a person’s own grafted fat." Writes Amy Odell.
At the risk of sounding taut-ological, NYT writers have nonsurgical “bitch face.”
Now do Mark Zuckerberg - who willingly went along with Crook Joe Biden's censorship demands.
Both Biden and Pelosi are massively worked on.
What about Madonna? She's a very wealthy leftist.
Her face is as fake as it gets.
That’s why the past failures of Marxism and the French revolution don’t hold sway today. We should try it again because the current rich are different.
It wouldn't matter if they were, the revolutionaries are still the same.
The NYT referring to Dr. Who & The Hunger Games exemplifies its descent into low-brow clicks.
And that was dr who when it was still good
And this should concern me why?
What do she mean that "Rich people didn't look like this before?' They've looked like that since plastic surgery was invented.
rehajm said...
"Katherine Helmond in Brazil had her face stretched like that photo, too."
That is exactly what I thought when I saw that photo, too. Brazil came out in 1985.
Movie stars have had problematic plastic surgery for decades. So have the rich. The "Bride of Wildenstein," for example.
When I saw that picture, I thought of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, but Katherine Helmond works better.
The ultrawealthy seem less and less concerned with hiding their excesses.
Underlying Implication: They should be ashamed, demanding to be taxed, and always giving their money away.
Sometimes I wonder if some of you read the same blog I do. about 60% of the time Althouse is highlighting NYT articles or content because she is critical of it. About 10% she is amused by some juxtaposition, about 20% she is pointing out purely the interesting concept the article is covering and maybe 10% of the time she favors what the NYT is saying.*
Now we COULD use an argument from silence to say that of the 100 pieces of content per day, Althouse only pillories 1, then she approves of the other 99, but I don't think that would be fair. Ultimately, she leans liberal, but truly does want to hold the left accountable for their excesses. She actually hold the right less accountable, in my estimation.**
* not a scientific study
** That could mean she doesn't care enough about the right to get up the gumption to even try and correct them (Beneath her contempt) But I would think that would create too much friction in Meadehouse, so I doubt it.
Leftists are fine with their billionaires.
thanks, Wa St Blogger. That's generally accurate (other than that I'm worried about discord with Meade or I lack "gumption"!)
No mention of Pelosi?
" That could mean she doesn't care enough about the right to get up the gumption to even try and correct them (Beneath her contempt)"
It's probably because I haven't found any right-wing media that I want to read. I need source material and I can't find anything that's like The New York Times but on the right. It's just not good enough.
Meet the $50mn ‘experience designers’ for the 0.01 per cent ~ FT
'House reveals, heli-skiing and branded condoms are all in a day’s work for the professionals who curate billionaires’ lives.'
"As the mastermind of $50mn weddings and “no budget” birthdays, Ken Fulk has views on conspicuous consumption. “We work for people for whom money is not an obstacle. Time is their limited resource. For them, luxury is not about accumulation, but time well spent,” he says."
https://www.ft.com/content/d0799c70-b01b-4ca8-8406-06cf36397ec0?shareType=nongift
I saw this framing as part of the program to dehumanize the rich--they don't look normal--to label them gooks, in the context of the Vietnam War five decades ago. It makes it easier to hate them and justify legislatively taking their stuff.
But then I was similarly annoyed at the justification of micro-looting by Hasan Piker in the Times podcast this week.
And I thought about how I would never, ever give a dime to the Times, such that when i view the free NYT site and see and article I want to read, I use webpage archive to read it for free.
Call it micro-looting the Times I suppose.
Conflicted.
Brazil came out in 1985
…and top 5 all time movie for me. Also part of the Criterion Collection with a bunch of movies movie snobs know they’re supposed to appreciate…
I need source material and I can't find anything that's like The New York Times but on the right. It's just not good enough.
I ask this with the utmost respect: what constitutes "good enough"? If a newspaper is caught lying (and even more often, presenting opinion pieces as news and salting even generally newsy pieces with prejudicial language) as much as the NYT has, especially in recent years, does its prior reputation carry over sufficiently to keep it "good enough"?
If it's the quality of the writing or editing, isn't the accuracy and newsworthiness of an article at least as important as the use of fifty-cent words in Times New Roman?
I get that the Post doesn't always cover the same things (perhaps particularly culture news) and doesn't cover what it does cover as skillfully, at least in terms of language, grammar, that sort of thing. I specify the Post because I suspect that - perhaps unconsciously - there could be some New York bias - I believe I recall that you lived in and love New York (I hope I'm not making that up). And because there simply aren't any right-leaning papers in major markets anymore (was the Sacramento Union the last, before it went to a tabloid format? I don't even know if it's around anymore), it's probably impossible to find a right-leaning paper with the budget, and therefore the journalistic resources, of the NYT. But shouldn't the NYT have to meet the high standard that it claims it established, in order to be considered "good enough" itself? And does it?
Then again, it does provide material.
It's probably because I haven't found any right-wing media that I want to read. I need source material and I can't find anything that's like The New York Times but on the right. It's just not good enough.
I have to agree. Few outlets out there that have the breadth and depth of the big three that approach from a conservative view. Have to go to alternative sources and often they are very narrow in their scope. Anyway, I was more poking fun than actually considering that you found conservatives beneath your contempt.
Moisturize me! An episode that ended on a touching note.
The federalist is good on many angles they dont want to challenge
Who would have thought who would descend into obscurity after about a decade
There was a sci-fi flick where a character was represented as a face on a skin stretched across a frame.
Or was it a horror show.
Today's Neo Gilded Age displays wealth inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor, which has widened, with a small percentage of individuals holding a large portion of the nation's wealth and a notable presence of political corruption, which seemingly will never go away.
I think the California/New York Post is far more informative and entertaining than the "papers of record" (they may have been at one time, but now they are FNM and relish being strictly propaganda for the Left).
"I ask this with the utmost respect: what constitutes "good enough"? If a newspaper is caught lying ..."
No. It's not about the lying. I assume lots of lying all around all journalism and lying is an important part of what I'm looking for while reading.
It's about a home page that isn't ugly and full of repulsive ads and that displays a wide range of subjects represented by headlines that are substantive and suggest new material.
For example, take a look at Washington Examiner. The home page is so badly formatted, such a mess, that I cannot force myself to look at it long enough to see what is bloggable. I wish I could! The left hand margin is cut off in my browser. There's nothing inviting about the headlines. It's physically unreadable to me.
"The left hand margin is cut off in my browser."
I reopened it and it wasn't cut off, so I guess that's not a permanent problem. But still, I get the overall sense that this is offered as food for right wingers. I've never made it my thing to critique this stuff and it's not my natural impulse. This isn't my job, you know. If you paid me, I might do it if I needed a job, but I don't even need a job, and I don't want a job!
the content is crap but such large portions….
Paddy O hits the nail on the head.
What are the pyramids in Egypt if not monuments to “an elite, all-powerful clique that gets to operate under a different set of societal norms and rules."
As were the babylonian ziggurats
rehajm said...
"Brazil came out in 1985
…and top 5 all time movie for me. Also part of the Criterion Collection with a bunch of movies movie snobs know they’re supposed to appreciate…"
Try "The City of Lost Children"
"Moisterize me!"
Several others have already mentioned "Brazil" which is what I thought of after I read the header to this post and saw the image. Beyond that, though, this reminds me of going to my 25 year college reunion and, from a distance, seeing a classmate who has had a very successful career working for some high-end luxury brands in New York. I had seen photos of her before that reunion and knew that she had dramatically changed her look; she had been a rather plain-looking Jewish girl from Long Island when I knew her in college, but now she's blonde and her professional photos all look more like glamour shots. At the reunion, though, I was immediately struck by how unnatural and frozen her face looked in person vs. how it appeared in photos.
Plastic surgery is like most endeavors - "prefect" is the enemy of "good".
People who make small believeable adjustments benefit.
Those who get the Full Monty; not so much. Kinda like the people who chooe dentures or implants that are whiter than Cinderella's wedding dress and lined up more uniformly than soldiers on parade.
As a long-time resident of the Peoples' Republic of Illinois, I can assure the Althouse Community that Gov. Pritzker is engaged in a fat-jab regime. The problem is, he doesn't look any better.
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