Being Young and Unemployed Sure Is Trendy

Being Young and Unemployed Sure Is Trendy:

No! No one should. And no one should feel bad for old Scotty Boo-Berry up there either. The Millennial Job Whine is not something that should elicit pity from any rational person. Not having a job certainly sucks. But turning down a 40k-a-year job or holding out for the dream gig (or at least the beginnings of the dream gig) while wasting away in Manhattan and thinking that's a Big Story sucks more. One difference in the two types of coverage of this boo-hoo phenomenon is that on "The Awl" LiveJournal site they are being a bit winking in their post series, I suspect. (Biddle included — he seems in on it.) But the Times is dreadfully serious. This young white man who lives in a nice house and went to Colgate is having a mild struggle to find a career for himself and that is a some Great Big Indicator of our troubled times. The Times certainly does its share of reporting on the genuine miseries in this country, but why then throw the balance so precariously out of whack with this Updikian rich people fact-fart? It's likely they're just trying to ruffle their readers, who are mainly the perpetually worried upper-middle-classers who crawled out of the '70s and '80s and never want to look back. They do, however, seem to have a strange proclivity (prurient delight?) for watching an entitled generation of unspecial kids flounder and flummox in the muddy river delta that is one's messy post-college years.