Sorry about the current obsession with the Observer/Guardian, but I do think that a newspaper that has such a magisterial online presence and which prides itself on journalistic standards and objectivity is worth a closer look.
So when while reading the Observer women’s section yesterday I cane across this article from Kathryn Flett I couldn’t let it go:
I’m going on a man hunt
Get a job? A man? In these complex times, what’s an honest gold-digger to do[…]
So a woman doesn’t need to be a hottie to land herself a millionaire, but if she wants to keep one she’ll need the same amount of self-belief and determination that some men channel into climbing the north face of the Eiger. Gold-digging will always be a slog, but if a woman’s idea of a romantic pay-off is signing a pre-nup then who am I to judge how the contemporary Becky Sharp spends her ‘working’ day?
Indeed, when the following refreshingly honest ad was posted on craigslist, you had to admire the pragmatism.
‘I’m tired of beating around the bush,’ the advertiser wrote. ‘I’m a spectacularly beautiful 25-year-old. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but a million a year is middle-class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching … I am interested in marriage only’, and then, sweetly, if optimistically, ‘hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way’. They didn’t, of course.
Given there are fewer marriages every year, the usual gilt-edged security afforded the traditional gold-digger seems to be that much harder to acquire, so hey – why not tell it like it is?
More…
How oddlly familar.I thought. I know that story:
I Am Saying She’s A Golddigger
I came across this Craigslist-related morality play while idly googling for something else, as is often the way. Apparently this dating ad and the reply has been doing the email rounds on Wall St and I think it’s time it broke into the general population.
Craigslist Meets WallStreet…Classic
What a classic answer…..THIS APPEARED ON CRAIG’S LIST
What am I doing wrong?
Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy.
I’m not from New York . I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.[…]
In the immortal words of Chandler Bing, could they be any more shallow?
But on the other hand, there is something to be said for treating marriage like a contract, at least everone knows where the stand, or thinks they do. But it only works when both sides have more or less equal bargaining power, which patently isn’t the case here.
Still, there was a time when a girl had to rely on her father to do the bargaining when she was sold into marriage – I suppose it’s a step forward, of a kind, that now she gets to set the terms of the sale herself.
I wrote that back at the start of October. Now I’n not an idiot, I’m perfectly aware that print journalists mine the internet for stories and this article is most likely a amalgam of many sources. I’d be very surprised indeed if Flett had read my post. I’n not alleging plagiarism; but the trouble.is that Flett does present the storyi as though she had come across it herself on Craig’s Liist.
That she did I find highly doubtful. More likely is that the story’s been percolating around and through email lists and eventually ended up in her inbox, or she saw it on a blog. It’s been out there for a while now.
But it is deeply irritating to see her turning a quick buck on a piece of fluff built on other people’s unpaid work.
Flett saw a story online and used it to hang a saleable article on, presenting the story as her own whilst completely ignoring the original source. It may be typical journalistic sleight of hand to do this but for me it borders on the dishonest.
She also competely diregarded the enormous amount of discussion and commentary about what this story says about relations between men and women in today’s society, much of which has been taking place online .
She might’ve written about the way online debate is pushing the boundaries of discussion on gender relations, using the craigslist ad as a jumping-off point. Now that would have made a good artlcle. But no. Instead we got a bit of metropolitan fluff about Flett’s lovelife and her brushes with lucury, not omitting the obligatory allusion to Becky Sharp, that convenient literary shorthand for the archetypal mercenary female – which is what the Gurdian/Observer seems to think its female readers are, an army of forty-ish Becky Sharps interested in only what the most fashionable preschool, London address or wrinkle cream is.
Journalists are very fond of emphasising the differences between themselves and bloggers. They like to think that they have superior ethics. Bolllocks. The differences between bloggers and journalists are that a] bloggers acknowledge our sources with links, and b] bloggers don’t get paid for mining others’ work for material. Well, some do, but like journalists who do the same thing, they’re assholes.
