Time was when the Wall Street Journal was a respected paper: always with a business-friendly, mostly conservative point of view, but one at least respected. But ever since Rupert Murdoch acquired it a couple of years ago, it has ditched the gravitas for the sort of knee-jerk captain-of-industry populism best exemplified by Mr. Burns. And there was no better example of how tired and fussy this new Journal is than a recent op-ed piece published against cupcakes.
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The author is Joe Queenan, a self-labeled “cultural critic,” which essentially means he's a failed reporter who'd rather create witty bon mots than, you know, actually report. His sad, tired, forced piece works in slams against Jimmy Carter, Sex and the City, liberalism and all the other bogeyman the Journal crowd fears behind their servants and gated communities.
“With their fawning subservience to the cupcake,” Queenan writes, “Americans had once again
been led by the nose into mortifying behavior by the marketers who
invent odious social trends and then trick everybody into thinking they
result from a real paradigm shift bubbling up from the heartland.”
You mean kind of how the Journal and others joined the Dubya administration in leading us into Iraq?
The funniest thing about Queenan's slam is that it's about two years too late. Even his assertion that pie is the new cupcake is about a year off–it's donuts that are now in, you cultural critic, you! A reminder that people should look toward the Journal for cultural trends the same way people should look to the Weekly for fawning coverage of Javier's…
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