On raising city kids
I picked up the August issue of Vogue to read during the WiFi-less flight I took this past weekend (Mental note: I really should subscribe, since now that I think of it I probably buy at least 6 issues per year off the newsstand.)
Anyway, Sarah Jessica Parker is on the cover, and the interview with her is pretty good. Two things I especially loved:
1. In every photo she's still rocking the Manolo Blahniks-- the
defining brand for the Carrie Bradshaw era -- even now that the trendy
set has mostly jumped ship to Christian Louboutin. Now that's dancing with the one that brung ya.
2. Her reasoning for deciding to raise her family in New York City, despite the fact that she has three young children:
2. Her reasoning for deciding to raise her family in New York City, despite the fact that she has three young children:
"You do start to understand the behind-the-gate mentality, the getting in the car in your driveway... but I can't imagine living in seclusion. We flirted with it. We went outside the city and troubled all these realtors and stood in these homes and fantasized, and then I kept picturing nine o'clock at night and" -- she breaks into mime drumming her fingers on her crossed knees and staring into the middle distance.
"The beautiful thing about New York is, you have to expose yourself to other people the minute you step outside the door. There is no choice. And I love that.
Connecting the dots
--Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, from the truly fantastic profile of her in next week's New Yorker
I was so impressed with Sheryl Sandberg when I saw her in April on this panel about Women in Tech, which I maintain is the best panel I've seen at a conference ever (and I've seen a lot of them.) Both the article and the panel are highly recommended -- whether you're a woman, in the tech industry, both, or neither.
On Ohio and oregano
From a reportorial standpoint, I'm completely in awe of Matt Taibbi and his fearlessness. He writes for the typically liberal Rolling Stone, but he personally never comes off as left or right-- he's just fiercely anti-corruption. His beat at RS for the past few years has been Wall Street, which has obviously led to lots of interesting articles. Whether you agree with him or not, the man has cajones and he's exhilarating to read.
For a primer on Taibbi's style and outlook, you should watch Amy Goodman's recent video interview with him. In it, he compares Ohio's current governor to the kind of drug dealer who swaps in oregano for weed. He says this intelligently, calmly, on television, wearing a suit, not blinking an eye-- and it totally makes sense in the context he's presented. I'm telling you, the guy has a gift.
I've transcribed some of the best of it below, but you should watch the video yourself, if only for the rare opportunity to see an on-air reporter like Amy Goodman: A beautiful, smart woman who is apparently aging naturally, gray hair and all.
MATT TAIBBI: Just to back up, you know, provide some context for this Wisconsin thing, and especially for the Ohio thing, given, you know, what their governor [John Kasich] used to do for a living.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
TAIBBI: Well, he was an employee for Lehman Brothers, and he was—
GOODMAN: This is Governor Kasich.
TAIBBI: Governor Kasich. And he was intimately involved with getting the state of Ohio's pension fund to invest in Lehman Brothers and buy mortgage-backed securities. And of course they lost all that money [after Lehman went bankrupt in September 2008 and the subsequent collapse of the housing market].
...But what they're doing now is they're blaming the people who are collecting the pensions. They're blaming the workers, they're blaming the firemen, they're blaming the policemen. In reality, they were actually the victims of this fraud scheme.
The only reason people aren't angrier about this, I think, is because they don't really understand what happened. If these were car companies that had sold a trillion dollars worth of defective cars to citizens of the United States, there would be riots right now. But these were mortgage backed securities, it's complicated, people don't understand it, and they're only now I think beginning to realize they've been defrauded.
The broad crime in all of this was just fraud. These banks... took this stuff that they knew was very, very risky and very, very likely to default, and they were going to the State of Wisconsin, the State of Ohio, the State of New York, and saying, 'Hey, this is as safe as United States treasury bonds. You should buy this, and you'll earn a little bit more than you'll earn with t-bills.' The reality is, they were taking absolutely worthless stuff and sticking it with these people and then fleeing the scene.
This is no different than drug dealers who take a bag of oregano and sell it to you as, you know, a pound of weed. That's exactly the same scam.
On love and change
"We just do what we want to do. We're not here to suppress each other; we complement each other. He looks great whatever he does. I'm constantly changing, evolving. That's good, right?
...Neither of us is ever scared to express ourselves or feels the pressure to conform. And people are always saying, 'What's he going to do next with his hair?' "
-Victoria Beckham in the January 2011 InStyle UK
Though Posh and Becks are often ridiculous, I love this aspect of their coupling. In any long-term relationship, it can be very easy for two people to unconsciously hold each other back: into certain roles, looks, or behaviors. I think this subtle suppression is a big part of why marriage sometimes gets a bad rap. Staying open to a partner's changes, from hairstyles to jobs, is something that most of us have to actively work on.
The Beckhams have had some public bumps in the road, but they definitely seem to cheer each other on and allow each other to evolve, both in their styles and careers. And after 12 years of marriage (which seems like an eternity in celebrity-ville) they seem to be going strong.
