"It’s a lot easier to try and do the Hollywood thing when your parents can always pay your rent, when your parents can take as much time off of work as they need, when your parents can chase your dream across the country…. Wouldn’t it be nice to always have a safety net, when you’re trying to vault into the stars?"
A different time, a different place, a slightly different industry, but the authors of "How To Have The Number One Hit Single In Britain In 90 Days Or Your Money Back!" (available for free on the internet, and itself a fascinating, if dated read) indicate that you *have* to be on the dole and broke for the steps to work.
This isn't because Artistic Integrity, far from it. Rather, it's because you need to be in a place where you have nothing to lose and are putting yourself in even more desperate straits, no money, no prospects, no talent, to the point where you'll try any novelty., any dopey shtick that might get you out.
Don’t forget how shitty “thank you for smoking” was!  Why has Jason Reitman been able to make so many shitty movies? Why are we all watching all these shitty Jason Reitman movies?
My critique of this framing is that "nepo baby" oversimplified compared to what is going on.
When I think of "nepotism" I think of a family member either giving you, or at least calling in a favor to get you a job. I'm sure that this is a factor in the success of some second- or third-generation actors, but it is hardly the only factor.
You touch on two other factors in your article - heritability and wealthy parents being able to support a kid pursuing a questionable career choice. However, there are other factors as well.
-Even if your actor parent doesn't get you a job, they have some experience on how best to get one as an actor and can advise you on what to do
-if your parent is an actor, you and your parent are both more likely to see acting as a reasonable career aspiration and less likely to decide that it's a pipe dream and you should really become an accountant or something
-if your parents are actors or in the entertainment industry, you are likely to live in LA or NY or somewhere else where there are a lot of acting opportunities and/or where you may organically make connections. It's easier to get a bit part in a movie in LA than rural Kansas.
These are all significant advantages (privileges if you will) that children of actors have over other people, that will help them break into acting if they want to. However, they are all distinct from the idea that your dad got you the job. Just saying that people got their job through nepotism ignores these factors, which is bad, especially since these factors give people a leg up in other professions as well and need to be accounted for when someone claims that they just want "equality of opportunity."
Furthermore, if your parents are actors, you probably grew up singing; dancing; acting; your image was crafted; you were in inprov classes, your friends and acquaintances did all the same... read up on "10,000 hours"
The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. If your dad was a mechanic, you grew up watching him work on machines, and picked up these skills. My dad was a programmer, guess where I ended up.
I realize this is completely a side topic and don't wish to start a major thing. But the Anders Ericsson research is real, it's not pseudoscience. I find some critiques of his research to be persuasive, but it's hardly made-up.
The main issue is Gladwell and other popular writers oversold some factors of the research, and undersold others.
It's very easy to shout "10,000 hours" as some magical threshold (which it's not), and undersell what deliberate practice is. Proponents also oversell what that level of effort will actually achieve. It doesn't trigger elite status in the pantheon of human history. Generally, it will make one an expert in a field that has the characteristics that Ericsson specifies in his research. There are those that will achieve epic status with less practice, and those that won't be experts with it. Those that pretend the research says otherwise are mistaken.
I was referring to Gladwell. He has basically admitted he takes real research and then spins a story out of it to suit his narrative purposes. It is obvious that practice makes one better at something, with lots of variation between individuals due to heritable skill or other factors. The "10,000 hours" as a metric just doesn't reflect reality very well.
In a sense this conversation does relate to the main topic, given that expert-level practitioners in a creative field can be passed over for someone's relatively mediocre relative or connection.
Roughneck on a drill rig? Joking aside, I think many children follow in their parents' foot steps as they're the most consistent roll model for which children aspire to until they rebel against their parents.
Oh I ain't laughing. Family businesses can be a good way to hand down wealth. I was joking that you implied you went into programming but were really not.
Dad was a hot-metal printer who in the 70s saw computers were going to take that over. He was always pushing me towards programming, but I became a hardware technician instead, and later morphed into a programmer all the same.
This is definitely a factor too. People do tend to be interested in their parents careers.
This obviously is not the case for everyone, and probably depends on the career, but I'm sure it puts a finger on the scale. If children of actors are more likely to be interested in it than the average person, and therefore give it a shot, you are going to find a disproportionate number of legacies in Hollywood, even they had no actual advantage, just because they are more likely to try.
This kind of goes along with the idea I mention above that, to the average person, being an actor seems like a questionable career choice, but may come across as a more realistic career choice if your parent(s) succeeded at being actors. OTOH, I heard an interview with Sarah Polly where she talked about really discouraging her daughter from going into acting (at least as a child), given her own experiences.
It's funny because I think creative parents, to a degree, will discourage their children from following in their footsteps. I never hear a doctor telling their kids to not go into medicine.
My family was aghast that I had switched majors from engineering to architecture (even though no one in my family is in either profession) but they saw architecture as not being a lucrative career path. Of course they were partially correct about it not being lucrative.
Yeah all this is true but he touches on the idea of privileges. Still, there are lots of wealthy, connected people in those areas. Not all of them are making it.
This actually touches on the opposite side of this. There is a little bit of an availability heuristic going on here. You notice when a famous person's kid goes into show business, but less so when they do not. As a result, while there probably is an disproportionate number of legacies in entertainment (I would be surprised if there were not), it is probably less disproportionate than you might otherwise assume.
Very well said. It's applicable to so many other places in life, too. For example, I'd been to a few fancy restaurants with my parents when I was a kid. So, when I was taken to one in my first "real" office job, I knew how to act, knew how to order etc., whereas a guy who didn't have that opportunity growing up might commit some faux pas, or just be so frozen with terror that he doesn't give a good account of himself.
And as Freddie says in his article, this isn't - or shouldn't be - a moral judgement on either person here. It's an advantage that I had that others did not. I can recognize that advantage, and how it helped me, without being twee or self-flagellating about it. But because we're absolutely obsessed with bootstrappin', we either pretend it's not an example or we throw ourselves pity parties for having some unearned advantage. Not good.
JD Vance has proven himself an ass in recent years, but he does a good job explaining this in Hillbilly Elegy. I loved the part where he's out to dinner with other new recruits to a white shoe law firm (or something along those lines) and is served "sparkling water" for the first time. He writes:
"I took one sip and literally spit it out. It was the grossest thing I’d ever tasted. I remember once getting a Diet Coke at a Subway without realizing that the fountain machine didn’t have enough Diet Coke syrup. That’s exactly what this fancy place’s 'sparkling' water tasted like. 'Something’s wrong with that water,' I protested. The waitress apologized and told me she’d get me another Pellegrino. That was when I realized that sparkling' water meant “carbonated” water. I was mortified."
I used to work for a company with an office near Munich. With no exaggeration, every desk had a glass 750ml bottle of Gerolsteiner on it each morning, with more in the break room if you wanted it. Dehydration was not a problem.
I think most of the reason I liked this story is that I can't stand basically any seltzer-like drink (except for a Tom Collins, if that counts). People seem to love Le Crux, but I feel like it all tastes like, if water went bad. I'll stick with my Pepsi Max.
Yeah. seltzer water is an acquired taste. I can enjoy that on it's own w/ just a slice of lime. Soda water though needs something. We have a Sodastream at home and I usually do a 3:1 ratio w/ cranberry juice. Otherwise plain soda water is terrible.
That's kind of what I do as well, though the ratio is closer to 3:2 water:juice, but I add a little bit of orange juice with the cranberry juice. There doesn't need to be much of it, but I feel it noticeably improves the taste.
Then there is the long ago story I read about a smart but non-credentialed young man who was being considered for a fairly prestigious job in a big NYC bank . Turns out that part of the interviewing process was being invited to lunch in the executive dining room . It was clear he was smart and hard working - but did he have the manners and social graces this bank required?
I am guessing he was dressed appropriately in Brooks Brothers (I said this was LONG ago) but turns out the main dish was turbot which he had never heard of (nor had I being a small town NJ girl of no great parentage). When the waiter came around asking what else he wanted, he said he wanted the turbot RARE - thinking, I guess that it was some sort of exoctic cut of beef. I will leave it up to you if he got the job.
Or you do what I always did on first dates many years before dutch treat was a "thing" and the man paid ( a or lunch with the boss and the questions was - a glass of wine or no) . Do nothing until they order and then say, "I'll have the same."
Or, if needing to signal that you are sophisticated about food, say "however the chef recommends it". Be aware that if you do this with a special/unusual dish, there is a non-zero chance of the chef coming out after you're done to personally ask you how you liked it, so better know in advance whether your dining partners are likely to be impressed or annoyed by that.
In a similar vein, I heard of a law student invited to dinner by a white shoe firm who got on the floor to look for a fork she had dropped. She was ranked #1 at her school, but did not get an offer from that particular firm.
Nonetheless, as someone who didn't grow up using knives and forks and was also poor, I can't help a certain degree of disdain. Direct experience is absolutely not necessary to learning the social etiquette common to the well heeled. Do these people not read or watch movies? Do they not pay any attention to the people around them?
Is "turbot" even a fancy word? I didn't think so. And if invited to dine somewhere for a job, isn't reviewing the menu beforehand simply good practice, especially if it's at the type of restaurant you're not accustomed to?
I get your point but I grew up watching movies, reading, and had parents with excellent table manners but with rather simple meals needing only one fork, knife and spoon. . My father would not eat any meat that didn't resemble the sole of a shoe so the first time a date offered to cook for me, he brought the leg of the lamb to the table and it pretty pink and i was sure it was RAW . Now that I love my hamburgers rare some restaurants will only do it to medium rare, since , it is thought dangerous because of all the diseases that uncook meat can cause. And it is true, my father never got sick from dinner.
We also never had shrimp since we lived inland in the Berkshire hills prior to the days o f frozen fish. At age 16 I went to a very fancy wedding with the swells and there on this huge buffet table I encountered them . It was love at first bite. I now live in Mexico and eat them three times a week.
You're right; I always forget the tremendous influence in my life of always having lived in large metropolises. Additionally, the reading that absorbed me in my youth were the novels of 19th century which were often focused on the manners and habits of the wealthy.
That said, I still recall walking pass an IHOP on my way to middle school and being absolutely convinced it must have been where the rich dined because I had never seen such a spectacular roofline in real life.
I was a sophomore? junior? in college before I had my first experience at a restaurant that was "nice".
Disdain seems excessive. You can be an observant person, doing your best to master manners to get ahead, and still find yourself confronted with the problem of unknown unknowns. Plus, the meritocratic myth can mislead strivers into believing social ease still ought to matter less than it does, compared to other achievements.
My parents, well-educated middle-class strivers themselves, never accepted "not being richer" as an excuse for having less-than-world-class etiquette, as they understood it, especially at the table. The nice thing about table manners, too, is that they're pretty legible: which fork do you use, are you in the habits of saying "please" and "thank you" at the right times?...
But it would not have occurred to my parents, and consequently not to me, that "table manners" should include researching a restaurant ahead of time, even for a job interview: the *point* of manners, as we understood them, was their universality, so that specifics like what restaurant you're at should pale in comparison to other things, like whether you're ready to answer complicated job-related questions. Nor did I learn other, less-legible manners, manners we often don't even call "manners", because they're not about politeness, but fitting in, like how hard to laugh at a superior's joke.
The actual manners governing social interactions aren't all about etiquette or being painfully polite. As "painfully" suggests, being painfully polite is a actually a hindrance: status games often involve knowing when to be rude, when it's OK, or even expected, to bend or break the rules a little.
Absolutely, and you learn the confidence to bend or break those rules in an appealing way by growing up watching adults who are at ease in those social settings.
The disdain comes from my personal experience of coming from a rather complicated background and never feeling like I belong to any particular culture. I come from peasants, minor aristocracy, industrialists and intellectuals in the not so distant past. This combined with criminally negligent parents stunted by the Chinese Cultural Revolution and a relocation to the US and growing up poor meant everything I've learned about society and its various cultural signifiers came from books, media and direct interaction with non-family members. It's really not so hard when your starting point is that nothing normal to you is reflected in the world around you.
Everytime I've been in a relationship or have had a close friendship there is a learning curve as I process all the different socioeconomic and cultural norms. I've had friends from both "high" culture and "low". And, I am reminded of reading Chimamanda Adiche and learning even the wealthiest and most cultured Nigerians considered cracking chicken bones standard practice at meals. Politeness requires making the adaptations necessary for your hosts comfortable rather strick adherence to any particular set of rules.
I come from an upper middle class academic background and it would never occur to me to research a restaurant's menu before going. Some of these things are really just rules that only apply to high corporate settings. Going to the type of expensive restaurants that high-end law firms go out to is just not part of your life experience growing up even if your parents are doctors or professors or average lawyers. It's likely that even most of the people at those dinners had to learn it.
On the other hand the sparkling water thing I just don't get. It's literally sold everywhere and not remotely expensive.
😂 I'm Chinese and I immigrated to the US when I was 6. I grew up using chopsticks and spoons. I was probably 7? 8? when I was first introduced to forks & knives (discounting cafeteria sporks) and never used them with any regularly until I was in my 20s.
I decided to look to the movies I watched years ago when I was learning manners since you have "disdain": for people who do not learn from them. So, first there were Ginger and Fred movies and they never ate - just danced. Alas, I didn't learn how to do that either. Then there were the series of Thin Man movies with Myrna Loy and William Powell playing a very sophisticated NYC couple but they never ate either - just drank and smoked a lot. In fact, they were often slighty inebriated so the most one could learn was how to hold a manhattan glass and a cigarette holder. Then of course there was Tom Jones who was right up my ally - chomped on some sort of big meaty bone with nary a utensil in site
The people around me were all Italians and they ate pasta almost exclusively -with a big spoon and fork that they used to twirl the spaghetti around before gobbling it up.
Are there movies you could recommend that could be used as teaching tools? Speaking of turbot - I think it is known as a junk fish that other FISH dine on. Also, if you are eating in the executive dining room as part of a job interview, do youREALLY check the menu before you go up inthe elevator. If you did, I think you would come down in said elevator very quickly and still hungry.
I think I was more aware of eating scenes simply because people on the screen did not eat the way I did. I remember being very conscious of Judy Garland in the Harvey Girls because she was obviously a representation of what is "proper". There were also scenes in Little House on the Prairie that contrasted the way people eat. I would say that movies featuring cross-status romances regularly featured dining scenes to contrast the characters' backgrounds, e.g., Pretty Women, Flashdance or even Splash. There are also changing places movies like the Prince and the Pauper. And, I have distinct memories of the way Bette Davis eats in her many movies where she plays a privileged woman.
When I was a law student and doing my dinner interview, I wolfed down my huge steak dinner and the partner sitting next to me stared and said "wow, you're going to have to go for a really long run tomorrow to work that off." Ha. I was a poor student who mostly ate peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches and of course I was going to take the opportunity of a free fancy dinner to clean my plate. I was also rail thin and didn't run. I got hired anyway. Honestly there is nothing I hate more than food snobbery. It is at the top of my list of unappealing personality traits.
Good story. Not that I believe it though. 😀 unless they were testing him.
“How do you like your turbot”.
“Pan fried as it says on the menu with the sauces and sides that’s mentioned on the menu. As to how you pan fry it, not my job. Probably you have to turn it occasionally, but I’m sure the chef knows what to do. Good afternoon, sir”.
It has been written that things like "free entrance to classical music concerts and art museums" is really a disguised subsidy for the middle class, the sorts of people who consider it important that their kids grow up knowing Bach from Wagner, Manet from Monet.
Anyway, at the place where I work and take naps, Feline Resources write me up all the time, and they claim to be working for me!
I do think part of the issue is that we treat entertainment professionals as being some sort of weird aristocracy.
Across all walks of life, it's pretty normal (especially historically) for children to follow in the footsteps of their parents. Aside from nepotism, there's a lot of logic to this - who is better suited to train you for a profession than your own parents? To me it doesn't seem especially nefarious if the child whose parent runs a plumbing business ends up picking up a lot of plumbing skills and becoming a skilled plumber in their own right.
With entertainment it's feels weirder though, maybe because of a baked in assumption that OF COURSE everyone wants to be in entertainment. So nepotism dynamics feel unfair in entertainment in a way they don't with other (still potentially lucrative, but) less prestigious professions.
But to me it feels a little dystopian to try and interrupt an otherwise relatively benign desire of parents to pass down their profession to their children. What we realistically need is not pure meritocratic access to the entertainment industry, but rather a downgrade of the prestige associated with it (as part of a general project of leveling prestige across different lines of work).
America is strange - the country wants to end privilege of birth in the racial sense but not in any specific sense. The former isn’t possible without the latter.
Yes it is. In fact it's far, far easier, and far more politically popular, to do what you're describing. See the work of Second City Bureaucrat here on Substack. He posted a very timely article just yesterday about how a soft eugenics based on (and here I'm paraphrasing) the meta-character aspects of race is perfectly compatible with the American civil religious value of individual merit:
America's obsession with class privilege knows no racial bounds. Plenty of middle and upper class racial minorities do as much to protect their social status and capital as any M&UC white people do. I once had a friend's father tell me that the "wet backs" were giving him (a hard working self-identified Chicano) a bad name.
Is it? I don’t think so. Pretty easy to admit to white privilege as an rich white, you’ve now eliminated class distinctions between you and the homeless white man on the street.
Wait, I missed a word in your response. No there are still class distinctions between, say, the middle class and a homeless fellow, but almost all of what passes as racial privilege is actually about class, hence my use of the word Proxy.
I'm not really sure we *are* trying to end privilege. Attempting to do so seems a fool's errand in a world of people with unequal circumstances (both innate and environmental). The only way to eliminate privilege is to destroy innate advantages that many people have, and that destructive process is both unfair and reduces overall human experience.
This feels right, but also it’s important to note that the desire to pass down the profession only happens when wealth and/or prestige are involved. (Obviously.) isn’t that the point of the article sort of? That once you have wealth and prestige in the bag, your descendants will too into perpetuity and this feudal system sucks?
I wouldn't say "only." Mostly, yeah. Most people who work in Burger King aren't wanting their kid to learn the family trade. But a good example is a local Chinese restaurant. A lot of second-generation owners are on the cusp of retirement. Some want their kids to do something else - something with more money, less 16-hour days, less scalding injuries. But there are plenty out there who desperately want the family business to stay open, only to find the kids don't want to do it.
Obviously wealth and prestige are nice, and most parents want that for their children. But I don't think that's the whole story here.
Many (most?) people who practice a particular trade or profession take pride in their work. I think it is very natural to want to pass those interests and skills down to your children. It probably doesn't apply to low-prestige jobs, but I'd expect there's a whole world of middle prestige jobs where it does apply - stuff like plumber, chef, academic, engineer, construction worker, baker, etc. I'd also expect it to apply to most small business owners, who of course can be all over the income and prestige spectrums.
On the whole I think this impulse to pass on a legacy to the next generation is of great social value. Yes, it can create highly unequal outcomes, but I'm not sure how you'd prevent it without dystopian measures. And the skills being passed along are valuable to all of society.
The better solution IMO is to just work towards a broadly prosperous and egalitarian society where everyone can enjoy a comfortable life regardless of profession. If that is achieved, then children following in their parents footsteps is charming rather than sinister.
The key point to me is the Hollywood angle. Its a very specific thing being passed down that would be far less common if "being good at pretending while pretty" didn't come with those things.
This is an old saying of how wealth works in most familial lines. Great grandfather starts a small business and struggles, but has kids. Grandfather (one of those kids) inherits all or part of that business, and proceeds to grow it into extreme wealth through hard work. Father goes into some unrelated field, such as doctor or actor as the initial startup costs are high, but they are covered here. And his child, son of someone who "skipped the line" has no appreciation of wealth and wastes anything he comes into.
I have seen this far too many times, at various stages.
I wonder how many nepo babies are actively trying to secure auditions and gigs for their own kids, while they claim they had no advantage. Probably a lot of them.
Of course. But there’s help your own children and then there’s pay for a fake resume to get them into the college you want. There’s help your own children and then there’s have your own agent make a call or risk being fired by you.
If you're a celebrity and your kid is Zosia Mamet or Maya Hawke, who can actually act and have a decent amount of charisma, then setting them up in Hollywood probably requires the equivalent of making a donation to your alma mater or volunteering to do a couple alumni interviews to help your smart kid get admitted through legitimate channels. If your kid is Lily Rose Depp or Dakota Johnson then whatever you're doing to help them build a career has to be closer to paying someone to write their college essays or faking that they're a star athlete or donating an entire library...it's the nepo babies who are obviously untalented who make me question wtf their parents had to do to get them those roles. I'm sure it wasn't pretty. Others probably got a very typical leg up from well-meaning parents that helped them capitalize on their genuine talent and I don't begrudge them at at all. Any parent would do the same for their kid in any industry.
Yeah, it's the difference between "I wish everyone as talented as X could be as successful" and "X doesn't deserve to be as successful as s/he is." It's a huge distinction that mirrors the longstanding conceptual wrinkle in "privilege" - some privileges are actually things that everyone should have (eg not being catcalled/harassed when moving about in the world), while others should not be extended to anyone.
That's a great way of articulating the distinction. Are you getting a leg up over equally qualified people because of who your parents are, or are you getting access to something you're completely unqualified for because of who your parents are? The latter feels like much more of an affront.
Except everyone that talented will never be able to that succesful. The vast majority of talented actors will never make it. There just aren't enough spots available at the top. So I don't think that not being catcalled is a good analogy.
I agree. I didn't really mean it as a direct analogy, just a conceptual link. Life is and always will be unfair: even if we eliminated nepotism, those that made in it in Hollywood would still owe their success to factors beyond talent and work ethic (physical appearance is obviously a big one, but even if *that* were eliminated (LOL) then random chance and "right place right time" circumstance).
But I still think it's a useful distinction because it frames how we think about the issue. The problem on the one hand is the nature of the business itself - not enough spaces for all the deserving people - while on the other hand it's the actual nepotism (I don't want to watch this jackass on my TV). And I do actually think that has implications for how we can more productively think about intersectional "privilege" in a broader sense.
These things are hard. Everyone should help their kids. But some people helping their kids makes life unfair for everyone else. It's a good instinct that leads to unjust outcomes. It's hard to know how to fix it, because no one is going to refuse to help their kids and it would be at least somewhat immoral to ask them to do so.
I don't think Freddie DeBoer has a problem with nepo babies, per se. He has a problem with how they respond to being nepo babies, the fact that some refuse to recognize how much their circumstances contributed to their success.
Honestly, if nepotism only operated in Hollywood and similar rarefied fields, I wouldn’t care (Jason Reitman aside). The problem is that nepotism is a necessary part of the hiring process for any job that anyone would want to have. We call it networking, but if we are honest, we ought to admit that networking is nepotism--exploiting our connections to powerful and influential people in order to get an advantage denied to other, likely equally skilled and hardworking, people. What talents are we wasting, what contributions are we denying ourselves, and which pressing societal problems remain unsolved, because our system is set up so that in order to have a shot at an interview, job candidates need a powerful person to vouch for them first?
That doesn’t sound right to me. Resumes and interviews are notoriously bad at selecting for good employees. And most companies advise managers to just confirm dates of employment. Having direct knowledge of someone and their work product is invaluable.
I think the obviously bad parts of nepotism make people over-correct in their critique, to the point where it's not clear what is being corrected for or what better outcome you're trying to achieve
The question is, can we guarantee an equal chance for someone who does not enjoy unearned benefits of networking and personal connection? And if the answer is no, how do we look them in the face as they struggle?
Well, your point is true for some situations, but nepotism operates for entry-level jobs and career switches too, and also when the powerful person actually has no idea about the work product. You are right that it’s important to have someone vouch for a candidate, but it’s too often the case that the powerful person is vouching not for the candidate’s work, but rather for their status as “the right kind of person.”
yep, totally agree, and I think it would be better if more people talked about that nuance than everyone over-corrects to "there's no good reason to ever allow someone else to hire someone they knew already" (which I'm not saying FDB or anyone in the comments does here, just that I see hints in that direction all the time, especially in the HR world)
Recommending someone you worked with before us not nepotism nor networking. Recommending someone because you went to private school with him, or because he’s a friend of your son, or school friend is.
??? This makes no sense to me. You're telling me that my professional network is only comprised of people I know in a professional sense, but have never worked with? People I've worked with directly are in another category that isn't networking anymore?
Ok, so It’s a form of networking but benign. This seems to be semantics.
It’s not the type of networking that goes on between elites and isn’t mutual back scratching either. In my company we just hired a guy in the recommendation of another existing employee, after an interview. This isn’t hiring the governor‘s niece.
I disagree that the difference is semantic. You hired someone in part because an existing employee recommended them - this is common and, in many cases, not very meritocratic, even if the candidate is well-qualified. For most jobs, there are dozens of candidates that apply and are qualified. Happening to know someone who works there can get your resume advanced when it otherwise would not have. Such a candidate isn't *less* qualified, sure, but they were still advanced by a metric of dubious meritocracy.
And, worth noting: it's a well-known fact in the recruiting world that employee referrals are both effective at finding successful hires (at least, more so than most sources of candidates) and bad for diversity (because people tend to have networks that share their own racial, socio-economic, and other traits). I just think people tend to approach these questions as far more cut-and-dried than they really are.
How are you defining "any job that anyone would want to have?" I've been in the white colllar world - well-paid, *relatively* low stress desk work, not exactly glamorous but certainly nice for a middle class lifestyle - and this is completely and totally alien to my experience. I've had exactly one job where I was vouched for before joining, and the overwhelming majority of people I've hired have not come with an internal recommendation. I can count them literally on one hand, now that I sit and really think about it. Maybe you're talking a few rungs up the ladder from where I am.
Or maybe it’s certain areas of the country? It seems to me that the east coast metropolitan areas are particularly dependent on granting access to jobs through powerful connections. That’s how I got my foot in the door at the elite private school in DC where I taught, for example. I tried for several months to get a teaching job on the strength of my resume as an experienced teacher with a BA and MA from one of the top universities in the countries, and no one would give me the time of day. But as soon as I used a connection they offered me an interview and hired me. My son is in the job market now and is having a similar experience as he looks for entry-level jobs. He needs to get someone important to provide him with access; otherwise no one will even consider him. These are personal examples, but everyone I know has found their jobs this way. Our family is privileged to be able to take advantage of the system, but it seems so unfair to me.
That might be it. The more "established" areas of the country might have denser networks. Same with small towns or regional cities. I'm an immigrant in a "boomtown" in the South. Between other immigrants and US transplants, we're probably well into the six figures by now. So for us, it is a blank slate.
I think it has much more to do with eliteness (or perceived eliteness) of the job. I work in a metropolitan area of the east coast and have very little experience with connection-based hiring, either as a person being hired, or as a person doing the hiring. Not none, but very little.
It has to do with who the clients/customers are of the business you work for. If they are rich, then having connections will trump any other metric for hiring. Because it means you will (very likely) bring in more clients/customers. Law firms that bill hundreds or thousands per hour, or architecture firms that build homes for wealthy people, or private schools that charge high tuition...those are all going to be areas where powerful, monied connections are highly valued.
Why on earth would you think that elite private schools would rely on resume rather than connections? Isn't that the entire point of elite private schools?
And upon further reflection, I’m wondering whether jobs in STEM, which have more objective measures of achievement, are immune to this problem? My husband is a mathematician and does a lot of hiring. He uses headhunters to locate candidates and follows up on references, of course, but he would never grant an interview to someone on the sole basis of their having a powerful friend.
The issue with tech (not STEM in general) is that there are more jobs than workers. That not only results in higher salaries but also lots of unqualified people doing jobs they're really not suited for.
I haven't found STEM professions to be immune to networking / contact influence. If anything, it's a way to find good talent. If you value certain employees, you may take their recommendations / references more seriously for a potential hire. Conversely, I've been waved off from firms based on friends who worked there or had worked there.
In the tech field, my last 2 jobs including my current position out of 6 have come from people I've worked with previously and also consider friends.
I've also put in a word for friends of mine that I have worked with at multiple places.
Generally speaking someone that can get vouched for is going to get looked at first and will get the nod over another equally qualified candidate. With that said it's a safe practice given the spectrum of talent. There's a lot of people that interview well as well as a lot of hiring managers that don't know how to interview properly so a known quantity making a recommendation carries a lot of weight behind it.
The trick is to learn how to get an entry level job, learn a lot, and then make sure people remember you based on your work. The important part is that ultimately you still have to perform. I wouldn't recommend a friend that I didn't think could hack it, frankly I've worked hard for whatever reputation I've earned and wouldn't compromise it. I also wouldn't expect my friends to do that either.
I've actually given negative recommendations for a couple people who asked me to refer them to my company. I felt terrible doing it but one of them in particular is an absolute nightmare to work with and lacks any level of self-awareness about it (hence the fact that they thought it was a good idea to ask me for a referral after the experience we had working together).
Thankfully I haven't had to do one of those yet. It's funny there are certain traits that correlate well across almost any field and ones that can sink you in almost any career.
Lack of self-awareness is an absolute killer for a lot of otherwise promising people. That's not to say that some don't still make it without any self-awareness but it's definitely a quiet hinderance that's hard to learn about and overcome.
I think this is very industry and market location dependent. I've found that it's much easier to move to other firms based on knowing someone at that firm. I've done the same at firms I've worked at in the past by recommending former co-workers. I think many industries prefer to find talent that way vs. cold hires off the street. It's not nepotism but it's definitely networking. This was true when I worked in Denver, Washington D.C. , New Orleans, and abroad.
My white collar and managerial experience matches this. It's rare that connections get one a job. In fairness, though, these jobs were not exactly glamorous. They were solid, good-paying white collar jobs for firms that were not household names.
Your Beast article isn't very good. In the piece you pandered way too hard to their editors in order to get published there, and for what? That site is even more pathetic than the NYT.
You also committed the very common error of calling twitter a "public square." It is not public, and it most certainly isn't square (unless you're referring to the monitor through which you view it.).
Nothing digital can ever even come close to replacing the actual public square, because it exists in reality. You can walk on it. No algorithmic demons can ban you from it. It's that simple. Digital imitations are too pathetic to even be comparable.
What a bizarre comment. You're aware that "public square" is a colloquialism, right, and even if it were exclusively a real physical place that wouldn't make it any more universally accessible than Twitter is. Digital and physical spaces each exclude different kinds of people, it's silly to pretend that physical spaces are automatically better, more authentic, or more accessible than digital ones.
I'm sorry. If you can't see that what's real is better than what isn't, I can't help you. Physical spaces are automatically better than digital "spaces." There's no getting around that. They are more authentic by definition.
You should look at the complete inability of all the losers constantly bitching on social media to change anything, for instance. Freddie has written about it frequently.
When we fuck up our metaphors we risk fucking up our thinking, and calling twitter a "public square" is fucking up indeed.
There's a very, very simple solution to nepotism. First, children must be separated from their families and communities by age 5. At this point, each child is given a randomized name and moved at least 100 miles away from their place of birth. All employers, in all fields, are required to report job opportunities to a centralized agency. All those seeking work are given another randomized professional name. Resumes are not permitted to name prior employers, university education, or personal interests. Internal opportunities are governed by the Office on Internal Recruitment, and those wishing for a promotion must undergo name randomization to avoid any perception of bias. Hiring outside the central agencies is illegal, with employer being punished by hefty fines and employee being subject to minimum 20 year prison sentences.
Of course - people would just be shocked at how often Jamie Diamond’s son adopted into a family of addicts in rural Kentucky ended up a managing director at Goldman and the son adopted into Diamond’s family ended up dying of an overdose.
I don't have much to say about the "Nepo Babies" article because I am one, and probably the most "nepo" of them all. You are absolutely correct that we live in a culture where chance rules but people still believe in just deserts. I laugh about it from atop my mountain every single day.
I'm commenting on how it looks to outsiders. You spend a large portion of the first half of the piece shitting on Musk, which is exactly what one would do to impress the pathetic editors of that website.
Musk, in this and only this instance, should be praised. Anyone who uses twitter deserves to be shit on, and he is truly shitting on them. It is glorious to behold. I do share your hope that the site dies eventually, but not before those dumb enough to use it eat plenty of excrement.
You are a case study in how twitter has destroyed the ability of so many to hold themselves accountable for dithering, every new statement contradicting the last buffoonery
How were his talents wasted? The Daily Beast has a large audience and Freddie wrote basically what you'd expect him to write given his output here.
I understand being irritated about where someone publishes, as good writing (e.g., Freddie's) will attract more attention to the site. I, for one, hope to never see Freddie publish on any Bari Weiss associated platform again as she's a hypocrite on `cancel culture' and, according to what I infer about Freddie's position on Israel (he's likely an anti-Zionist), Bari views him as an anti-Semite. None of that changes what he wrote over there (quite good) and I hope that people appreciated his perspective and maybe he got a few subscribers out of it. I don't see the need to question his intentions (e.g., by asserting that he's willing to compromise his values just to be viewed favorably by a prominent commentator) as he's always been very upfront and honest about his views.
I found it! This is why I was confused and disappointed when I saw where you had published. You wrote this, some time ago:
"They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”"
I thought it might have been Taibbi, but it was you.
There's no contradiction between finding "the Daily Beast reputation for excellence" to be a laughable piece of puffery on the one hand, and working for them on the other hand. If anything this contradicts the idea of pandering.
I disagree 100% with Freddie's stance on Elon Musk (the Left is just mad that the same arbitrary treatment they've dished out for years is now being turned against them) but this is a weak criticism.
There isn't a contradiction. The percentage of people who agree with every single thing their employer does or says is probably single-digits, and that's because they're sole proprietors. Expecting someone to have a 100% positive viewpoint of a publication - that they don't even work for full-time! - is ludicrous. People are allowed to have opinions. The corporate press hasn't yet denied them that, despite its best efforts.
Elon is a rank hypocrite in this case as free speech apparently doesn't extend to Alex Jones, elonjet, or Linette Lopez. The way that your argument sounds is that the ends justify the means.
Plenty of non-political/media talk happens on twitter, every day. Game threads for football and basketball, with no political content whatsoever, are incredibly popular and draw in fans and analysts alike. All those people are `dumb' and deserve to be `shit on' because they like to praise/gripe/complain and analyze what their favorite team(s) are doing with like minded individuals?
Hollywood nepotism is more pernicious than the other industries. First, there are SO few winners. An unconnected kid who goes to law school will still make a middle class living; a struggling actor often won’t. Second, the privileges are SO insane. A lawyer or doctor may enjoy a high salary, but they’re also slogging unglamorous 80 hour weeks. And finally, there is no objective, merit-based filter at all (unless you’re a musician and your records simply don’t sell). That doctor had to take the MCAT and boards, which assures SOME level of qualification even if they had an easier time due to family background.
FWIW, manufactured pop stars are as old as the pop charts.
What I find fascinating are those times when The Next Big Thing is hyped to high heaven, but still doesn't sell, all the best efforts from the best image makers and PR agencies in the business, and the dogs still won't eat the dog food.
The story of how Robbie Williams brought down EMI. Outside of the US, the guy was arguably the biggest pop star in the world. EMI signed him to a huge deal, sure that they could break him in America. Spoiler Alert: they couldn't get Americans to come to his shows, even if they gave the tickets away.
No, they're perfectly liberal - with other peoples' money.
Oh God, Ghostbusters Afterlife. I can’t recommend the Red Letter Media review enough: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMtrjNPcjR0
"It’s a lot easier to try and do the Hollywood thing when your parents can always pay your rent, when your parents can take as much time off of work as they need, when your parents can chase your dream across the country…. Wouldn’t it be nice to always have a safety net, when you’re trying to vault into the stars?"
A different time, a different place, a slightly different industry, but the authors of "How To Have The Number One Hit Single In Britain In 90 Days Or Your Money Back!" (available for free on the internet, and itself a fascinating, if dated read) indicate that you *have* to be on the dole and broke for the steps to work.
This isn't because Artistic Integrity, far from it. Rather, it's because you need to be in a place where you have nothing to lose and are putting yourself in even more desperate straits, no money, no prospects, no talent, to the point where you'll try any novelty., any dopey shtick that might get you out.
That’s true of anything that requires unpaid internships.
Take him from the planet Earth 😂😂 that was a good morning laugh for me that led to a very productive cough.
Don’t forget how shitty “thank you for smoking” was!  Why has Jason Reitman been able to make so many shitty movies? Why are we all watching all these shitty Jason Reitman movies?
My critique of this framing is that "nepo baby" oversimplified compared to what is going on.
When I think of "nepotism" I think of a family member either giving you, or at least calling in a favor to get you a job. I'm sure that this is a factor in the success of some second- or third-generation actors, but it is hardly the only factor.
You touch on two other factors in your article - heritability and wealthy parents being able to support a kid pursuing a questionable career choice. However, there are other factors as well.
-Even if your actor parent doesn't get you a job, they have some experience on how best to get one as an actor and can advise you on what to do
-if your parent is an actor, you and your parent are both more likely to see acting as a reasonable career aspiration and less likely to decide that it's a pipe dream and you should really become an accountant or something
-if your parents are actors or in the entertainment industry, you are likely to live in LA or NY or somewhere else where there are a lot of acting opportunities and/or where you may organically make connections. It's easier to get a bit part in a movie in LA than rural Kansas.
These are all significant advantages (privileges if you will) that children of actors have over other people, that will help them break into acting if they want to. However, they are all distinct from the idea that your dad got you the job. Just saying that people got their job through nepotism ignores these factors, which is bad, especially since these factors give people a leg up in other professions as well and need to be accounted for when someone claims that they just want "equality of opportunity."
Furthermore, if your parents are actors, you probably grew up singing; dancing; acting; your image was crafted; you were in inprov classes, your friends and acquaintances did all the same... read up on "10,000 hours"
The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. If your dad was a mechanic, you grew up watching him work on machines, and picked up these skills. My dad was a programmer, guess where I ended up.
10,000 hours is pseudoscience and has been thoroughly debunked
Well yeah, it's from Malcom Gladwell, the Jim Cramer of the social sciences
If he wasn't white he probably would
I realize this is completely a side topic and don't wish to start a major thing. But the Anders Ericsson research is real, it's not pseudoscience. I find some critiques of his research to be persuasive, but it's hardly made-up.
The main issue is Gladwell and other popular writers oversold some factors of the research, and undersold others.
It's very easy to shout "10,000 hours" as some magical threshold (which it's not), and undersell what deliberate practice is. Proponents also oversell what that level of effort will actually achieve. It doesn't trigger elite status in the pantheon of human history. Generally, it will make one an expert in a field that has the characteristics that Ericsson specifies in his research. There are those that will achieve epic status with less practice, and those that won't be experts with it. Those that pretend the research says otherwise are mistaken.
I was referring to Gladwell. He has basically admitted he takes real research and then spins a story out of it to suit his narrative purposes. It is obvious that practice makes one better at something, with lots of variation between individuals due to heritable skill or other factors. The "10,000 hours" as a metric just doesn't reflect reality very well.
In a sense this conversation does relate to the main topic, given that expert-level practitioners in a creative field can be passed over for someone's relatively mediocre relative or connection.
Roughneck on a drill rig? Joking aside, I think many children follow in their parents' foot steps as they're the most consistent roll model for which children aspire to until they rebel against their parents.
You laugh, I know a driller who took over his dad's business. Small time wells and exploration in Alaska.
Oh I ain't laughing. Family businesses can be a good way to hand down wealth. I was joking that you implied you went into programming but were really not.
Dad was a hot-metal printer who in the 70s saw computers were going to take that over. He was always pushing me towards programming, but I became a hardware technician instead, and later morphed into a programmer all the same.
This is definitely a factor too. People do tend to be interested in their parents careers.
This obviously is not the case for everyone, and probably depends on the career, but I'm sure it puts a finger on the scale. If children of actors are more likely to be interested in it than the average person, and therefore give it a shot, you are going to find a disproportionate number of legacies in Hollywood, even they had no actual advantage, just because they are more likely to try.
This kind of goes along with the idea I mention above that, to the average person, being an actor seems like a questionable career choice, but may come across as a more realistic career choice if your parent(s) succeeded at being actors. OTOH, I heard an interview with Sarah Polly where she talked about really discouraging her daughter from going into acting (at least as a child), given her own experiences.
It's funny because I think creative parents, to a degree, will discourage their children from following in their footsteps. I never hear a doctor telling their kids to not go into medicine.
My family was aghast that I had switched majors from engineering to architecture (even though no one in my family is in either profession) but they saw architecture as not being a lucrative career path. Of course they were partially correct about it not being lucrative.
If you are going to be a Dr. you need to make sure to go into a field where you get your own Jonathan.
You also are more likely to know the ins and outs of the business, to learn from others around you.
Yeah all this is true but he touches on the idea of privileges. Still, there are lots of wealthy, connected people in those areas. Not all of them are making it.
This actually touches on the opposite side of this. There is a little bit of an availability heuristic going on here. You notice when a famous person's kid goes into show business, but less so when they do not. As a result, while there probably is an disproportionate number of legacies in entertainment (I would be surprised if there were not), it is probably less disproportionate than you might otherwise assume.
I, for one, stay on top of what Chet Hanks is up to!
😂
Very well said. It's applicable to so many other places in life, too. For example, I'd been to a few fancy restaurants with my parents when I was a kid. So, when I was taken to one in my first "real" office job, I knew how to act, knew how to order etc., whereas a guy who didn't have that opportunity growing up might commit some faux pas, or just be so frozen with terror that he doesn't give a good account of himself.
And as Freddie says in his article, this isn't - or shouldn't be - a moral judgement on either person here. It's an advantage that I had that others did not. I can recognize that advantage, and how it helped me, without being twee or self-flagellating about it. But because we're absolutely obsessed with bootstrappin', we either pretend it's not an example or we throw ourselves pity parties for having some unearned advantage. Not good.
JD Vance has proven himself an ass in recent years, but he does a good job explaining this in Hillbilly Elegy. I loved the part where he's out to dinner with other new recruits to a white shoe law firm (or something along those lines) and is served "sparkling water" for the first time. He writes:
"I took one sip and literally spit it out. It was the grossest thing I’d ever tasted. I remember once getting a Diet Coke at a Subway without realizing that the fountain machine didn’t have enough Diet Coke syrup. That’s exactly what this fancy place’s 'sparkling' water tasted like. 'Something’s wrong with that water,' I protested. The waitress apologized and told me she’d get me another Pellegrino. That was when I realized that sparkling' water meant “carbonated” water. I was mortified."
I go through sparkling water by the case and I can't stand Pellegrino - it's flat and salty - so I stand with JD Vance.
Real men drink Gerolsteiner anyway.
I used to work for a company with an office near Munich. With no exaggeration, every desk had a glass 750ml bottle of Gerolsteiner on it each morning, with more in the break room if you wanted it. Dehydration was not a problem.
When I find it in stock I usually buy several bottles. It's one of my favorite.
I think most of the reason I liked this story is that I can't stand basically any seltzer-like drink (except for a Tom Collins, if that counts). People seem to love Le Crux, but I feel like it all tastes like, if water went bad. I'll stick with my Pepsi Max.
Yeah. seltzer water is an acquired taste. I can enjoy that on it's own w/ just a slice of lime. Soda water though needs something. We have a Sodastream at home and I usually do a 3:1 ratio w/ cranberry juice. Otherwise plain soda water is terrible.
That's kind of what I do as well, though the ratio is closer to 3:2 water:juice, but I add a little bit of orange juice with the cranberry juice. There doesn't need to be much of it, but I feel it noticeably improves the taste.
I enjoyed this definitely true story from JD Vance
Then there is the long ago story I read about a smart but non-credentialed young man who was being considered for a fairly prestigious job in a big NYC bank . Turns out that part of the interviewing process was being invited to lunch in the executive dining room . It was clear he was smart and hard working - but did he have the manners and social graces this bank required?
I am guessing he was dressed appropriately in Brooks Brothers (I said this was LONG ago) but turns out the main dish was turbot which he had never heard of (nor had I being a small town NJ girl of no great parentage). When the waiter came around asking what else he wanted, he said he wanted the turbot RARE - thinking, I guess that it was some sort of exoctic cut of beef. I will leave it up to you if he got the job.
Beginner's error! Correct answer is always "what would you recommend?"
Or you do what I always did on first dates many years before dutch treat was a "thing" and the man paid ( a or lunch with the boss and the questions was - a glass of wine or no) . Do nothing until they order and then say, "I'll have the same."
Or, if needing to signal that you are sophisticated about food, say "however the chef recommends it". Be aware that if you do this with a special/unusual dish, there is a non-zero chance of the chef coming out after you're done to personally ask you how you liked it, so better know in advance whether your dining partners are likely to be impressed or annoyed by that.
In a similar vein, I heard of a law student invited to dinner by a white shoe firm who got on the floor to look for a fork she had dropped. She was ranked #1 at her school, but did not get an offer from that particular firm.
Nonetheless, as someone who didn't grow up using knives and forks and was also poor, I can't help a certain degree of disdain. Direct experience is absolutely not necessary to learning the social etiquette common to the well heeled. Do these people not read or watch movies? Do they not pay any attention to the people around them?
Is "turbot" even a fancy word? I didn't think so. And if invited to dine somewhere for a job, isn't reviewing the menu beforehand simply good practice, especially if it's at the type of restaurant you're not accustomed to?
I get your point but I grew up watching movies, reading, and had parents with excellent table manners but with rather simple meals needing only one fork, knife and spoon. . My father would not eat any meat that didn't resemble the sole of a shoe so the first time a date offered to cook for me, he brought the leg of the lamb to the table and it pretty pink and i was sure it was RAW . Now that I love my hamburgers rare some restaurants will only do it to medium rare, since , it is thought dangerous because of all the diseases that uncook meat can cause. And it is true, my father never got sick from dinner.
We also never had shrimp since we lived inland in the Berkshire hills prior to the days o f frozen fish. At age 16 I went to a very fancy wedding with the swells and there on this huge buffet table I encountered them . It was love at first bite. I now live in Mexico and eat them three times a week.
You're right; I always forget the tremendous influence in my life of always having lived in large metropolises. Additionally, the reading that absorbed me in my youth were the novels of 19th century which were often focused on the manners and habits of the wealthy.
That said, I still recall walking pass an IHOP on my way to middle school and being absolutely convinced it must have been where the rich dined because I had never seen such a spectacular roofline in real life.
I was a sophomore? junior? in college before I had my first experience at a restaurant that was "nice".
Disdain seems excessive. You can be an observant person, doing your best to master manners to get ahead, and still find yourself confronted with the problem of unknown unknowns. Plus, the meritocratic myth can mislead strivers into believing social ease still ought to matter less than it does, compared to other achievements.
My parents, well-educated middle-class strivers themselves, never accepted "not being richer" as an excuse for having less-than-world-class etiquette, as they understood it, especially at the table. The nice thing about table manners, too, is that they're pretty legible: which fork do you use, are you in the habits of saying "please" and "thank you" at the right times?...
But it would not have occurred to my parents, and consequently not to me, that "table manners" should include researching a restaurant ahead of time, even for a job interview: the *point* of manners, as we understood them, was their universality, so that specifics like what restaurant you're at should pale in comparison to other things, like whether you're ready to answer complicated job-related questions. Nor did I learn other, less-legible manners, manners we often don't even call "manners", because they're not about politeness, but fitting in, like how hard to laugh at a superior's joke.
The actual manners governing social interactions aren't all about etiquette or being painfully polite. As "painfully" suggests, being painfully polite is a actually a hindrance: status games often involve knowing when to be rude, when it's OK, or even expected, to bend or break the rules a little.
Absolutely, and you learn the confidence to bend or break those rules in an appealing way by growing up watching adults who are at ease in those social settings.
The disdain comes from my personal experience of coming from a rather complicated background and never feeling like I belong to any particular culture. I come from peasants, minor aristocracy, industrialists and intellectuals in the not so distant past. This combined with criminally negligent parents stunted by the Chinese Cultural Revolution and a relocation to the US and growing up poor meant everything I've learned about society and its various cultural signifiers came from books, media and direct interaction with non-family members. It's really not so hard when your starting point is that nothing normal to you is reflected in the world around you.
Everytime I've been in a relationship or have had a close friendship there is a learning curve as I process all the different socioeconomic and cultural norms. I've had friends from both "high" culture and "low". And, I am reminded of reading Chimamanda Adiche and learning even the wealthiest and most cultured Nigerians considered cracking chicken bones standard practice at meals. Politeness requires making the adaptations necessary for your hosts comfortable rather strick adherence to any particular set of rules.
Having striver parents sounds difficult.
I come from an upper middle class academic background and it would never occur to me to research a restaurant's menu before going. Some of these things are really just rules that only apply to high corporate settings. Going to the type of expensive restaurants that high-end law firms go out to is just not part of your life experience growing up even if your parents are doctors or professors or average lawyers. It's likely that even most of the people at those dinners had to learn it.
On the other hand the sparkling water thing I just don't get. It's literally sold everywhere and not remotely expensive.
Wait, what do you mean "didn't grow up using knives and forks?" Did you eat everything with a spoon? How did you cut meat?
😂 I'm Chinese and I immigrated to the US when I was 6. I grew up using chopsticks and spoons. I was probably 7? 8? when I was first introduced to forks & knives (discounting cafeteria sporks) and never used them with any regularly until I was in my 20s.
I decided to look to the movies I watched years ago when I was learning manners since you have "disdain": for people who do not learn from them. So, first there were Ginger and Fred movies and they never ate - just danced. Alas, I didn't learn how to do that either. Then there were the series of Thin Man movies with Myrna Loy and William Powell playing a very sophisticated NYC couple but they never ate either - just drank and smoked a lot. In fact, they were often slighty inebriated so the most one could learn was how to hold a manhattan glass and a cigarette holder. Then of course there was Tom Jones who was right up my ally - chomped on some sort of big meaty bone with nary a utensil in site
The people around me were all Italians and they ate pasta almost exclusively -with a big spoon and fork that they used to twirl the spaghetti around before gobbling it up.
Are there movies you could recommend that could be used as teaching tools? Speaking of turbot - I think it is known as a junk fish that other FISH dine on. Also, if you are eating in the executive dining room as part of a job interview, do youREALLY check the menu before you go up inthe elevator. If you did, I think you would come down in said elevator very quickly and still hungry.
I think I was more aware of eating scenes simply because people on the screen did not eat the way I did. I remember being very conscious of Judy Garland in the Harvey Girls because she was obviously a representation of what is "proper". There were also scenes in Little House on the Prairie that contrasted the way people eat. I would say that movies featuring cross-status romances regularly featured dining scenes to contrast the characters' backgrounds, e.g., Pretty Women, Flashdance or even Splash. There are also changing places movies like the Prince and the Pauper. And, I have distinct memories of the way Bette Davis eats in her many movies where she plays a privileged woman.
When I was a law student and doing my dinner interview, I wolfed down my huge steak dinner and the partner sitting next to me stared and said "wow, you're going to have to go for a really long run tomorrow to work that off." Ha. I was a poor student who mostly ate peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches and of course I was going to take the opportunity of a free fancy dinner to clean my plate. I was also rail thin and didn't run. I got hired anyway. Honestly there is nothing I hate more than food snobbery. It is at the top of my list of unappealing personality traits.
That was exactly the situation Vance found himself in:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/j-d-vance-what-i-didnt-know-how-the-world-of-the-american-elite-works
I had to go look up Turbot... now that I know, I feel prepared for the elite!
😂👌
I can't quite pinpoint when I learned about turbot but I'm fairly sure it was from my love of Edith Wharton in middle school.
Good story. Not that I believe it though. 😀 unless they were testing him.
“How do you like your turbot”.
“Pan fried as it says on the menu with the sauces and sides that’s mentioned on the menu. As to how you pan fry it, not my job. Probably you have to turn it occasionally, but I’m sure the chef knows what to do. Good afternoon, sir”.
It is a good story, isn't it? The girl in question was an Asian friend of my law school classmate. I believe they met in undergrad.
We had tears in our eyes when he was relaying it. I've met the girl in question and I believe him. 😅
She's doing fine now ($$$$) and also has a wife who can smooth out all the edges.
It has been written that things like "free entrance to classical music concerts and art museums" is really a disguised subsidy for the middle class, the sorts of people who consider it important that their kids grow up knowing Bach from Wagner, Manet from Monet.
Anyway, at the place where I work and take naps, Feline Resources write me up all the time, and they claim to be working for me!
I do think part of the issue is that we treat entertainment professionals as being some sort of weird aristocracy.
Across all walks of life, it's pretty normal (especially historically) for children to follow in the footsteps of their parents. Aside from nepotism, there's a lot of logic to this - who is better suited to train you for a profession than your own parents? To me it doesn't seem especially nefarious if the child whose parent runs a plumbing business ends up picking up a lot of plumbing skills and becoming a skilled plumber in their own right.
With entertainment it's feels weirder though, maybe because of a baked in assumption that OF COURSE everyone wants to be in entertainment. So nepotism dynamics feel unfair in entertainment in a way they don't with other (still potentially lucrative, but) less prestigious professions.
But to me it feels a little dystopian to try and interrupt an otherwise relatively benign desire of parents to pass down their profession to their children. What we realistically need is not pure meritocratic access to the entertainment industry, but rather a downgrade of the prestige associated with it (as part of a general project of leveling prestige across different lines of work).
America is strange - the country wants to end privilege of birth in the racial sense but not in any specific sense. The former isn’t possible without the latter.
Yes it is. In fact it's far, far easier, and far more politically popular, to do what you're describing. See the work of Second City Bureaucrat here on Substack. He posted a very timely article just yesterday about how a soft eugenics based on (and here I'm paraphrasing) the meta-character aspects of race is perfectly compatible with the American civil religious value of individual merit:
https://substack.com/profile/92488821-second-city-bureaucrat
America's obsession with class privilege knows no racial bounds. Plenty of middle and upper class racial minorities do as much to protect their social status and capital as any M&UC white people do. I once had a friend's father tell me that the "wet backs" were giving him (a hard working self-identified Chicano) a bad name.
From the outside it doesn’t seem that the US is obsessed with class privilege at all, at least publicly. Racial privilege yes.
Racial privilege is a proxy for class privilege.
Is it? I don’t think so. Pretty easy to admit to white privilege as an rich white, you’ve now eliminated class distinctions between you and the homeless white man on the street.
You just confirmed what I wrote.
Wait, I missed a word in your response. No there are still class distinctions between, say, the middle class and a homeless fellow, but almost all of what passes as racial privilege is actually about class, hence my use of the word Proxy.
I'm not really sure we *are* trying to end privilege. Attempting to do so seems a fool's errand in a world of people with unequal circumstances (both innate and environmental). The only way to eliminate privilege is to destroy innate advantages that many people have, and that destructive process is both unfair and reduces overall human experience.
This feels right, but also it’s important to note that the desire to pass down the profession only happens when wealth and/or prestige are involved. (Obviously.) isn’t that the point of the article sort of? That once you have wealth and prestige in the bag, your descendants will too into perpetuity and this feudal system sucks?
I wouldn't say "only." Mostly, yeah. Most people who work in Burger King aren't wanting their kid to learn the family trade. But a good example is a local Chinese restaurant. A lot of second-generation owners are on the cusp of retirement. Some want their kids to do something else - something with more money, less 16-hour days, less scalding injuries. But there are plenty out there who desperately want the family business to stay open, only to find the kids don't want to do it.
Obviously wealth and prestige are nice, and most parents want that for their children. But I don't think that's the whole story here.
Many (most?) people who practice a particular trade or profession take pride in their work. I think it is very natural to want to pass those interests and skills down to your children. It probably doesn't apply to low-prestige jobs, but I'd expect there's a whole world of middle prestige jobs where it does apply - stuff like plumber, chef, academic, engineer, construction worker, baker, etc. I'd also expect it to apply to most small business owners, who of course can be all over the income and prestige spectrums.
On the whole I think this impulse to pass on a legacy to the next generation is of great social value. Yes, it can create highly unequal outcomes, but I'm not sure how you'd prevent it without dystopian measures. And the skills being passed along are valuable to all of society.
The better solution IMO is to just work towards a broadly prosperous and egalitarian society where everyone can enjoy a comfortable life regardless of profession. If that is achieved, then children following in their parents footsteps is charming rather than sinister.
The key point to me is the Hollywood angle. Its a very specific thing being passed down that would be far less common if "being good at pretending while pretty" didn't come with those things.
Poor to poor in four.
This is an old saying of how wealth works in most familial lines. Great grandfather starts a small business and struggles, but has kids. Grandfather (one of those kids) inherits all or part of that business, and proceeds to grow it into extreme wealth through hard work. Father goes into some unrelated field, such as doctor or actor as the initial startup costs are high, but they are covered here. And his child, son of someone who "skipped the line" has no appreciation of wealth and wastes anything he comes into.
I have seen this far too many times, at various stages.
I wonder how many nepo babies are actively trying to secure auditions and gigs for their own kids, while they claim they had no advantage. Probably a lot of them.
Oh totally. I am already scheming to get my 5yo into my alma mater. But I admit it!
Of course. But there’s help your own children and then there’s pay for a fake resume to get them into the college you want. There’s help your own children and then there’s have your own agent make a call or risk being fired by you.
If you're a celebrity and your kid is Zosia Mamet or Maya Hawke, who can actually act and have a decent amount of charisma, then setting them up in Hollywood probably requires the equivalent of making a donation to your alma mater or volunteering to do a couple alumni interviews to help your smart kid get admitted through legitimate channels. If your kid is Lily Rose Depp or Dakota Johnson then whatever you're doing to help them build a career has to be closer to paying someone to write their college essays or faking that they're a star athlete or donating an entire library...it's the nepo babies who are obviously untalented who make me question wtf their parents had to do to get them those roles. I'm sure it wasn't pretty. Others probably got a very typical leg up from well-meaning parents that helped them capitalize on their genuine talent and I don't begrudge them at at all. Any parent would do the same for their kid in any industry.
hell, look what you've done to support Gob!
Exactly, and if I'm being honest I don't care for Gob...
😂
Yeah, it's the difference between "I wish everyone as talented as X could be as successful" and "X doesn't deserve to be as successful as s/he is." It's a huge distinction that mirrors the longstanding conceptual wrinkle in "privilege" - some privileges are actually things that everyone should have (eg not being catcalled/harassed when moving about in the world), while others should not be extended to anyone.
That's a great way of articulating the distinction. Are you getting a leg up over equally qualified people because of who your parents are, or are you getting access to something you're completely unqualified for because of who your parents are? The latter feels like much more of an affront.
Except everyone that talented will never be able to that succesful. The vast majority of talented actors will never make it. There just aren't enough spots available at the top. So I don't think that not being catcalled is a good analogy.
I agree. I didn't really mean it as a direct analogy, just a conceptual link. Life is and always will be unfair: even if we eliminated nepotism, those that made in it in Hollywood would still owe their success to factors beyond talent and work ethic (physical appearance is obviously a big one, but even if *that* were eliminated (LOL) then random chance and "right place right time" circumstance).
But I still think it's a useful distinction because it frames how we think about the issue. The problem on the one hand is the nature of the business itself - not enough spaces for all the deserving people - while on the other hand it's the actual nepotism (I don't want to watch this jackass on my TV). And I do actually think that has implications for how we can more productively think about intersectional "privilege" in a broader sense.
These things are hard. Everyone should help their kids. But some people helping their kids makes life unfair for everyone else. It's a good instinct that leads to unjust outcomes. It's hard to know how to fix it, because no one is going to refuse to help their kids and it would be at least somewhat immoral to ask them to do so.
The problem is when "helping their kids" means regulatory capture and warping the playing field to disadvantage everybody else.
Like fish who can't see the water for lake, they're so immersed they can't see it.
I don't think Freddie DeBoer has a problem with nepo babies, per se. He has a problem with how they respond to being nepo babies, the fact that some refuse to recognize how much their circumstances contributed to their success.
Right, that’s why I said “while they claim they had no advantage”
Honestly, if nepotism only operated in Hollywood and similar rarefied fields, I wouldn’t care (Jason Reitman aside). The problem is that nepotism is a necessary part of the hiring process for any job that anyone would want to have. We call it networking, but if we are honest, we ought to admit that networking is nepotism--exploiting our connections to powerful and influential people in order to get an advantage denied to other, likely equally skilled and hardworking, people. What talents are we wasting, what contributions are we denying ourselves, and which pressing societal problems remain unsolved, because our system is set up so that in order to have a shot at an interview, job candidates need a powerful person to vouch for them first?
That doesn’t sound right to me. Resumes and interviews are notoriously bad at selecting for good employees. And most companies advise managers to just confirm dates of employment. Having direct knowledge of someone and their work product is invaluable.
What if you're the VP's son?
Sure it is all else being equal.
I agree, I wrote a thread response on Twitter about that comment because I really wanted to work through it - https://twitter.com/ranavain/status/1605933869257162752
I think the obviously bad parts of nepotism make people over-correct in their critique, to the point where it's not clear what is being corrected for or what better outcome you're trying to achieve
The question is, can we guarantee an equal chance for someone who does not enjoy unearned benefits of networking and personal connection? And if the answer is no, how do we look them in the face as they struggle?
Well, your point is true for some situations, but nepotism operates for entry-level jobs and career switches too, and also when the powerful person actually has no idea about the work product. You are right that it’s important to have someone vouch for a candidate, but it’s too often the case that the powerful person is vouching not for the candidate’s work, but rather for their status as “the right kind of person.”
Fitting in is a key component of one’s work.
yep, totally agree, and I think it would be better if more people talked about that nuance than everyone over-corrects to "there's no good reason to ever allow someone else to hire someone they knew already" (which I'm not saying FDB or anyone in the comments does here, just that I see hints in that direction all the time, especially in the HR world)
Recommending someone you worked with before us not nepotism nor networking. Recommending someone because you went to private school with him, or because he’s a friend of your son, or school friend is.
??? This makes no sense to me. You're telling me that my professional network is only comprised of people I know in a professional sense, but have never worked with? People I've worked with directly are in another category that isn't networking anymore?
Ok, so It’s a form of networking but benign. This seems to be semantics.
It’s not the type of networking that goes on between elites and isn’t mutual back scratching either. In my company we just hired a guy in the recommendation of another existing employee, after an interview. This isn’t hiring the governor‘s niece.
I disagree that the difference is semantic. You hired someone in part because an existing employee recommended them - this is common and, in many cases, not very meritocratic, even if the candidate is well-qualified. For most jobs, there are dozens of candidates that apply and are qualified. Happening to know someone who works there can get your resume advanced when it otherwise would not have. Such a candidate isn't *less* qualified, sure, but they were still advanced by a metric of dubious meritocracy.
And, worth noting: it's a well-known fact in the recruiting world that employee referrals are both effective at finding successful hires (at least, more so than most sources of candidates) and bad for diversity (because people tend to have networks that share their own racial, socio-economic, and other traits). I just think people tend to approach these questions as far more cut-and-dried than they really are.
Honestly this reminds me of a conversation I once had where I was told that I couldn’t condemn private jets because I occasionally fly commercial.
How are you defining "any job that anyone would want to have?" I've been in the white colllar world - well-paid, *relatively* low stress desk work, not exactly glamorous but certainly nice for a middle class lifestyle - and this is completely and totally alien to my experience. I've had exactly one job where I was vouched for before joining, and the overwhelming majority of people I've hired have not come with an internal recommendation. I can count them literally on one hand, now that I sit and really think about it. Maybe you're talking a few rungs up the ladder from where I am.
Or maybe it’s certain areas of the country? It seems to me that the east coast metropolitan areas are particularly dependent on granting access to jobs through powerful connections. That’s how I got my foot in the door at the elite private school in DC where I taught, for example. I tried for several months to get a teaching job on the strength of my resume as an experienced teacher with a BA and MA from one of the top universities in the countries, and no one would give me the time of day. But as soon as I used a connection they offered me an interview and hired me. My son is in the job market now and is having a similar experience as he looks for entry-level jobs. He needs to get someone important to provide him with access; otherwise no one will even consider him. These are personal examples, but everyone I know has found their jobs this way. Our family is privileged to be able to take advantage of the system, but it seems so unfair to me.
That might be it. The more "established" areas of the country might have denser networks. Same with small towns or regional cities. I'm an immigrant in a "boomtown" in the South. Between other immigrants and US transplants, we're probably well into the six figures by now. So for us, it is a blank slate.
I think it has much more to do with eliteness (or perceived eliteness) of the job. I work in a metropolitan area of the east coast and have very little experience with connection-based hiring, either as a person being hired, or as a person doing the hiring. Not none, but very little.
It has to do with who the clients/customers are of the business you work for. If they are rich, then having connections will trump any other metric for hiring. Because it means you will (very likely) bring in more clients/customers. Law firms that bill hundreds or thousands per hour, or architecture firms that build homes for wealthy people, or private schools that charge high tuition...those are all going to be areas where powerful, monied connections are highly valued.
Why on earth would you think that elite private schools would rely on resume rather than connections? Isn't that the entire point of elite private schools?
And upon further reflection, I’m wondering whether jobs in STEM, which have more objective measures of achievement, are immune to this problem? My husband is a mathematician and does a lot of hiring. He uses headhunters to locate candidates and follows up on references, of course, but he would never grant an interview to someone on the sole basis of their having a powerful friend.
The issue with tech (not STEM in general) is that there are more jobs than workers. That not only results in higher salaries but also lots of unqualified people doing jobs they're really not suited for.
I haven't found STEM professions to be immune to networking / contact influence. If anything, it's a way to find good talent. If you value certain employees, you may take their recommendations / references more seriously for a potential hire. Conversely, I've been waved off from firms based on friends who worked there or had worked there.
In the tech field, my last 2 jobs including my current position out of 6 have come from people I've worked with previously and also consider friends.
I've also put in a word for friends of mine that I have worked with at multiple places.
Generally speaking someone that can get vouched for is going to get looked at first and will get the nod over another equally qualified candidate. With that said it's a safe practice given the spectrum of talent. There's a lot of people that interview well as well as a lot of hiring managers that don't know how to interview properly so a known quantity making a recommendation carries a lot of weight behind it.
The trick is to learn how to get an entry level job, learn a lot, and then make sure people remember you based on your work. The important part is that ultimately you still have to perform. I wouldn't recommend a friend that I didn't think could hack it, frankly I've worked hard for whatever reputation I've earned and wouldn't compromise it. I also wouldn't expect my friends to do that either.
I've actually given negative recommendations for a couple people who asked me to refer them to my company. I felt terrible doing it but one of them in particular is an absolute nightmare to work with and lacks any level of self-awareness about it (hence the fact that they thought it was a good idea to ask me for a referral after the experience we had working together).
Thankfully I haven't had to do one of those yet. It's funny there are certain traits that correlate well across almost any field and ones that can sink you in almost any career.
Lack of self-awareness is an absolute killer for a lot of otherwise promising people. That's not to say that some don't still make it without any self-awareness but it's definitely a quiet hinderance that's hard to learn about and overcome.
I think this is very industry and market location dependent. I've found that it's much easier to move to other firms based on knowing someone at that firm. I've done the same at firms I've worked at in the past by recommending former co-workers. I think many industries prefer to find talent that way vs. cold hires off the street. It's not nepotism but it's definitely networking. This was true when I worked in Denver, Washington D.C. , New Orleans, and abroad.
My white collar and managerial experience matches this. It's rare that connections get one a job. In fairness, though, these jobs were not exactly glamorous. They were solid, good-paying white collar jobs for firms that were not household names.
Your Beast article isn't very good. In the piece you pandered way too hard to their editors in order to get published there, and for what? That site is even more pathetic than the NYT.
You also committed the very common error of calling twitter a "public square." It is not public, and it most certainly isn't square (unless you're referring to the monitor through which you view it.).
Nothing digital can ever even come close to replacing the actual public square, because it exists in reality. You can walk on it. No algorithmic demons can ban you from it. It's that simple. Digital imitations are too pathetic to even be comparable.
What a bizarre comment. You're aware that "public square" is a colloquialism, right, and even if it were exclusively a real physical place that wouldn't make it any more universally accessible than Twitter is. Digital and physical spaces each exclude different kinds of people, it's silly to pretend that physical spaces are automatically better, more authentic, or more accessible than digital ones.
I'm sorry. If you can't see that what's real is better than what isn't, I can't help you. Physical spaces are automatically better than digital "spaces." There's no getting around that. They are more authentic by definition.
You should look at the complete inability of all the losers constantly bitching on social media to change anything, for instance. Freddie has written about it frequently.
When we fuck up our metaphors we risk fucking up our thinking, and calling twitter a "public square" is fucking up indeed.
There's a very, very simple solution to nepotism. First, children must be separated from their families and communities by age 5. At this point, each child is given a randomized name and moved at least 100 miles away from their place of birth. All employers, in all fields, are required to report job opportunities to a centralized agency. All those seeking work are given another randomized professional name. Resumes are not permitted to name prior employers, university education, or personal interests. Internal opportunities are governed by the Office on Internal Recruitment, and those wishing for a promotion must undergo name randomization to avoid any perception of bias. Hiring outside the central agencies is illegal, with employer being punished by hefty fines and employee being subject to minimum 20 year prison sentences.
What adoption studies show is that the kids will end up waaaay more similar to their bio-parents than their adoptive parents.
I get the feeling he's not being entirely serious ;)
Of course - people would just be shocked at how often Jamie Diamond’s son adopted into a family of addicts in rural Kentucky ended up a managing director at Goldman and the son adopted into Diamond’s family ended up dying of an overdose.
It would shake America to its core.
Absolutely. Blank slate theory is simply incorrect.
No need then for the added advantage of either nepotism or inheritance which compounds the advantages that the offspring of the rich already have.
Between Monday's Moldy Peaches shout-out and today's Juno gripe, Kimya Dawson's having a banner week over here...
I don't have much to say about the "Nepo Babies" article because I am one, and probably the most "nepo" of them all. You are absolutely correct that we live in a culture where chance rules but people still believe in just deserts. I laugh about it from atop my mountain every single day.
I pronounce it Al-oo-min-i-um
The use of malapropisms is reserved for the hardworking nepo babies.
Dear god no. “DESerts” are dry places, “deSERTS” are things you deSERVE. “Just Desserts” is a pie shop in San Francisco”.
"In the piece you pandered way too hard to their editors in order to get published there"
This is expressed with perfect confidence, about something you can't possibly have any information on, and entirely wrong.
I'm commenting on how it looks to outsiders. You spend a large portion of the first half of the piece shitting on Musk, which is exactly what one would do to impress the pathetic editors of that website.
Musk, in this and only this instance, should be praised. Anyone who uses twitter deserves to be shit on, and he is truly shitting on them. It is glorious to behold. I do share your hope that the site dies eventually, but not before those dumb enough to use it eat plenty of excrement.
Mostly I'm just disappointed. Your talents are entirely wasted writing for the Beast.
They pay better than you do.
Materialism's fatal flaw.
You are a case study in how twitter has destroyed the ability of so many to hold themselves accountable for dithering, every new statement contradicting the last buffoonery
I've never used twitter. Also, nobody is responsible for the words that appear next to their social media handles.
LMAO
This piece may help you understand.
https://damagemag.com/2022/04/21/the-internet-is-made-of-demons/
How were his talents wasted? The Daily Beast has a large audience and Freddie wrote basically what you'd expect him to write given his output here.
I understand being irritated about where someone publishes, as good writing (e.g., Freddie's) will attract more attention to the site. I, for one, hope to never see Freddie publish on any Bari Weiss associated platform again as she's a hypocrite on `cancel culture' and, according to what I infer about Freddie's position on Israel (he's likely an anti-Zionist), Bari views him as an anti-Semite. None of that changes what he wrote over there (quite good) and I hope that people appreciated his perspective and maybe he got a few subscribers out of it. I don't see the need to question his intentions (e.g., by asserting that he's willing to compromise his values just to be viewed favorably by a prominent commentator) as he's always been very upfront and honest about his views.
It is weird that he wrote for them after previously talking shit about them. They're also an objectively terrible publication.
I pitch whatever I want. You seem to misunderstand my ability to get published.
I found it! This is why I was confused and disappointed when I saw where you had published. You wrote this, some time ago:
"They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”"
I thought it might have been Taibbi, but it was you.
There's no contradiction between finding "the Daily Beast reputation for excellence" to be a laughable piece of puffery on the one hand, and working for them on the other hand. If anything this contradicts the idea of pandering.
I disagree 100% with Freddie's stance on Elon Musk (the Left is just mad that the same arbitrary treatment they've dished out for years is now being turned against them) but this is a weak criticism.
Yeah but it's also really funny, so get bent, lib
The only ethical position is to oppose twitter, period.
It is surprising that he would write for a publication he previously talked shit about.
There is a contradiction, and it is notable because Freddie rarely contradicts himself.
There isn't a contradiction. The percentage of people who agree with every single thing their employer does or says is probably single-digits, and that's because they're sole proprietors. Expecting someone to have a 100% positive viewpoint of a publication - that they don't even work for full-time! - is ludicrous. People are allowed to have opinions. The corporate press hasn't yet denied them that, despite its best efforts.
Elon is a rank hypocrite in this case as free speech apparently doesn't extend to Alex Jones, elonjet, or Linette Lopez. The way that your argument sounds is that the ends justify the means.
Plenty of non-political/media talk happens on twitter, every day. Game threads for football and basketball, with no political content whatsoever, are incredibly popular and draw in fans and analysts alike. All those people are `dumb' and deserve to be `shit on' because they like to praise/gripe/complain and analyze what their favorite team(s) are doing with like minded individuals?
Yes, because they are supporting twitter. They need to do it somewhere else that sucks less. They will remain pathetic and pitiable until they do so.
You really love to see Musk dick riders out here pretending they're not completely insane and pathetic
I actually liked "Up In The Air". Go figure.
One of my favs honestly, along with Young Adult. He's right about Juno though, and I can't bring myself to even give GB:Afterlife a chance.
Hollywood nepotism is more pernicious than the other industries. First, there are SO few winners. An unconnected kid who goes to law school will still make a middle class living; a struggling actor often won’t. Second, the privileges are SO insane. A lawyer or doctor may enjoy a high salary, but they’re also slogging unglamorous 80 hour weeks. And finally, there is no objective, merit-based filter at all (unless you’re a musician and your records simply don’t sell). That doctor had to take the MCAT and boards, which assures SOME level of qualification even if they had an easier time due to family background.
FWIW, manufactured pop stars are as old as the pop charts.
What I find fascinating are those times when The Next Big Thing is hyped to high heaven, but still doesn't sell, all the best efforts from the best image makers and PR agencies in the business, and the dogs still won't eat the dog food.
The story of how Robbie Williams brought down EMI. Outside of the US, the guy was arguably the biggest pop star in the world. EMI signed him to a huge deal, sure that they could break him in America. Spoiler Alert: they couldn't get Americans to come to his shows, even if they gave the tickets away.