The Globe and Mail Shows Us Common People How to Party
My dream would be for Karen Von Hahn to come to my dinner party. If only because it might get me that much closer to getting a write-up as shockingly pretentious as the twenty page spread in the Globe and Mail's spanking new Entertaining section which debuted this weekend.
Uh, maybe not.
The only thing more surprising than the fact the Globe conceived and supported this embarassment was that the host (Judith Tatar) and her dinner guests agreed to be in it. Then again, nothing says vanity than having your nation's national newspaper show how hip you are by outsourcing everything from your event invites to music selection to flowers to the food itself.
Quiet for a moment as we listen to the sounds of all the people not living in Rosedale in Canada puking in their morning Shreddies.
The Globe's editorial product once again fails to reflect the diversity of both this city and country. Tatar's oh-so interesting guests include twelve white people plus George Yabu and an Upper Canada College grad. Name dropping is par for the course.
Some choice excerpts:
Judith has been known to reschedule parties around the availability of Tony and his teammate Barton Cornego. "They know just the way I like everything done, but they are almost impossible to get," she said, "partly because they are better-looking than most of my guests."
"In the last eight days, I've been in Madrid, Paris, Dubai and Delhi. I've got more air miles than I'll ever use."
Two weeks before In honour of Pushelberg's predilection for Air France, Tatar's office designs and sends out an e-vite that looks like a boarding pass. Forwards e-vite to the hired professionals, so "that they know the attitude of the occasion."
My big contention with the article is not that they actually ran it. Publications the world over, be they Toronto Life or The New York Times, have certainly printed their fair share of society and trust fund kid exposees. (And many can be interesting anthropological studies)
What is more discouraging is the extent to which the Globe featured and promoted it. (Really, an entire new section?) And pretend this is actually relevant, important, helpful, admirable, interesting or something to which we should all aspire.
And there's more! The party continues online at the globeandmail.com/entertaining where we get to learn more pointless details and exchange repartee with Von Hahn herself who will be logging on Monday to perhaps fill us in on what soap was featured in the washroom; and who conceived it, purchased it and whether someone remarked it was fabulous.
Comments (13)
Ah, but it didn't even teach us common people how to party. It taught us how to hire people so that we may party. Who doesn't need a set designer to do their decor in this day and age?
Yes, I've always found G&M a tad pretentious with its horde of upper-middle-class writers. Jan Wong's otherwise excellent series on maids was marred by her regular stress on her real, much more luxurious life, where her sons attended private schools! Where they spoke French! And ate meals with four different kinds of expensive cheese! Etc!
I found it nauseating as well and wondered why it had to take a whole Style section. Heaven forbid the G&M ever shake off it toronto-elitist stripes.
I finally had to give up the G&M a few years back. The columnists were either turning into a) right-wing Bush apologist blowhards or b) vapid cultural commentators whose idea of insightful prose was to name-drop and list expensive items they have purchased.
While it bills itself as a "national" newspaper, I've always accepted its Toronto-bias without reserve. The writers live in Toronto. Much of what happens economically and culturally in Canada takes place in Toronto so it's natural to slant toward your fair city.
But I really don't know who their target audience is anymore: people whose income is more than 500K per year and live in Rosedale? Really? That's it?
So I switched to the Montreal Gazette (I live there, by the way). It has its own baises being a CanWest paper and all, but at least I don't feel as though I'm too poor to read it.
Oh, give it a break, people! It's marketing, nothing more. 'tis the season for entertaining, no? I work in the grocery business (as a photographer) and guess what the big focus is for us for the next month and a half? Entertaining. Everybody and their cousin is having seasonal parties and the G&M is right to capitalize on it. It's fun and it delivers readers to advertisers, which is the point. The content doesn't really matter - it's the notion. Either you like it or you don't but one way or another you're thinking about entertaining.
I gave up reading the Style section so long ago that I didn't even know about this til now. Thanks for a funny read
It's not a NEW SECTION it's a SPECIAL section, ie one weekend only.
As the website and the print version clearly stated.
And it's not like they even created a new section in the paper for it, Entertaining simply took over the Style section for the weekend and the real tragedy was only that I couldn't find my Leah McLaren.
I live in Rosedale and I say it's about time a newspaper represents the values and interests of people like me. I'm sick and tired of the proletariat ruling the media! It's time for a bourgeoisie takeover! Long live G+M! Long live the aristocrats!
Just for the record, the Globe and Mail doesn't hire exclusively upper middle class writers. I've written for them on several occasions and have never cleared more than $15K a year in my entire life (and for the record, have also only lived in TO for about four months).
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