This morning's NYTimes had a truly stupid article about fallback jobs. The basic idea was not that different from Will Work for Food, Adam Gertler's Food Network series. The difference was all in the approach and attitude. For all his smartassery and snark, Gertler approaches all the jobs with a certain respect for the hard work and specialized skill sets involved. The NYTimes article came across with this attitude that, well, sure the economy is tanking and I might lose my Wall Street job but, hey, I can always go make chocolates or work on a farm or whatever. OK, yes, the writer does learn that, well, hard work is hard. But the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth in a way I couldn't quite articulate at first. Fortunately, there was a book review also up today that helped me out. From a book review of Shop Class as Soulcraft: "highly educated people with high-­status jobs... often believe that they could do anything their less-educated brethren can, if only they put their minds to it, because cognitive ability is the only ability that counts."
Yup, that about sums it up for me.