The paragraph regarding A Seat at the Table is exquisite.
I will say, the business school drone thing is something that stuck me as someone that went to a top 40 business school drones producing business school. One of the things I learned from my fellow graduates was that the "cool companies" (especially the media ones) you could go work for after graduation were almost entirely the worst. They offered the worst pay with the worst benefits with the dumbest people. You were usually turning down 50-70% additional salary to go to one of those companies because you weren't just going to be working in an office and doing what the Man told you do, man. You were going to make a difference in the world! People would ask who you work for and instead of saying some boring bullshit like McKinsey or PwC (companies most people have no idea control as much money as they do), you'd respond "oh, I work for a media company. Have you hear of Vice?" and you would get a semi as the sad sack drone working for soul destroying company like Exxon making 5x what you make in Dallas where they can live like a King on that salary would go "Oh yeah! Didn't they make that cool video about North Korea?"
And you'd be a little annoyed because those videos are like 12 years old and that was when it was a bit more problematic and you're pushing the latest Anand Giridharadas production out, who is so hot right now, and your projections look really good (it's a line graph where line goes up and right) and you know the moment is right for this thing to be a fucking hit.
But you didn't actually do any like...market research or financial projections or generated a model tracking ad revenue for comparable projects because that shit is for nerds and you had like one finance class in business school that you mostly skated through because the guy with the undergrad in accounting (yuck) and the comp sci guy (double yuck) basically made a spreadsheet that will solve any test question in one of those google sheets.
As the actual rigor has been sucked out of MBA degrees, this is what you get now. The degree is a pathway to be a decision maker in businesses they don't understand but those businesses have outgrown the original scale and need someone to help with the organization.
I'm a finance person in management at a major media company.
"When in his [Vice's head of HR] office to collect some form or other, he once unleashed upon me [Moyn] a compliment so pornographic that even in those permissive pre-MeToo days, I was left both flattered and speechless."
Good god, I wish I could have witnessed this first hand.
Substack and The Free Press are really tag teaming me these days to get me to renounce my aversion to listening to politics and cultural criticism. Dammit I get all the rage-inducing nonsense I need from the boys at the Fifth Column! Be less good everyone!
They say the easiest way to judge the veracity of a news source is to look at their coverage of a subject you are intimately aquatinted with. I am guessing Ben is intimately aquatinted with his own conversation with his father and the coverage is pretty telling.
The most eyebrow-raising part of the article was when I clicked the link for the 2022 breakdown of web site performance across verticals. Must be a good feeling when your NDA counterparty dies.
Back in February, Bloomberg published an article about historical preservation efforts in Oakland and Chicago that could lead to a potential Black Panthers national monument of some sort. The article is built around telling the real story of the Panthers, one that captures its "true" legacy. Yet there is almost no articulation of what that legacy might be. Mention is made of "liberation" and "self determination", but such grand ideas are embodied in not much beyond free breakfasts and violent opposition from/against the cops and the FBI. And, of course, there is a touch of anti-capitalism: a brick three-flat apartment building is described as telling "a story about Black wealth creation (if you were the landlord) and Black wealth extraction (if you were a tenant)." The building is shown to be standing alone on an otherwise vacant block in Chicago, but whatever connection that desolate present has to the Panther past is left undiscussed--because it is presumably self-evident? As is usually the case in historical preservation, this is less about doing history and more about crafting mythology--building monuments almost certain to be torn down by a future generation who no longer finds the constructed myth compelling. The Black Panthers as another "Lost Cause" in American history. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-24/how-chicago-is-landmarking-the-black-panther-party
“The Lost Causing” of American history. I’ve been looking for some sort of explanation to the lunacy and historical revisionism that’s gripped the portrayal of American history for the last twenty years. This is it. Has anyone written the piece that parallels the dunning school to what we see in academia (and to be fair, probably more so in popular media) today?
Oh God. I remember trying to watch A Seat at the Table. With that guy I'd never heard of before, or since, it was horrible. It should have been called "My Luxury Beliefs."
I’m afraid this means I should re-up my Free Press subscription—but with a subscription here and a subscription there, pretty soon you are talking some real money
The paragraph regarding A Seat at the Table is exquisite.
I will say, the business school drone thing is something that stuck me as someone that went to a top 40 business school drones producing business school. One of the things I learned from my fellow graduates was that the "cool companies" (especially the media ones) you could go work for after graduation were almost entirely the worst. They offered the worst pay with the worst benefits with the dumbest people. You were usually turning down 50-70% additional salary to go to one of those companies because you weren't just going to be working in an office and doing what the Man told you do, man. You were going to make a difference in the world! People would ask who you work for and instead of saying some boring bullshit like McKinsey or PwC (companies most people have no idea control as much money as they do), you'd respond "oh, I work for a media company. Have you hear of Vice?" and you would get a semi as the sad sack drone working for soul destroying company like Exxon making 5x what you make in Dallas where they can live like a King on that salary would go "Oh yeah! Didn't they make that cool video about North Korea?"
And you'd be a little annoyed because those videos are like 12 years old and that was when it was a bit more problematic and you're pushing the latest Anand Giridharadas production out, who is so hot right now, and your projections look really good (it's a line graph where line goes up and right) and you know the moment is right for this thing to be a fucking hit.
But you didn't actually do any like...market research or financial projections or generated a model tracking ad revenue for comparable projects because that shit is for nerds and you had like one finance class in business school that you mostly skated through because the guy with the undergrad in accounting (yuck) and the comp sci guy (double yuck) basically made a spreadsheet that will solve any test question in one of those google sheets.
As the actual rigor has been sucked out of MBA degrees, this is what you get now. The degree is a pathway to be a decision maker in businesses they don't understand but those businesses have outgrown the original scale and need someone to help with the organization.
I'm a finance person in management at a major media company.
Late to the party but that last sentence was just *chef's kiss*
Have a lovely weekend, all - and thanks Matt for the Saturday reading 😄
Agreed. I'm only 1/3 through reading this. I am saving the rest for when it's slow at work tomorrow.
The title...I'm blushing
"When in his [Vice's head of HR] office to collect some form or other, he once unleashed upon me [Moyn] a compliment so pornographic that even in those permissive pre-MeToo days, I was left both flattered and speechless."
Good god, I wish I could have witnessed this first hand.
Substack and The Free Press are really tag teaming me these days to get me to renounce my aversion to listening to politics and cultural criticism. Dammit I get all the rage-inducing nonsense I need from the boys at the Fifth Column! Be less good everyone!
They say the easiest way to judge the veracity of a news source is to look at their coverage of a subject you are intimately aquatinted with. I am guessing Ben is intimately aquatinted with his own conversation with his father and the coverage is pretty telling.
‘I’m Supposed To Be Thick’ - I’ve been telling my wife this, but she seems dubious
Balls deep?
The most eyebrow-raising part of the article was when I clicked the link for the 2022 breakdown of web site performance across verticals. Must be a good feeling when your NDA counterparty dies.
It's Christmas in May!
Back in February, Bloomberg published an article about historical preservation efforts in Oakland and Chicago that could lead to a potential Black Panthers national monument of some sort. The article is built around telling the real story of the Panthers, one that captures its "true" legacy. Yet there is almost no articulation of what that legacy might be. Mention is made of "liberation" and "self determination", but such grand ideas are embodied in not much beyond free breakfasts and violent opposition from/against the cops and the FBI. And, of course, there is a touch of anti-capitalism: a brick three-flat apartment building is described as telling "a story about Black wealth creation (if you were the landlord) and Black wealth extraction (if you were a tenant)." The building is shown to be standing alone on an otherwise vacant block in Chicago, but whatever connection that desolate present has to the Panther past is left undiscussed--because it is presumably self-evident? As is usually the case in historical preservation, this is less about doing history and more about crafting mythology--building monuments almost certain to be torn down by a future generation who no longer finds the constructed myth compelling. The Black Panthers as another "Lost Cause" in American history. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-24/how-chicago-is-landmarking-the-black-panther-party
“The Lost Causing” of American history. I’ve been looking for some sort of explanation to the lunacy and historical revisionism that’s gripped the portrayal of American history for the last twenty years. This is it. Has anyone written the piece that parallels the dunning school to what we see in academia (and to be fair, probably more so in popular media) today?
Oh God. I remember trying to watch A Seat at the Table. With that guy I'd never heard of before, or since, it was horrible. It should have been called "My Luxury Beliefs."
Any chance Moynihan could post his sources for the Huey Newton article? I think it's way more useful that way.
I’m afraid this means I should re-up my Free Press subscription—but with a subscription here and a subscription there, pretty soon you are talking some real money
if anyone's interested, abigael shrier's new book is on sale for $2.99 today (kindle version).
I found a Venn diagram of the Omnicause!
It’s truly beautiful and is as batshit crazy as we all imagined.
https://x.com/falastinerkive/status/1796927790358335971?s=46&t=xuM3b0kGgI_Q8kZGNv8KvA