Around and around with The Wall Street Journal. In any given week there are several articles I like, whether in agreement or not, and then increasingly more that are inane, as if they were churned out on a phone in an Uber on the way to pick up delicate pastries. AI-enhanced? Can’t tell for sure, but Meghan Cox Gurdon’s latest “Free Expression” column reads that way, although given that she’s in her 60s and a successful author (Free Range Girl comes out next month)—my admittedly shaky radar for such breaches is up for grabs—I’ll say no.
I wasn’t familiar with Gurdon, and assumed the article was the work of a younger writer, but nevertheless the column, “Don’t Ruin Vacationland,” was an example of what’s wrong with legacy newspapers today. In short, her brief is that trips abroad or in the U.S. can be ruined by people who are more interested in taking photos than storing “memories.”
She writes: “There is a special horror that comes when some lovely thing you treasure goes viral… Whatever the thing it is and wherever it may be—Positano, Paris, the island of Santorini—the minute influencers post about it, their followers rush in. What you or I may have stumbled on by serendipity becomes a kind of notch in a universal trophy, and everyone wants to go there. Lines form. Hotels book up. Locals can’t get around without be jostled by strangers who are there for the selfie.”
Jeepers, that’s jejune: I’d no idea that Paris has become a popular tourist destination because of “influencers.” She also lapses into laziness at the best, an ethical lapse at the worst, when complaining that a “newspaper produced in New York was extolling the touristic pleasures of the area where I live.” That “newspaper produced in New York” is The New York Times and there was no need to be cute about “this media organ” running a story about Midcoast Maine. It’s not often today that competing newspapers cite a competitor’s work, but that’s still no excuse.
I’ve traveled all over the world—in 1987, as an example of how airlines have changed, I bought an unlimited first-class round ticket for $3500 that deposited me in London, Paris, Greece, Turkey, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Berlin, Rome and finally back to London before returning to New York three months later—and, thanks to fat glossy magazines like Conde Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure, bursting travel sections in newspapers, as well as the Fodor and Frommer guide books, and popular cooking shows on cable, I found some restaurants and hotels difficult to secure.
I needed a word to the concierge from a Londoner friend to get a room for five days at the then very trendy (and not the equal of 47 Park Street or the Hyde Park Hotel) Blake’s in South Kensington. You’re traveling and some inconveniences arise. Big deal. And while there were no “influencers” spreading their photos on TikTok, every other person had a camera (including me) and sometimes made walking difficult. In 1991 my wife and I dined at Paris’ exquisite Le Taillevent on a Baden-Baden/London/Paris jaunt and the French paparazzi lined the sidewalks (not for us, obviously) and we just ignored it. (No such commotion when I went to Johannesburg with my brother and sister-in-law in 1988—in fact, it was dangerous, like when I went to Belfast in ’86—but that’s not a surprise and I doubt that “newspaper produced in New York” ran any fashion/restaurant spreads of the city.)
At the article’s end, Gurdon dips into her trite bag of words once again, and writes: “[Let] me borrow a line from Jonathan Swift and make a modest proposal. Perhaps the authorities in Maine—and Tokyo, and Paris, and on Santorini—will consider setting up kiosks to liberate tourists from the tyranny of their smartphones. The visitors would have a better time, and so would the inhabitants.” She’s not indulging in facetiousness—Gurdon’s part of the elite!—but does admit some would find it “uncool.” Just like her article.
Back to the top, I did enjoy Matthew Hennessey’s Sept. 17th column in the Journal (I’m mixed about his conventional conservative writing) on the topic of loud-mouth artists and celebrities. An excerpt: “The Kennedy Center is lucky it survived #MeToo. That it did is a testament to the hypocrisy of the arts and their patrons. The principled crusade against sexual behavior by powerful men didn’t extend to those named Kennedy or Clinton. Tearing certain Democrats down would’ve given aid to the political enemy. We can’t have that.”
The photo above shows one of my nieces relaxing on a yacht on the Amalfi Coast, during a two-week extended family reunion many years back. Despite the lack of TikTok and cell phones, the Capri restaurants were jammed, as were those in Positano, Tuscany and Monaco (I didn’t fare too well at the Monte-Carlo Casino during that trip, but the 100 bucks I dropped was worth the couple of hours another niece and I—dressed so smart!—spent together.)
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: E.L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate, Robert B. Parker’s Playmates and Pauline Kael’s Hooked are published; Imogen Poots is born and Robert Penn Warren dies; Kazuo Ishiguro wins the Booker Prize; Anne Tyler wins the Fiction Pulitzer; Liverpool wins the FA Cup; License to Kill premieres in London; Douglas Hurd becomes Foreign Secretary in the UK; The Replacements’ Don’t Tell a Soul is released; and the Atlanta Braves rank last in attendance, with less than a million.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023