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• Wednesday, April 12, 2006 04:00 PM

  Flanagan: All dressed up with no place to go. . .

  Caitlin Flanagan exemplifies the phenomenon of the moderately talented writer without anything to say. . .She has few real ideas and is confused about the ones she does have. . .so, with no idea what to say or write, she just writes or says something really stupid. . .

  Every time I read one of her New Yorker articles I'm just astounded that they gave her that much space to describe how she blew obscene amounts of money on a Hawaiian vacation with her family. . .or on bribing her children's private school teachers with expensive gifts. . .

  Her stuff is, indeed, compulsively readable, but it always makes me feel like I need to take a shower after reading it. Nothing else in the New Yorker ever makes me feel that way. . .

  Is that why they publish her? Because she's the closest they can get to unseemly voyeurism and still call themselves the New Yorker?

  What is their excuse?

  Please: fight about this working mom vs. non-working mom nonsense all you want (and it is nonsense--most of the moms I know, employed outside the home or not, are too busy to engage in this sillyness)but whatever you do--DO NOT buy this book. She'll just use the money for another extravagant vacation--or even worse--subject New Yorker readers to descriptions of her home renovations.

  Ick. Gotta go take a shower.

  —just another synesthete Read just another synesthete's other letters
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