The Unbearable Lameness Of Anya Kamenetz

Several times, upon picking up the Village Voice, I vaguely noticed a recurring series of columns under the banner "Generation Debt".  I had a pretty good sense that these columns were little more than woe-is-me whinings of a frustrated twentysomething, replete with complaints about credit-cards, the high cost of college, the lack of cool jobs, and how humiliating it is to live at home.  But I also had the sense that "Generation Debt" was not so much a demographic, but a voluntary culture.  Those people that I knew who went into areas like law, chemistry, business, computer engineering, biology etc. weren't slumming around at low-paid restaurant jobs, pining for a chance to be a barista at the local hipster hot spot.  On the other hand my friends who wanted to be musicians, filmmakers and playwrights (which I myself have pursued), were having a harder go of it.  There just aren't high-paying jobs in those areas for people right out of college and there never will be -- that's not a reflection, though, of the economic times.

But there was one aspect of the "Generation Debt" which I totally missed.  I expected the author to be among the poor souls that were profiled.  Far from it.  As I learned just today, the essays were penned by the privileged and wildly successful Anya Kamenetz.  Here's her bio:

Anya Kamenetz grew up in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father,   Rodger Kamenetz, is a poet and the author of The Jew in the Lotus; her mother,   Moira Crone, is a novelist. Since graduating from Yale University in 2002, Anya   has lived in Manhattan and freelanced as a fact-checker, copy editor, research   assistant, and writer.

She has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post,   New York Magazine, Salon, Slate, The Nation, and the Village   Voice. In 2004, the Voice nominated her for a Pulitzer Prize in feature   writing for her work on the series “Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being   Young.” In January 2005, the series became a biweekly column. Reporting assignments   have taken her to the Palestinian territories, post-Katrina Louisiana, and the   streets of New York City, during protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention,   where she barely evaded capture by plastic netting. Generation Debt:   Why Now is a Terrible Time to be Young (Riverhead Books, 2006) is her   first book.

But the problem isn't that she's a Yale-educated daughter of two novelists, with a good career, talking about how bad the youth have it.  That's fine and well, and frankly such character charges are always lame.  The problem is that her writing and her viewpoints are awful, and one gets the distinct impression that it's precisely because of her background that she so badly misses the mark when talking about her own generation.  The fact that so many Village Voice (and New York Times, and New York magazine) readers are likely to look to Kamenetz' writing to get a sense of where twentysomethings are only makes it worse

The article that actually caught my attention was from Tuesday's New York Times, in which she bizarrely rants against the evils of the internship.  The article was found after reading Will Wilkinson's scathing critique which starts with the awesome line, "Anya Kamenetz’s mind is an ideological funhouse mirror designed to baffle and enrage the economically literate."  Indeed.  Shall we?

Actually, it's hard to know where to begin:

Although it's not being offered this year, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Union Summer internship program, which provides a small stipend, has shaped thousands of college-educated career organizers. And yet interestingly, the percentage of young workers who hold an actual union card is less than 5 percent, compared with an overall national private-sector union rate of 12.5 percent. How are twentysomethings ever going to win back health benefits and pension plans when they learn to be grateful to work for nothing?

So an internship doesn't teach you everything you need to know about coping in today's working world. What effect does it have on the economy as a whole?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not identify interns or track the economic impact of unpaid internships. But we can do a quick-and-dirty calculation: according to Princeton Review's "Internship Bible," there were 100,000 internship positions in 2005. Let's assume that out of those, 50,000 unpaid interns are employed full time for 12 weeks each summer at an average minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. That's a nearly $124 million yearly contribution to the welfare of corporate America.

Said assaults on logic come fast and furious.  Somehow, in her world, there's a relationship between an internship spot at a labor union and the fact that there aren't many young people who are actually in unionized careers.  Please leave a comment if that makes sense to you.  Then she makes up some data about the "yearly contribution to the welfare of corporate America", which so far as I can tell is an entirely meaningless phrase.  What she's crafted is a crude back-of-the-envelope guess for how much interns make in a year. So we're left wondering what that means.  I'll spare you any more, though elsewhere she compares interns to illegal immigrants, which means she's probably been watching too much Lou Dobbs.  She also claims that by working for free, workers convince themselves that they love their jobs.

But it isn't just her understanding of economics which is flawed, she clearly has a damaged perspective.  Via Radley Balko, I found this great Daniel Gross piece in slate on Kamenetz:

In Kamenetz's book, there are plenty of poor, self-pitying upper-middle-class types, disappointed that they can't have exactly what they want when they want it. Sure, it's tough to live well as a violinist or a grad student in New York today; but the same thing held 20 years ago, and 40 years ago. To improve their lot, twentysomethings have to do the same things their parents should be doing: saving more, spending less, building skills that are marketable, and aligning aspirations with abilities. It's tough to have a bourgeois life at 26.

Kamenetz also makes cavalier statements about economics and career development. "The job market sucks," she proclaims. It may not be as good as it was in the 1990s, but suck is a pretty strong term. She complains that a $700 personal computer, a necessity for any young person, is expensive. Huh? Computing is incredibly cheap. The first PC I bought, that crappy, tiny Mac, cost $2,000 in 1990 dollars.

Kamenetz complains that: "No employer has yet offered me a full-time job with a 401(k), a paid vacation, or any other benefits beyond the next assignment. I have a savings account but no retirement fund. I can't afford preschool fees or a mortgage anywhere near the city where I live and work." Of course, Kamenetz doesn't have kids to send to preschool. And chances are, by the time she does, she'll be able to afford preschool fees. Most people in their 20s don't realize that their incomes will rise over time (none of the people I know who have six-figure incomes today had them when they were 25), that they will marry or form a partnership with somebody else, thus increasing their income, and that they may get over having to live in the hippest possible neighborhood.

Look. It's tough coming out of Ivy League schools to New York and making your way in the world. The notion that you can be—and have to be—the author of your own destiny is both terrifying and exhilarating. And for those without marketable skills, who lack social and intellectual capital, the odds are indeed stacked against them. But someone like Kamenetz, who graduated from Yale in 2002, doesn't have much to kvetch about. In the press materials accompanying the book, she notes that just after she finished the first draft, her boyfriend "proposed to me on a tiny, idyllic island off the coast of Sweden." She continues: "As I write this, boxes of china and flatware, engagement gifts, sit in our living room waiting to go into storage because they just won't fit in our insanely narrow galley kitchen. We spent a whole afternoon exchanging the inevitable silver candlesticks and crystal vases, heavy artifacts of an iconic married life that still seems to have nothing to do with ours." The inevitable silver candlesticks? Too much flatware to fit in the kitchen? We should all have such problems.

Look, it's one thing to be privileged; I feel that I am, as are many of my friends.  And it's fine to be wrong, I've been wrong on too many issues to count.  But for people to accept that someone like Anya Kamenetz speaks for her generation, when it's obvious that her life bears little resemblance to the cherry picked anecdotes and misleading statistics in her writing, is just baffling. 

At the risk of of sounding like Holden Caulfield, Kamenetz is the worst kind of phony.  It's common that in wealthy societies privileged persons seek to identify with and give voice to an oppressed class.  This can be a good thing when such a class actually exists.  But Kamenetz goes a step further.  She brilliantly created a new oppressed class and made a lucrative career out of being its spokesperson.  Surely it will be a new model for similarly ambitious people for years to come.

Comments

[mo]

yes and no. Yes she's ridiculous, but no, young 20 somethings do have it harder than their parents(economically at least). The disparity between young and old workers is also getting worse.
I make roughly $30k a year(with degrees in computer science and political science) in Washington, DC. I can either put 2/3 of my salary into a 150 square foot studio, or pile in with 11 of my closest friends into a 4 bedroom house. The previous generation was already onto their second kid by the time they entered their mid-twenties--I'm still struggling to put ramen on the table for myself. Fortunately, my parents took care of my undergrad education, but my friends with loans are farked. I know people that are living with significant others simply because they can't afford to live separately. http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060524

[carlo]

but no, young 20 somethings do have it harder than their parents(economically at least).

You're missing an important distinction -- that the choices many people in their 20s make create the appearance their lives are "harder" than previous generations.

Choices like moving to places with high costs of living, or choices about what constitutes an acceptable lifestyle.

Also, using procreation as a measure of economic health is also quite odd.

[Dennis Chan]

Kamenetz is a total, total whiner. Each generation has its own unique problems. If she thinks her generation has it rough, try telling that to the greatest generation; you know, the generation that lived through a great depression and risked their lives to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Oh, by the way, after they saved the world from tyranny, they built America into the greatest country on earth. Or even my generation, I immigrated to the US in 1979 with no money, couldn't speak a word of English and faced an alien culture. Compare to that, they have it easy. Yes, it is a little bit more difficult than their parents who maybe the most spoiled generation in America. All they have to do is to swallow their prides and move back to live with their parents until they accumulate enough savings to buy their own houses.

[jb]

this generation is so spoiled and so ridiculous that i worry about this country's future... they grow up playing on their iPods , computers , and GameBox's , and we should feel bad for them that their "entitledments" aren't there after they leave college... they're soft

[Patrick]

I think she's a genius.

After all, if you invent your own " new oppressed class" then you can't have anything you say or believe disproved by any unfortunate encounters with reality.

Mind you, I seem to remember exactly the same complaints from when I was in my 20s back in the mid 1990s. Probably you could dig up similar reports from the 80s, 70s, 60s...1830s....Aristotle...

[wcw]

"..and they drive their chariots too fast." (elder carping purportedly found on a clay tablet of Hammurabi's vintage)

That said, AK is so lame, you and the otherwise-sainted Mr. Gross have made the grave error of paying attention. When faced with utter lameness, I learned by weekly encountering the self-centered scribblings of Gina Arnold back in the day, you have to pretend it didn't happen.

If you respond, the lame writer's employers will think, "aha! we are employing someone who arouses a response," and she will not be fired.

The best way to get a writer fired is to ignore her.

FD: I lived like a Bohemian at 26, and I'm paying for it with a checkered career path at 35. I went in with eyes open and regret nothing. I would like a nice sinecure, mind you, but on Monday I fly off for another painful consulting gig. Such is life.

[Bary G]

I can't tell you how many friends and youth I have seen turn into angry depressed people who feel they are entitled to something other then freedom, and they all quote their newspaper of choice: The New York Times. Its my theory that the Times and similar school of thought are destructive because it makes people think that someone else should make their plan when reality is that we live in a society which not only rewards the individual but requires it. It also explains why so many times readers stay small or poor, because if the times helped them move up, then it would lose it readership, that would explain why the worst economist ever (paul krugman(and they have the balls to charge to read his non-sense online)) still writes for the times.

[mike]

Hi, I'm new to the Stalwart, and I don't know the first thing about Anya Kamenetz. However, based on the texts you cite, I find your analysis to be rather poor. For example, this paragraph almost entirely misinterprets her text:

"Said assaults on logic come fast and furious. Somehow, in her world, there's a relationship between an internship spot at a labor union and the fact that there aren't many young people who are actually in unionized careers. Please leave a comment if that makes sense to you. Then she makes up some data about the "yearly contribution to the welfare of corporate America", which so far as I can tell is an entirely meaningless phrase. What she's crafted is a crude back-of-the-envelope guess for how much interns make in a year. So we're left wondering what that means. I'll spare you any more, though elsewhere she compares interns to illegal immigrants, which means she's probably been watching too much Lou Dobbs. She also claims that by working for free, workers convince themselves that they love their jobs."

1) She isn't talking about internship in labor unions (??), she merely quotes her source for internship statistics, or rather for the non-existence of those: the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No relation to unions whatsoever.

2) I don't find "yearly contribution to the welfare of corporate America" to be a completely meaningless phrase. Here's how I understand it: companies offer internship positions at no wages, so when qualified people accept working for free, it's as if they were providing welfare to companies. What's so obscure about the phrase?

3) You're left wondering what that means? It sounds to me like you're not thinking very hard then. She says, pretty clearly, that the practice of hiring qualified people for unpaid internships, is not cool.

To quote you, "I'll spare you anymore".

Best,
Mike

[ima potato]

to mike, above: if as you say immediately you don't know the first thing about anya kamenentz, but are new to the stalwart, than (a) why did you come to the stalwart and (b) why did you come apparenty to defend anya kamenentz?

[mike]

Dear ima_potato,

(a) I read a piece called Journalism is Broken (over at http://c-lo.net/?p=133) and there was a reference to the Stalwart, I quote, "two untrained writers, but two highly intelligent guys with great thoughts on business and economics". So I thought I'd give it a shot.

(b) The Anya Kamenetz text happened to be the article on display that day. I read it, and found the analysis to be lacking. Obviously the author did not get the meaning of her text, so I thought I'd help him out.

[carlo]

Mike,

"Although it's not being offered this year, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Union Summer internship program, which provides a small stipend, has shaped thousands of college-educated career organizers."

Last time I checked, the AFL-CIO was a labor union. And a pretty big one at that.

"She says, pretty clearly, that the practice of hiring qualified people for unpaid internships, is not cool."

And you say The Stalwart's "analysis is lacking"?

[mike]

*cough*

yup. guess i was tired. my apologies

[Geoff Wickersham]

Putting AK's comments/whining into a little more perspective, hadn't the Baby Boomers whined about being misunderstood and hassled when they were younger? Weren't the wealthier college kids the ones who avoided the Vietnam War draft and led the anti-war protests on the college campuses? These children of privilege were fighting against a war they would never die in, and when it was all over, most went on with their lives and made money in the system they so bitterly fought against.

I've got AK's book from the library and have started to read it. I think she would have done a better job if she could have linked some of the bad economic factors, like McJobs, to a nationwide trend - outsourcing millions of manufacturing and white collar jobs to Asia being one of those nationwide trends. That way, the book wouldn't have such a narrow focus. Or, to get a broader picture of this generation, she shouldn't have limited her scope to the upper-middle class. It wouldn't have hurt to talk the middle and lower-middle class folks who also have issues w/ credit cards, student loans, and what not.

Here on Stalwart.com, you make a good point about choices. People in Gen X (born 1961-1981) and the Millenials (born after 1981) have made terrible choices with credit cards that put them deeper in debt. Also, people have made the poor choice to live in trendy neighborhoods and then lament the fact that they can't afford to live there w/o sharing an apartment with five friends splitting a $1,200 rent payment.

Hell, that sounded like college for me back in 1989-90 - paying $200 to share a room and live on mac and cheese and Crunchberries. Plus, I applied for credit cards up the wazoo. I was $7,000 in debt before I got married. Thank God for my wife! She helped me get rid off all that stuff, including $3,000 worth of loans. Plus, I finally got a decent paying job once the recession finally wore off in Michigan.

Daniel Gross in Slate also does a fine job of putting her comments into perspective. When you're in your 20s, life is tough. When you get to your 30s, things will turn around. Your dream job might be ten years away. I didn't get my dream job until I was 29. All within 5 months of turning 29, I became a father, got my Masters, and got a job teaching social studies in a great public school. So, it does get better, but it hard to be patient, especially for a generation raised on instant gratification.

I'll bet that the internship editorial is probably one that she wishes she could take back.

Peace,
Geoff

[George]

You totally miss the boat. She's not trying to guesstimate how much interns make - there's no need to do that. UNPAID INTERNS MAKE $0. What she's trying to estimate is how much labor corporate America gets for free by using the false promise of a paid position waiting at the end of an internship.

As a 20-something who worked 2 unpaid internships, I'll speak up in her support. Companies are circumventing minimum wage laws and we need to teach students that their work has value. It's degrading to anyone to work an unpaid internship, and it hurts the job prospects of everyone.

And, no, I don't have a philosophy/art/music or other nebulous degree. I'm a copywriter and I worked hard nosed advertising internships.