Ann Marlowe

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/01/style-over-substance-opinions-contributors-barack-obama.html

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out why my friends buy dysfunctional products. I include myself for my two cursed MacBooks, each of which has been in the shop multiple times in their first year of service. I’ve been using Macs so long that it would be a major issue to change all my files, though every month or two I think about it.

But because of my MacBook horrors–which include having to buy a second one when the first one simply wouldn’t turn on the day before a month-long trip to Afghanistan–I’ve resisted the siren song of the iPhone and stayed with my reliable if unglam BlackBerry.

Yes, I’d love to have the function that identifies songs that are playing, and the photo storage is cool and good-looking. But from what I’ve heard, it just doesn’t work. Lately, every time I’ve walked up those silly transparent steps to the Moronbar at my local Apple Store with one of my two lemon MacBooks, I’ve watched the line of hipsters waiting to drop their iPhones off for repair–and recoiled.

Then my visiting friend from Los Angeles, Rachel, told me she needed to use my landline for a radio interview because her iPhone was unreliable. I knew I’d made the right choice. I don’t need another product that doesn’t work.

My friend Edward, who is 49, told me that a 27-year-old woman he recently went on a date with showed him how to use some of the apps on his iPhone. (Maybe that’s what people do on dates these days). Edward is brilliant but an “old 49″ who dresses like a man of 60. So the iPhone is the equivalent of sharper shoes for him. It involves him in the culture of younger folk.

The iPhone seems to have a fatal allure for my 50ish friends, and I’ve come to think they see it as a way of clinging to youth that doesn’t involve fashion mistakes or plastic surgery. With both the iPhone and BlackBerry now available for about $199, with a contract, neither is a signifier of wealth. But each has a meaning. And maybe the BlackBerry is a way of leapfrogging to full adulthood–the corporate world, seriousness, all that–for some users in their early 20s.
Don’t get me wrong, part of me wants an iPhone, too–the same part that occasionally buys really uncomfortable shoes because of how they look. And I understand those who have both iPhones and BlackBerrys; it’s like having both sensible shoes and stilettos. If you’re willing to lug around two devices (the reason many people give for buying an iPhone is that they don’t want to carry both an iPod and a BlackBerry), and can afford it, why not?

My bi-phone 51-year-old woman filmmaker friend Pamela loves her BlackBerry (“I’ve dropped it at least 300 times and no matter how hard it falls, it still works!”) and her iPhone. But what she e-mailed me about the iPhone reminds me of Edward:

“Not only is it useful in my line of work, having an iPhone is sort of like having a dog–you take it out and you instantly make friends with lots of very attractive young people–you sit around and trade tips on the best new apps or show each other photos or films you’ve made. This definitely makes it worth every penny.”

Ah yes, the very attractive young people–and so accessible! Who can blame Pamela? The quest for signifiers of youth is pretty harmless, in the field of consumer goods.

(more…)

 www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/10/06/sarah-palin-elite-oped-cx_am_1007marlowe.html

“If Sarah Palin is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, so am I!”

These words spoken by my friend Janet were true. But Janet hasn’t put herself in Palin’s position by running for office. She’s made films and renovated houses, cushioned by inherited money. And since she doesn’t have any kids, it’s hard to say what would have gotten in the way if she’d wanted to be in politics. She didn’t, though, any more than 99% of my women friends and acquaintances; she believes in cultivating one’s own garden.

Most women I’ve talked with about Palin–all certified members of either the media elite or the just plain elite–take her nomination personally. Their animus isn’t explained just by her politics; none of them hate Condoleezza Rice, though they disagree with most everything she’s done. Nor, for that matter, do they even dislike John McCain. Typically they “respect” McCain but find him too old or too erratic or simply adore Obama.

It’s as though Palin were an average girl from their boarding school class–or, frankly, from the public school down the road–who unexpectedly won a big prize. “Why not me?” is the subtext, and it’s one I’ve never heard from men talking about male politicians. Many New Yorkers hate George Bush, for instance, and say similar things about his and Palin’s lack of intellectual capability and curiosity about the wider world. But they don’t view him as a personal rival.

My friends who hate Palin are all more articulate and better educated than she is, better traveled, probably smarter, definitely more fun to talk with. But the reasons they can’t stand Palin are all wrong.

It’s not so much that Palin isn’t one of our own–an Ivy League type, or an Eastern preppie, or a self-made intellectual like Rice. It’s not for the fake feminist reasons that “she’s against freedom of choice” or “she didn’t tell her daughter about birth control.” (Though there is an element of hatred for her fertility, and the fact that it hasn’t impeded her rise.) It’s not because Palin only got a passport a few years ago and doesn’t speak any foreign languages.

No, it’s because Palin makes us look like the slackers we mainly are. We’ve had our bit of success, but we’ve also spent a lot of time smelling the roses. We’ve gone back to school to get another degree, volunteered in poor countries, devoted ourselves to a sport or a hobby. We’ve not had kids, or if we have, we’ve had one or two, and we’ve had nannies paid for by our work or our husbands or our inherited money.

We not only have had passports for decades, we’ve put serious mileage on them. We’ve lived overseas or spent months wandering around Africa or India, we understand foreign people and places in ways Palin never will–and yet it’s she who could become vice president, not one of us.

It’s not hard to see why. The boyfriend of one of my freshman roommates at Harvard is now governor of Massachusetts–a man no less and no more qualified than many of my classmates. Why him and not us? As with Palin, it comes down to wanting it badly enough and being singleminded. It means spending a lot of time in deadly dull meetings talking about school bond issues or where to put a new off-ramp.

It means spending a lot of time in small towns where no one you know has a country place or ever will. And except at the higher reaches, politics doesn’t offer much in the way of glamour or fame. I just got my absentee ballot here in New York City, and I didn’t recognize the names of the people running for Congress. (Jerrold Nadler or Grace Lin, anyone? Nadler has been the congressman from New York’s 8th District since 1992, and Grace Lin is a 24-year-old graduate of the University of Chicago whose previous experience is as a committeewoman for a Chicago ward. While her chances of victory are nil in this district, her Web site is frighteningly sketchy on the issues.)

People who become writers and intellectuals and artists tend not to want power that badly or pursue it that obsessively, which is what makes us interesting and fun–and makes few of us household names. Success at the Palin level in politics or business takes a level of blinkered self-confidence that comes mainly to (a very few) men. A lot of the people with this quality are annoying to be around. Maybe they aren’t very happy with themselves. But it’s not a surprise that a vice presidential nominee should be one of them.

The lesson of Sarah Palin for privileged women is to try harder. And that may be the toughest one to hear.