January 2, 2006
Idiot bias
That Leah McLaren was annoying this week will not come as a massive shock to most of you. That I keep reading her anyway is more surprising, but she just keeps turning up in my newspaper. Anyway, she wrote about debt this week. It reminded me of an article that was in the Globe a few weeks ago, about that poor twenty-four year old who didn’t realise that paying for your psychology degree with a credit card was perhaps not the best life choice and was now blaming all and sundry for her debt problems. And McLaren, who can’t understand why she amasses so much debt with such a modest lifestyle- car, house, cashmere. However it seems that Leah McLaren bought her house in a place where she doesn’t live, and so rents an apartment on top of mortgage payments. I am beginning to see her problems. I also doubt that Ms. McLaren drives a 1989 Honda Civic. So here are these poor twenty-somethings, debt-ridden, symptomatic of a quarter-life crisis.
I’ll give you a life crisis- the threat of death. All else is melodrama. If you are lucky to be 25 or thereabouts, save your crisis for when you’ll really need one. And if you are stupid enough to pay for your psychology degree with your credit card, please own up to your stupidity. Don’t blame your debt on teachers telling you to “follow your dream” or on-line poker. If you find it necessary to live far beyond your means, don’t market this in national newspapers as a fashionable choice. Do these idiotic people have no shame? And why must they keep hanging the “idiot” label upon my entire generation?
