I have been perusing a crazy blog lately that most of you have probably seen and spent a large amount of time reading (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com), and through it I stumbled upon an article from the New York Times website about young, affluent urbanites going out to farms and getting elbow deep in pig shit in order to show the rest of us how we might make a better world. Here is the link to the Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/fashion/16farmer.html?scp=1&sq=Trucker+Hat&st=nyt

I suppose I should give credit to people who put their money where their mouths are and do the dirty work they always felt was so noble—but I just can’t seem to rise above. When I hear about Williamsburg hipsters, who were raised on the east side of Manhattan, heading upstate to start their own organic produce farms, it makes my eye twitch. Have they any idea how badly the kids who were raised on small, struggling farms throughout the country want to get out? I know, I know, it’s their prerogative to choose such a difficult life, and their reasons for doing so are none of my business—but every single one of these crunchy ass-breaths in this article struck out to raise “organic” produce and livestock, which they will in turn sell back to the wealthy people in the urban centers they just left behind. Lower income households certainly can’t afford the kinds of prices necessary for the ex-cool kids to live in adequate quarters while “living off the land”—and here is where the whole idea of nobility starts to fall apart.

These people have the skills that so many others desire in order to live a more promising life. But they would rather move to the sticks and take jobs away from others that lack the ability or the means to find better. It is all enough to drive me freaking bugshit, and then I read a quote like this, and my blood boils in my veins:

The Billyburg scene has changed, said Annaliese Griffin, who contributes to a blog called Grocery Guy. “Having a cool cheese in your fridge has taken the place of knowing what the cool band is, or even of playing in that band,” she said. “Our rock stars are ricotta makers.”

Holy crap. Well, Annaliese, let me guarantee you this: somewhere out there a poor farmer’s son could care less about fucking goat cheese and would so love to go see a rock star one day. Can he have your old record collection, Annaliese? You PIG.

Soon enough all these new hippies will get tired of getting up at 5 AM every day, working their asses off until they feel like dropping in their well-heeled tracks, and then they will head back to the city to start up research firms, just like the old hippies did.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 3:26 pm and is filed under General Nonsense, News and Science, The Soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.