Ben Stein Watch: January 25, 2009 - Conde Nast Portfolio
Your fault, completely. Your son is 21, and unemployed. As a general rule, unemployed 21-year-olds do not believe that they can eat at any restaurant they like. The ones who do believe that only believe it because they have been over-pampered, and because they have been given far too much money/credit by their parents. What's more, those parents invariably have exactly the same attitude to restaurants, especially pointless and flashy ones like Morton's and Mr Chow.What's more, as Yves Smith notes, Stein starts off the column spending a lot of time picking on his old friend, just because "he needs to make his pampered son look better".
The friend's story is not exactly sympathetic: she's been spending something north of $20,000 a month for years now without ever finding a job; she lives in a $2.7 million house; and now, with the imminent end of her alimony payments and her relationship with "a wealthy beau who pays her credit card bills and other incidentals", she's scared about how she's going to maintain her lifestyle.
