Greedy like Me

I haven’t decided if I want to go out and be good before it becomes trendy or hang back and enjoy being greedy until the very last moment. Arthur Schlesinger is the one who tipped me off to the coming change of fashion. Mr. Schlesinger has divided historical eras into two categories: the virtuous ones, when his friends are allowed to run the country, and the selfish ones, when they’re left to hang around PBS television studios feeling grumpy.

Mr. Schlesinger told the New York Times recently that we are ending a selfish era and we’re all going to start being good again. Newsweek let the bad news drop in one of its aggressively uneducated trend stories, “The ‘80s Are Over: Greed Goes Out of Style.” Since Newsweek’s and Mr. Schlesinger’s virtuous eras usually involve a lot of people giving up house and career and going off to 12-hour concerts of Bergman movies adapted for banjo and harmonica, I don’t know if I want to be on the cutting edge of this next social transformation.

DB

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David Brooks

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I haven’t decided if I want to go out and be good before it becomes trendy or hang back and enjoy being greedy until the very last moment. Arthur Schlesinger is the one who tipped me off to the coming change of fashion. Mr. Schlesinger has divided historical eras into two categories: the virtuous ones, when his friends are allowed to run the country, and the selfish ones, when they’re left to hang around PBS television studios feeling grumpy.

Mr. Schlesinger told the New York Times recently that we are ending a selfish era and we’re all going to start being good again. Newsweek let the bad news drop in one of its aggressively uneducated trend stories, “The ‘80s Are Over: Greed Goes Out of Style.” Since Newsweek’s and Mr. Schlesinger’s virtuous eras usually involve a lot of people giving up house and career and going off to 12-hour concerts of Bergman movies adapted for banjo and harmonica, I don’t know if I want to be on the cutting edge of this next social transformation.