The Gimlet Eye

Nixon’s Nemeses

FOR ALL its blessings, affluence carries a curse: the creation of entire classes of people who don’t, as a technical matter, have any reason for being here. The golf pro, the anti-smoking activist, the gestalt therapist—each forgoes productive employment to surf on the lagniappe of an economy that creates more wealth than it can properly dispose of. Some of these people are harmless or amusing; some are pests and parasites. Some are professors of journalism.