Alexandra Scaggs

Places I Went And Loved: Hong Kong

I went to Hong Kong to visit a friend, but the best part of the trip was wandering around alone during the day — like the day I visited Cheung Chau.

The trip is just an hour or two by ferry. The island is an honest-to-god fishing village, with wet markets and fisherman drying out their recent catches on bicycle racks. There are expansive nearly-empty beaches to sit on, and an ocean to swim in if you ignore the pollution. 

I heard a young Chinese man talking to his English friend getting off the ferry:  ”It’s like it’s… 30 years ago.” 

For such a short ferry ride, it’s really a world away from the city. Two hours after I took this picture I was dropped off right outside a mega-mall in Central Hong Kong, complete with Cartier and Louis Vuitton and the rail-thin ultra-groomed women shopping there. Needless to say, after the full day swimming, laying out and exploring in the fishing village, I got some looks, but didn’t mind a bit. 

Betty Draper? Really? Totally not getting why everyone hates Marnie. 

theatlantic:

Marnie on ‘Girls’: TV’s Latest Beautiful Control Freak

Two weeks into the new HBO series Girls, one character has emerged as the most divisive: Marnie, the gorgeous, uptight roommate of the show’s heroine, Hannah. In a discussion about the most recent episode, Slate’s L.V. Anderson asked, “Does she have any redeeming qualities?”Vanity Fair’s Julie Weiner echoed the sentiment, calling Marnie “a gallerina with overbearing mothering tendencies.”

Marnie is not TV’s first beautiful control freak: She fits squarely into a character type formed by Mad Men’s Betty and Sex and the City’s Charlotte, two stunning women with deep neuroses. Marnie, Betty, and Charlotte highlight a strange trend in highbrow television: With beauty comes a desire for control—which the character ultimately must lose in humiliating fashion.

Most television characters are physically attractive, of course, andGirls is no exception. But the other women on Girls have qualities that blunt their beauty in some way and make them seem “realer.” Jessa has her ridiculously bohemian outfits and tough attitude; Shoshanna her laughably dated Juicy jumpsuits and tense, eager-to-please smile; and Hannah her well-documented arm and tummy fat. Marnie, however, is basically physically flawless. She has beautiful hair, clear skin, and a long lean frame, and she wears classically fashionable clothes that fit her well. She has no obvious outward flaw to signal to the audience that she’s “just like us.” […]

This combination of beauty and obsessive self-control is toxic. Countless articles and video montages decry Betty’s poor parenting skills,self-pity, and all-around annoyingness. Charlotte didn’t inspire the same amount of vitriol as Betty, but still had her detractors. Over the course of the Sex and the City’s six-year run she was dismissed as “dopey,” “prudish,” and “conventional.” After just two episodes, Marnie is getting the same treatment: Good magazine wonders why Hannah would ever be friends with her; Vanity Fair calls her the show’s “most polarizing character.” Even her defenders couch their approval in apology: A male reviewer at Mother Jones says, “I fully understand the kind of guff I’m inviting by reserving praise exclusively for the hot one.”

Read more. [Images: HBO, AMC]

I don’t want to keep up the outrage so I’m not including the original post (click on the picture if you want to read).

Mr. Rosen doesn’t mention that newspapers don’t quote spokespeople by name because it doesn’t matter. It’s a common rule for style. Spokespeople are acting as the voice of the company, so they don’t need names. I don’t think I’ve ever quoted a PR rep/spokesperson by name. Did he not know this? 

*update - it should be noted I don’t see any problem w/ other debates on anonymous attribution. But I wouldn’t use the quoting of a “spokesperson” as evidence that a reporter is in the pocket of a company or “cowardly.”

*update part TWO - this seems to occur more in financial journalism. Many of these companies have more than 10 spokespeople (along with their third-party reps) who all work on the company line/statements (and who move around a lot, with a few high-profile exceptions who are usually quoted by name), and the company line is the company line, no matter who says it. It seems to be a bit different in political news, where one politician will have one spokesperson for everything. Like I’ve said, it’s debatable. Those questions are probably best addressed by far greater/more important minds than mine, but just wanted to point out it is very often stylistic and not the result of a request from the rep.  

leitch:

via Skeets

Hm.