Adam Gopnik is Officially a Pundit...

...by which I mean he is a twit who thinks that if he says something about current affairs, then it must be true, because why would he have said it, otherwise?

Comparing American consumers to toddlers, he says of us that

Consumers have stopped consuming, the papers, say, for the same reason that the child has decided to cry: I'm really damaged, we want the world to know; attention must be paid. (The New Yorker 95[43]:19, 5 Jan 2009)

We are overreacting to the economic downturn, worsening it by consuming less, because we want Mama to make it aw bettew.

Which, you know, is probably true — the part about how low consumption won't help the economy, I mean.

But that we're reacting like children? Fuck you, Gopnik. Fuck you.

If you could guarantee that I'll still have my job a year from now, sure, I'd spend more. But you know what? Our big boss is a little nervous, and if things don't pick up by this time next year, the downsizing will begin. Without any expectation that I might need it anytime soon I've been working for a couple of years now to save a year's worth of monthly budgets. Just to be on the safe side. Now, though, that's not enough, and I'm going to spend this year adding as much as I can to it. And until you opened your damned pie-hole* I was keeping mine shut about it. I don't expect anything from anyone with respect to my preparations for the future. So unless you can foretell peoples' futures, how dare you suggest we are overreacting? You presume too much, sir.

I'll make you a deal, Gopnik: you promise to leave your higher-paying-than-mine job in December and then not work for another year afterward, and, in the meantime, spend for all you're worth, and I'll reconsider whether you're an insufferable know-it-all and I'm a crybaby.

Until then, Gopnik, you can See Me in Hell.

*Ordinarily I would be thrilled by the opportunity to use the word legitimately, but Gopnik took all the fun out of it.