Errors and Omissions

Sorry, Harry: time to mothball "Executive Pursuits"

I've been spending too much time today reading "Fire Joe Morgan." Those guys are really funny, but reading it too much gets me as cranky as they are.

Which brings me to Harry Hurt III, the writer of "Executive Pursuits," a biweekly column in the New York Times Sunday Business section.

When I first saw this column, I thought: there are not enough articles on ultra-expensive leisure activities in newspapers today. And now there is a regular column on this topic! Hooray!

Not really.

Who is the Times aiming at with this column? Ninety-nine percent of even their readers won't get within a country mile of Hurt's adventures. A sampling:

• Playing polo
• Running over a $5,700 Vertu cellphone with a Porsche
• Getting a custom-made pair of $1,300 shoes (note: the prices of items in the column is prominently featured)
• Spending $650 on a bottle of wine at auction
  
• Driving a cigarette boat
• Flying a World War II fighter jet

And the column is written with a tone stuffier than a forty-year-old New Yorker Talk of the Town piece. Such as: "Left alone to labor in gloom, I was hoping to take the edge off the cold dark night even as the words of my existentialist hero, Albert Camus, rattled my brain."

Finally, we are treated to glimpses of Hurt's personal life that are as banal as they are overweening:

• "I needed to rent my Sag Harbor house again this coming summer to make ends meet."
• "As an ominous autumnal-feeling wind shook the leaves from the trees, my wife, Alison, accused me of real and imagined transgressions."
• "My chimerical evil twin, Larry, had once again gotten me exiled to Chateau Bow Wow, a.k.a the Doghouse, by flirting with a yoga teacher."
• "Now Christmas was just a few weeks away, and my checking account was tapped out."

I don't know what I feel about Hurt, but it certainly isn't envy.

At any rate, Times editors, it's time to put this column out of its misery. There's gotta be a better use for the newsprint it takes up.

newspapers, media, New York Times

posted by Unknown @ 6/08/2006 03:43:00 PM