Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
Weekly: Pick of the Issue
Bimonthly: Ask the Librarians
Submit a question for the next column.
Frequently:
Headline Shooter
Seal Barks
Eustace Google
Looked Into
Simon Rich Homage: What Do Hipster Parents Sound Like to Kids?
Filed under: Eustace Google Tagged: Shouts & Murmurs, Simon Rich
What do Hipster Parents Sound Like to Kids?Simon Rich has written a hysterical version of what grown up conversation sounds like to kids in this week’s New Yorker Shouts and Murmurs. It made me think about how much I enjoy The New Yorker now and how much I hated it as a kid.
In tribute to Simon Rich’s piece, here’s how I imagined my parents when reading The New Yorker as a kid:
DAD: This magazine is so great. It has so many words in it.
MOM: Look at the cover. It makes no sense. That’s so clever.
DAD: (laughing) And, this cartoon isn’t funny. That’s the kind of cartoon I like, black and white cartoons that aren’t funny.
MOM: I have an idea. Let’s pick a movie based on these reviews to take the kids to. They’ll love that.
OK. That got my juices flowing, so let’s keep going with this.
What does conversation at the hipster parents’ couch sound like to the kids?
MOM: Did you see the cute thing the kid did today?
DAD: Yeah, we need to make sure he doesn’t do anything cute. That’s not cool.
FRIEND: Hey, I think they’re watching kid TV over there.
MOM: Shit! I thought I’d set it to only play MTV2.
DAD: Shut up…This is the best part of the song.
MOM: So are you taking the kid to the loud smelly grown-up concert tomorrow? He was kind of crying about it.
DAD: He’s going to love it. Dammit.
MOM: They saw some fun toys at their friend’s today that we can deprive them of…
DAD: Cool.
MOM: Cool.
DAD: Cool.
MOM: Cool.
DAD: Cool.
DAD: Cool.
MOM: The girl asked for a pink thing, but I bought her an ironic T-Shirt instead.
DAD: Yeah, it’s important that she learn to think for herself. Not just fall into what she wants because everyone else is doing it.
MOM: Those kids are lucky to have parents who are so cool and youthful like us, even though we’re in our 50s.
DAD: I like smoking this funny cigarette. It makes me stupid.
MOM: I took away all their candy so we can eat it after they go to bed.
Anyone else feel the vibe? Send in your version of grown-up stuff as heard by kids.
Who she?
I'm Emily Gordon, reachable at emily@emdashes.com.
I'm an editor at PRINT magazine in New York City. I've worked at The Nation, Newsday, PEN America, and Legal Affairs. I've written for the NY Times Book Review, Salon, The Washington Post, The Village Voice... continued
I welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.
No fear: Everything you say or send is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.
A few clips
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.
Primary sources
The New Yorker
Events listed by the magazine
Web resources: New Yorker writers and artists
Books, Organizations, &c.
Written and edited by Emily Gordon (plus various guest contributors), designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
The Rossosphere
- Mick Stevens: I Really Should Be Drawing
- Resistance Is Fertile
- The essential Jane Grant
- Newyorkette
- Matthew Diffee's HuffPo blog
- Sasha Frere-Jones
- The New York Public Library records
- Map: Caption Contest Winners
- New Yorker haiku
- Between the Squibs
- New Yorker database
- Technorati: New Yorker
- Wikipedia: The New Yorker
- The New Orcer
- Access My Library
- New Yorker Comment
- Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
- Paul Noth's Pale Force
- The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s
- Link to suggest? Email it!
- I Hate the New Yorker
- Blog About Town
- Ben Yagoda's homepage
- Modern Spectator
- New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest
- Silence of the City
- Cartoonist Michael Maslin's homepage
- Chiasmus in The New Yorker
Comments
Emily,
Thanks for linking to my post, but I hope I am not getting lumped in with David Brooks as a Hipster Parent hater…because I am a Hipster Parent mocker of a totally different stripe. In fact, I am a David Brooks mocker too—as you can see from my post on his idiotic Hipster Parent editorial.
MP
Hi! I figured; note that I linked to Steven Johnson’s smackdown rather than Brooks’s original (and stupid) piece. :)
I hate hipster parents. But only MY hipster parents.
If I prefer the one about what parents must think when they peruse the NYer, that’s only because the hipster one at times seemed too close to actual transcription! Nicely done; very funny.