PROJECT RUN AWAY

Another winner from bon vivant Simon Doonan's delightful weekly column in The NY Observer"

Last week I was speaking at a ladies' luncheon in Palm Beach-if that doesn't qualify as the most poofy column-opener in the history of this newspaper, then I cannot imagine what would-when I suddenly did a total Alec Baldwin. It happened during the Q&A, when one of the immaculately coiffed attendees asked me to talk about the ways in which I was currently "helping young people fulfill their dreams of a career in fashion." Young people! Young people! Young people! ... All of a sudden the room started spinning-along with my head-and I began channeling the seething thespian.



"I am completely and utterly against the idea of helping young people," I told the gobsmacked crowd. I then ranted on about how I was sick of hearing about young people's hopes, aspirations and career goals-how come nobody wants to help old people?-and that I had been driven so insane by the current generation of Eve Harrington-esque overachieving fashionistas (Mr. Baldwin would probably call them "ungrateful little pigs") that I had reached the point where, instead of helping them fulfill their dreams, all I wanted to do was crush them. Just call me "the Dream-Crusher."

O.K., so I got a bit carried away. But seriously, folks, don't you think the whole concept of bending over backwards to help "young people" achieve their dreams is a little dotty? (I'm not talking now about hardscrabble inner-city kids who genuinely deserve a leg up, I'm talking about middle- and upper-class kids who are already clutching a first-class ticket.) The last thing these "young" people really want or need is a bunch of old farts disempowering and infantilizing them by trying to optimize and micromanage their career opportunities. Why can't young adults just be the big, fat, freewheeling losers that people in their 20's are meant to be? Why are we attempting to deprive them of the pleasures of all that character-building striving and bungling and blundering? As Sir Bob Geldof once said, "Hey, teachers! Leave them kids alone!"

WHOLE ARTICLE: OBSERVER.COM