Wednesday, August 23, 2006

growing dissatisfied

So, Michael Noer, Executive Editor at Forbes.com, decided to write an article about a recent study that suggests that men are making a bad move if they marry a "career girl":

To be clear, we're not talking about a high-school dropout minding a cash register. For our purposes, a "career girl" has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.

According to the study, if you are married to a "career girl", she is more likely to "grow dissatisfied with you", cheat on you and leave you in the dust.


And, guess what? Michael Noer pissed people off: people who stand erect, people who do not drag their knuckles on the ground.

Okay, so that's interesting if you're shocked that educated men who should know better DO NOT know better. But, come on, who finds that to be shocking, really?

What IS interesting is that Forbes.com yanked the article after bloggers got into a tizzy, only to put it up again when they had managed to find a woman who would be willing to write up a counterpoint -- all within 24 hours (or less).

In other words, forget letters to the editor. (First Snakes on a Plane and now this!)

Forbes.com deserves praise for a) monitoring what is being said about it in a timely manner and b) for being responsive. On the other hand, I'm not so sure it was a great idea to yank the article because it probably only fueled the flames of conversation. I also have to wonder -- and someone else out there already said this and I wish I could remember who -- how the article made it past the editor in the first place?

Thanks to Boing Boing for the heads up (and for working so hard to make sure its readers could find the article).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

interesting post and topic - i will check out said article - but that is not why I am writing - I am writing to say that I am so glad you have a new post so that everytime I check out your blog (daily) I am not faced with that dude's shaved monkey arm with the SOAP tatoo!!

hope all is well,
amy k.

Days of the Broken Arrows said...

Forbes should be praised for censorship, then? Noor's article might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it was research-based and the fact that people are cheering it's censorship is disturbing.

It's interesting that whenever women enter the public sphere -- be it in college or the business world -- censorship rears its ugly head.

abf said...

Sorry not to be clear. No, Forbes should not be praised for taking the article down. They SHOULD be praised for monitoring what was being said and responding to it.

Your comment about"whenever women enter the public sphere," however, is pretty weird. Do you mean as opposed to staying at home, barefoot and pregnant? Did someone do you wrong, Broken Arrows?