Marc Tracy unloads on Joel Stein’s new cover-story (paywalled), which tries to take millennials down a peg:
[W]here it does say things, Time and Stein reveal themselves to be guilty of taking culturally and ethically specific ideas about how people should live their lives as normative facts. …
[F]rom Stein’s opening litany: “[Millennials’] development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University Poll of Emerging Adults.” For one thing: it’s the economy, stupid! Thousands of words on, Stein dutifully nods toward other possible valid reasons for this development, such as greater, technologically enabled control over fertility. But that is not even the point. “Stunted” is one of those words that linguist Paul Roberts would have called “colorful.” Stein is making not only a forensic observation, but also a moral judgment. Millennials are delaying maturity, leaving home, marriage, having children, and the rest—and that is wrong of them. Thank God Joel Stein is here to set us right!
And from later on:
“They’re financially responsible; although student loans have hit record highs, they have less household and credit-card debt than any previous generation on record—which, admittedly, isn’t that hard when you’re living at home and using your parents’ credit card.” “Responsible,” too, is a moral word masquerading as an empirical one. To write an article about young people that minimizes student debt at a time when it, indeed, is at a record high, is astonishing enough. To imply that, in contrast to low household and credit-card debt, all of this student debt is not “responsible” betrays an incredibly poor understanding of how student debt has gotten as high as it has.
One of the most popular Dish threads from last year was “Letters from Millennial Voters” – read it all here.
The Dish 