Wall Street Won't Take You: Try Vaudeville Instead

Sorry, you're not getting your "shot" here.

"New unemployment claims slip; housing starts tick up," is the title of this USA Today article. The gist? Fewer Americans have been requesting unemployment benefits (claims haven't been this low since August 2008), indicating that the economy might just be getting better. Also, more people are building real estate and buying imported goods; in short, Americans are "confident and willing to spend." As I am neither a statistician nor economic analyst, to me this is a run-of-the-mill optimistic update, and I'll accept it as news. It's nice. It's helpful. It'll do.

But it's also infuriating. Why? Because when it came to choosing a photo to accompany this article, some idiot did not choose an image of new construction, Holiday shoppers, or smiling New Yorkers on the rush hour train (I'm sure you could think of many more acceptable choices). Instead, he/she picked an AP photo of a Santa-hatted, 20-something dreamer named Jesse Paloger, who was found standing on Wall Street with a cardboard sign touting his many assets, including "experience in sales, marketing, management" and a degree in accounting and economics. Mr. Paloger's sign also points out that he's a "Go-getter from California looking for my shot," and "ready to interview" (First, is this the Grapes of Wrath reversed? Second, please, please tell me you wouldn't actually interview on Wall Street with a Santa hat on).

The problems with this photo:

1. It has nothing to do with the article. The article isn't about how recent grads and yuppiehipsters can't find jobs so they have to live at home and do chores so their parents won't hate them (though, god knows, we've seen enough of those). It's not even about a lack of jobs at all. It's about a supposed decrease in unemployment. So why are we looking at some unemployed rando in a Santa hat?

2. Of all the people affected by the job market and trying their best to find jobs in uncertain times, THIS guy was chosen as a representative. This guy, who has so much time on his hands that he's standing on the street essentially impersonating a panhandler in the cold, when he could be working or applying to jobs, or reading a book or something. And god help him if his goal was actually to find a job this way (I'm guessing he's trying his luck at amateur comedy), because last time I checked, a Wall Street hopeful has to either know somebody very important or really have his act together. This guy clearly has neither advantage.

3. As much as it pisses me off that this well-dressed idiot with the hubris of a recent degree (which clearly didn't help him at all, in the job or brain departments) is standing on the corner impersonating a homeless person, it's far more bothersome that the AP reporter who took this photo was so goddamn intrigued by Mr. Paloger's lame comedy act that he deemed it newsworthy. And as if that weren't bad enough, someone at USA Today then chose this guy's photo as a perfect accompaniment to an article that has nothing to do with it (it's not even like Mr. Paloger is applying for unemployment or something). What idiocy: an insult not only to panhandlers, but to college graduates actually trying hard to find jobs, and the parents who paid for them to go to college. 

Alas, the hipster-pandering media curse strikes again.