Why does Daphne Merkin get paid to write?
I’ve been noticing the mediocrity that is Daphne Merkin ever since I was first irked by her a few years ago in the New Yorker. She also writes for the New York Times magazine. Her trademark is a buzzing, incessant, helpless whine. You could get a more original, thoughtful, 21st century-style piece of writing on the sex lives of 50-year-old women in a thousand places on the Internet. From people who are getting paid nothing to write. Here’s Merkin’s latest piece of whinery in the Times Magazine:Of course, I understand that negative myths do more harm than positive ones and, more crucially, sell far fewer books. And there may well be women like Rachel, the over-50 management consultant who met a champion at tantric sex on the Internet who taught her how to have multiple orgasms. All the same, it would seem fairly self-evident that as women enjoy longer and more active lives in a culture that venerates youth, especially in women, something’s gotta give — and what gives, mostly, are men. M
