{"id":96873,"date":"2016-05-22T07:02:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T15:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=96873"},"modified":"2016-05-22T07:04:27","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T15:04:27","slug":"nyt-at-warby-parker-a-sense-of-exclusion-in-a-low-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=96873","title":{"rendered":"NYT: At Warby Parker, a Sense of Exclusion in a Low Price"},"content":{"rendered":"

Comment<\/a>: This NYT article At Warby Parker, a Sense of Exclusion in a Low Price<\/a> about \u2018cheap\u2019 glasses reminds me of Steve\u2019s country club exclusion<\/a> theory of Jewish projection<\/a> vexation.<\/p>\n

Ginia Bellafante<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

\n

The story of Warby Parker more or less conforms to this narrative: One of the young student-founders lost his glasses on a backpacking trip, discovered that they were too expensive to replace, squinted for months and then, with friends who could relate, built a company in 2010\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The actual founding (and founders) omitted from Ginia\u2019s article (from Wikipedia):<\/p>\n

\n

The company was founded in 2010 by Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt, David Gilboa, and Jeffrey Raider, and is headquartered in New York City. The name “Warby Parker” derives from two characters that appear in a journal by the Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Too bad \u201cStratton Oakmont\u201d was already taken. Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

\n

The company was started in the Venture Initiation Program of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where the founders all studied.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This WASPy-sounding company has been wildly successful. However, there may be some casualties among humble descendants of poor, huddled masses. NYT again:<\/p>\n

\n

Imagine how you would feel, though, if you had been selling eyewear for decades, and your origin story dated not to the era of Malia Obama\u2019s middle-school years but to the period of Ellis Island arrivals and mass emigration from Minsk. Both Moscot and Cohen\u2019s Fashion Optical are New York institutions that began as pushcart businesses, with immigrant founders \u2014 Hyman Moscot and Abe Cohen \u2014 selling eyeglasses on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 20th century. Their flagship stores are cater-corner from each other on Orchard and Delancey Streets. Moscots and Cohens still run the businesses, and they have been forced to respond to Warby Parker\u2019s Occupy Eyewear agenda.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I hate it when the \u2018little guy\u2019 gets squeezed by snobby Haven Monahans:<\/p>\n

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Cohen\u2019s faces the challenge of trying to seem hip as a franchise business with 130 stores.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here I agree with Ginia, antifa can go to hell:<\/p>\n

\n

As an aesthetic, antifashion as fashion is annoying and alienating<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately, it comes down to feelings, nothing more than feelings:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

A store like Cohen\u2019s never makes you feel like a loser. Maybe it should post that outside of every branch, and declare a social victory.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

* I don\u2019t get the snark aimed at Warby Parker. I\u2019m not a customer, but I give the founders credit: They started a hugely successful company, that lowered prices in an industry dominated by one manufacturer (https:\/\/en.m.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Luxottica), and the donated lots of eyeglasses along the way (they donate one pair for every pair sold). What exactly is your problem with them, that they didn\u2019t use the founders\u2019 names as the company name?<\/p>\n

* I think Errican\u2019s point was that the anger at Warby Parker expressed by Ginia Bellafante is due to the fact that a WASPy-sounding company is outcompeting a Jewish-sounding company (Cohen\u2019s Fashion Optical), even though at least one of the company\u2019s founders (Neil Blumenthal) is Jewish.<\/p>\n

Assuming that Errican is saying that Ginia Bellafante is Jewish (her appearance would suggest that, although the name doesn\u2019t sound Jewish to me and I can\u2019t find anything saying that she is Jewish), the point appears to be that she is trying to blame WASPs for intra-Jewish competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comment: This NYT article At Warby Parker, a Sense of Exclusion in a Low Price about \u2018cheap\u2019 glasses reminds me of Steve\u2019s country club exclusion theory of Jewish projection vexation. Ginia Bellafante writes: The story of Warby Parker more or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96873"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96877,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96873\/revisions\/96877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}