Toby Young, Again

Initially I was surprised to find that Toby Young was a real person--in the sense of the film How to Lose Friends and Alienate People having been (loosely) based on the true story he recounted in his memoir and its sequel. I happened to read it, and found Young an amusing, even mildly interesting figure given his particular set of quirky experiences on the fringes of wealth and celebrity, and his candid discussion of the hungers that drove him, rare enough that it seemed worth note. (Who doesn't want a good time? Who doesn't know that a good time is mainly had by the rich in our profoundly unequal social order, and that for scrawny, nerdy-looking types like Young, getting rich and famous is pretty much only their shot at that? Being an intellectual--even to the slight degree to which he could claim that--doesn't mean one is without such desires.) His sociological eye was no match for his famous father's (indeed, he was surprisingly clueless on some points, not least just how extraordinarily privileged he has been), but that he had one at all seemed something.

Reading those works it was clear that Young had opted for a different path from his accomplished parents' extraordinary lives of public service and intellectual inquiry, favoring a crass, hedonistic individualism instead. At the end of How to Lose Friends, though, it seemed he had recognized that path's shallowness (as well as its futility for him) and moved on.

The years since have made it clear that he has not--and in a most unfortunate way. Instead of a life devoted to chasing wealth and glamour and sex, he continued his rebellion against mom and dad by endlessly and often viciously championing the most backward, reactionary politics around--attacking wheelchair ramps, mocking the appearances of the working-class kids who defy the odds to go to Oxbridge, championing eugenics--and like pampered idiots who have no idea how good they have it since the beginning of time, whining about how "You can't find good help these days," while being awfully smug about being "politically incorrect" in that way that has become so tiresomely standard for the pathetic yet utterly loathsome people who become alt-right trolls (and bullies in general).