Quote of the Day (Leigh Claire La Berge, Eyeing Skeptically ‘How Companies Are Put Together’)

“Is this how companies are put together? I find it incredible. These are the things that organize global commerce? Run governments? Fly planes? My second-grade soccer team was more carefully recruited and managed.”—Critic, memoirist and former consultant Leigh Claire La Berge, Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism is a Joke (2025)

Quote of the Day (Francis Fukuyama, on Anger, Inequality, and Disrespect)

“There are many people who are angry right now because they feel they’re not respected. They feel that people disregard them or look down on them. Capitalism is very good at fulfilling material desires, but it’s not so good as fulfilling the desire for others’ desires. It also produces a lot of inequality, and one of the problems with being poor is not only the lack of material resources but the problems it creates with regards to respect. If you’re poor, you’re not remarked upon. Politicians don’t pay attention.”—Stanford University political scientist Francis Fukuyama quoted by Cody Delistraty, “SOAPBOX: Rosamund Pike, Kaws and Francis Fukuyama on Desire,” WSJ. Magazine, Issue 126 (Spring 2021)

(The image accompanying this post, of Francis Fukuyama at Nexus Instituut, was taken Sept. 25, 2005, by Robert Goddyn.)

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on Digital Technology as ‘Capitalism in Hyperdrive’)

“Our digital technologies aren’t politically neutral. The young person who cannot or will not be alone, converse with family, go out with friends, attend a lecture or perform a job without monitoring her smartphone is an emblem of our economy’s leechlike attachment to our very bodies. Digital technology is capitalism in hyperdrive, injecting its logic of consumption and promotion, of monetization and efficiency, into every waking minute.”—Novelist-essayist Jonathan Franzen, “Capitalism in Hyperdrive,” in The End of the End of the Earth: Essays (2018)

Quote of the Day (David Sarnoff, on Competition)

"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people.”—U.S. broadcasting pioneer David Sarnoff (1891-1971), attributed in Montgomery Van Wart, Dynamics of Leadership in Public Service: Theory and Practice (2011)

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on Self-Made Men)

“Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.” —E.B. White, One Man’s Meat (1942)

TV Quote of the Day (’30 Rock,’ on the Cost of Snuggling)

Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey): “You wanna party? It's $500 for kissing and $10,000 for snuggling. End of list.” – Liz Lemon, 30 Rock, Season 5, Episode 18, “Plan B,” original air date March  24, 2011,  teleplay by Josh Siegal and Dylan Morgan, directed by Jeff Richmond

Liz, Liz darling, you have just supplied definitive proof that you’re more cut out for writing (or, to be exact, extracting script ideas from maladjusted junior writing staffers) than for business. Because, with that price for “snuggling,” you preemptively eliminated any chance of getting your foot through the door of a major enterprise, one that could prove a lucrative sideline if you ever decide to throw in the towel on comedy writing.

That bible of the business world, The Wall Street Journal, just about said as much in an article in its Friday edition by Stephanie Armour. Betcha never guessed there was such a thing as “professional cuddlers,” Liz. I know I sure didn’t—or even that they could make a nice bit of change ($80 an hour, or up to $400 for an overnight session, according to one business owner quoted). 

The article makes a point that demand for the services only really took off several years ago. Just about right, I guess, with all that recession-induced stress. But what if the cuddlers coalesce and form a cartel, hiking prices? Wouldn't that only raise stress once again?

Perhaps I’m slightly naïve, but I’d expect quite a bit for such services. But no—its leading practitioners insist that nothing untoward is involved, just squeezing, tickling and bearhugging. (That last specialty could even work for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, judging by his spontaneous—and, as it happened, short-lived—embrace of Dallas Cowboys’ owner-general manager Jerry Jones last week at a playoff victory for the Texas squad.) Many, thank God, do enforce contracts calling for recipients to shower and brush their teeth beforehand.

See, Liz, your boss Jack Donaghy would never have made the mistake of pricing himself out of such a market. He would have recognized a promising operation, acquired it, then leveraged the whole shebang by creating a reality show around it. 

Now, at first glance, I would think that this was one of those fake news stories on NPR’s comic quiz show, “Wait, Wait—Don/t Tell Me,” or Garrison Keillor’s classic New Yorker tall tale, “Local Family Keeps Son Happy,” which explained how the tense teenage son of “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Shepard of 1417 Swallow Lane” had become so much better adjusted now that they had hired a live-in prostitute for him.

But how can one be so distrusting when so many quoted in the Journal piece extol the “therapeutic benefits” of snuggling/cuddling?

Quote of the Day (E.B. White, on the ‘Trouble With the Profit System’)

“The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.” —E.B. White, One Man’s Meat (1942)