Friends,
I can’t always be keeping it light over here. Sometimes I feel called to take on serious, important, consequential work — like my new essay on the implications of Jensen Huang’s downfall for us (graying men in midlife with a leather jacket problem).
Sometimes investigative reporting means sifting through documents in an obscure government office; sometimes it means plumbing the depths of one’s own soul.
Same, same.
So enjoy this incredibly important but also urgent piece, and let me know: Should I keep wearing my black leather jackets?????
Hope you all have restful, cozy weekends.
A
From NYTimes.com:
Jensen Huang Betrayed the Leather Jacket Community
It has been a hard week, even for the thick-skinned.
The news that Jensen Huang, a co-founder of Nvidia, admitted to an affair with a woman whom U.S. intelligence regards as a Chinese spy has shaken not only Silicon Valley and geopolitics. It also has been an earthquake for the leather-jacket-wearing community.
We ask ourselves: Was Mr. Huang an easy mark because of his love of high-fashion, motorcycle-adjacent jackets that say both “I don’t care what people think!” and “Do you like how I look?” Did our — I mean, his — armor make him a target? Is an expensive leather jacket on a middle-aged man the new symbol of a honeypot victim?
Without any authorization whatsoever, because that would go against our rebellious grain, I’m speaking out on behalf of the leather-jacket community. We are washed-up musicians and we are dads just trying to feel something again and we are people who want others to assume that we own a Ducati Panigale. And we are here to defend the leather jacket’s name and honor.
We declare: One man’s fleshly failures should not impugn our second skins…
Read the full essay here, courtesy of this gift link:
The NYT will not permit me to read your essay
On your specific shoulders the black leather rules.