Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems

In one of the more absurd events of the late summer, a feud erupted between television's self-help doyenne Oprah Winfrey and Paris boutique Hermès. It seems that she was mad that she wasn't admitted to the store when she arrived, fifteen minutes after its posted closing time, when she could see that there were still shoppers inside. Was she snubbed because she was black? Was she snubbed because the store was in fact closed and she, like everybody except for the private party that was arranged in advanced, would just have to come back tomorrow? Was she snubbed because she was American? Suddenly it seemed as if Oprah's legions could only talk about one thing: whether or not they should shop Hermès because of the store's behavior. If it happened to Oprah, it could happen to me, her fans were suddenly thinking.

What never got mentioned was the fact that for the vast majority of Oprah's fans, this would never, ever happen to them. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that with a handful of exceptions, Oprah's audience couldn't afford to go to Paris to shop at Hermès. The level of outrage registered by the national press on this non-issue was astounding. This wasn't people drowning in New Orleans and it wasn't a war or an increase in gas prices. This was a woman who could buy and sell most us for chump change not getting her way, and that somehow became part of the public discourse on race and injustice.

Most of the essays in David Rakoff's Don't Get Too Comfortable focus on this venal, materialistic type of self-absorption. In a world where your targets are both the kind of people who would pay over $13,000 to fly the Concorde or those who would spend all morning lurking around Rockefeller Center to sniff Al Roker's fame, this kind of drive-by character assassination is like shooting fish in a barrel. What elevates these essays from mere bitchiness is Rakoff's piquant banter. Not content to merely point out the obvious, Rakoff gleefully piles well-coined invectives on top of each other to deliver mini-masterpieces of indignation.

And the inkwell for Rakoff's poisoned pen seems to be bottomless. There isn't a soul incapable of violating his sense of propriety (save for a woman who wouldn't let him use her cell phone as he walked the streets of Manhattan on September 12, 2001, which he found reassuring). After all, what kind of people would pay good money to fly the Concorde or Hooters Air, or pay $18 a pound for sea salt harvested in France, or pay to see The Puppetry of the Penis? These are people who either have a taste for the finer things in life but can't afford them and will buy into whatever level they can, or people who can afford them but have no clue what they are. Or, as Rakoff puts it, in describing a dining experience, "It takes an exceptionally fine tongue and palate, you must admit, to appreciate a dessert of a single date."

Rakoff's wit is fast, furious, and merciless -- responding to a New York Times food critic on her ecstasy over the eighteen-bucks-a-pound sea salt, he responds: "What has (she been doing) to add some savor to her food? Licking undeveloped Polaroids?" When addressing Barbara Bush's comments on seeing the flag draped coffins of fallen servicemen and -women from Iraq, Rakoff reminds the reader that someday "we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag draped coffin." Upon meeting Karl Lagerfeld while covering the supercilious world of couture, Rakoff is asked, "What can you write that hasn't already been written?" Rakoff's answer:

He's absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with right now is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn't....seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin over-risen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, overfed, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How's that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L.?

However, the author isn't purely mean-spirited in his ranting and raving. Rakoff has a heart, and he's vexed by the endless American pursuit of bigger, flashier, or faster in areas that don't really need it. He writes:

Surely when we've reached the point where we're fetishizing sodium chloride and water, and subjecting both to the kind of scrutiny we used to reserve for choosing an oncologist, it's time to admit that the relentless quest for that next undetectable gradation of perfection has stopped being about the thing itself and crossed over into the realm of narcissism so overwhelming as to make the act of masturbation look selfless.

Don't Get Too Comfortable is a gratifying reading experience for the misanthrope in all of us. Rakoff has a style and wit that is appropriately cruel towards its deserving targets. If you actually enjoy foie gras, performance art, or stalking celebrities, you'll probably miss the joke and would be much happier reading either Architectural Digest or Us magazine.

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