Obviously, the Internet is alive with condemnation for the people profiled, but what strikes me about it is how out-of-time, even innocent, their revolting behavior is. Even the "have you done it up the butt?" bit, though grody, seems more grade school than frat boy...it reads as though he just found out about the concept and was eager to share. It's not childish...it's pre-childish.
But the most interesting thing for me is their simultaneously crude yet almost chaste attitudes towards sex. "You don't think all the sex they talk about really happens, do you?" that one guy as much as asks, and there is a certain amount of prudishness on display. I've seen this in my cab among the upper-upper-middle class; excessive fooling around is seen as almost declasse.
This is most obvious with the girls in the middle of the scene, especially the so-awesomely-named Coventry Burke, who seems more like a Radcliffe or Barnard girl that William Safire and Calvin Trillan was pie-eyed over than the coked-up whooHOO-er I was expecting. I'm sure she's an awful person to be around, don't get me wrong, but not in the way I thought she would be when I first started reading the article.
Mostly, though, I came away from the story wishing it had been given to a better journalist, one capable of somewhat more complicated thinking than the OMG tone used in this piece.
(Also, expect to hear me say "turbo" about a million times in the next few weeks.)
