Be A Mensch

by Zoe Pollock

Bill Taylor responds to a disturbing statistic about the disparity of obituaries written about men and women in the New York Times:

What really matters? As a society and business culture, we still tend to equate money with success. If someone is rich, the thinking goes, he or she may or may not be a no-good SOB, but a fortune is evidence that someone is smart, or at least shrewd, and no doubt a success. Which helps to explain why so many wealthy males get New York Times obituaries, while women who died with smaller bank accounts, but who may have led richer lives, don't get the attention they deserve.

If we've learned anything from the boom-and-bust cycles over the last 20 years, it's that money is a pretty empty (and fleeting) metric of success.

The women over at Slate fact-check the debate over a similar problem in the books reviewed.