“The day the iPhone came out, June 29, 2007,” Tyler Cowen tells us, “I boasted to my wife that it would be one of the most important cultural events of our lifetimes, maybe the most important. I compared my purchase of one, which I wanted to justify, to going to see a “Don Giovanni” premiere in 1787.”
I don’t know the Cowens, but I’m guessing that Mrs. C did not respond to her husband by exclaiming either “Great God! How pretentious!” or “Bartender, make that a double vodka martini.” But if she had, I think she would have been entitled.
Comparing the “premiere” of the iPhone with the premiere of Don Giovanni is in itself pretty sucky, but what really pushes Cowen’s remark deep into insufferably pompous ass territory is 1) giving the date “1787” and 2) (even worse) the use of the indefinite article “a”—because Don Giovanni had two big premieres, one in Prague and the other in Vienna, although Wikipedia tells me that the Vienna premiere took place in 1788. So maybe Mrs. Cowen said “There was only one premiere of Don Giovanni in 1787, dumb ass.”
Afterwords
I actually have an iPhone, on which I listen to, of course, Mozart. But not Don Giovanni.
