March 31, 2014

No one is watching Ronan Farrow's TV show.

It's hardly surprising and scarcely his fault. How quickly rich, famous, young, pretty people are drained of any value they might have amassed in their brief experience!

What is this unfortunate lad supposed to do with the rest of his life?

51 comments:

Meade said...

"What is this unfortunate lad supposed to do with the rest of his life?"

First and most important: Has he signed up for health insurance?

Will Cate said...

HTML link is bad.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

What is this unfortunate lad supposed to do with the rest of his life?

How about he learn a skill that is valuable enough that someone else is willing to pay him for it?

You know, like the rest of us.

MadisonMan said...

There's always NPR.

ron winkleheimer said...

He's well connected, went to all the right schools, and holds all the right views concerning politics, art, science, religion, well everything.

He'll manage to persevere ever onward to the glorious future.

ron winkleheimer said...

comrade

William said...

JFK Jr. wanted to be an actor. His mother wanted him to be a lawyer, perhaps with an eye to taking over the family business. He deferred to his mother's wishes. He flunked the state bar exams twice. He didn't look like he was headed for a distinguished career in that field. He probably would have made a good actor. He was good looking enough to carry a romantic lead. And, as we saw with Ronald Reagan, an acting career is no deal breaker when it comes to running for the presidency. In any event, flying conditions are generally better in California than on the east coast. If he had followed his passion, he would be alive today and competing with Matthew McConaughey for roles of moody loners.......Ronan should follow his passion. I understand that he wanted to do a duet album with Lady Gaga, but his mother disapproved.

Anonymous said...

He flunked the state bar exams twice.

Should have gone to WI :)

Paddy O said...

Maybe he could do a bizarro Huffington, after rejection become a strong conservative and find popularity on Fox News.

Michael K said...

Who ?

Jim said...

He has his Father's eyes.

Anonymous said...

The more I think about it, the whole resurrected dust up over the allegations of abuse against Woody Allen - sparked by tweets from Mia and Ronan a few weeks ago - was probably nothing more than an effort to gain publicity for the guy's show.

bbkingfish said...

"What is this unfortunate lad supposed to do with the rest of his life?"

Failing to pass the bar exam would seem to put Ronan on the academic side of the doing/teaching divide. Otherwise, he is reputed to have an excellent academic record.

Perhaps his well-connected friends can secure for him a tenure-track faculty position at some university. Such a sinecure might afford him the free time necessary to try his hand at blogging, which also would probably be well within his skill set.

JRoberts said...

Maybe Ronan can get some career advice from Chelsea Clinton.

DKWalser said...

One of my professors lamented Orson Welles lot: His first film, Citizen Kane, was acclaimed as one of the best movies ever. What could he do for an encore? Ronan Farrow's lot is worse.

Nonapod said...

Clearly he doesn't have enough awards for stuff. If he had more awards, I'm certain more people would watch him. They should give him a Nobel Peace Prize, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony at least.

George M. Spencer said...

JFK Jr.'s magazine "George" was part of his long-term plan to go into politics.

It was published by Hachette Filipacchi Medias, a gigundo global media company.

Considering that no one in their right mind would fund the titanically expensive launch of a national newsstand magazine about politics and ongoing colossal multi-year deficits, one might well wonder if there was some expectation of something in return.

paul a'barge said...

dig a ditch?
become a professor of law?

which one would be more worthless?

Drago said...

Hey, they are handing out Nobels these days with no qualifications.

Why shouldn't they have given this kid a show?

Biff said...

t-man said..."The more I think about it, the whole resurrected dust up over the allegations of abuse against Woody Allen - sparked by tweets from Mia and Ronan a few weeks ago - was probably nothing more than an effort to gain publicity for the guy's show."
I've spent a lot of time with strategic communications advisors in the last couple of years, and I find your suspicion far more plausible than I once would have believed.

Larry J said...

paul a'barge said...
dig a ditch?
become a professor of law?

which one would be more worthless?


That's not a fair question. Ditches serve a useful purpose.

wanted to be an actor. His mother wanted him to be a lawyer, perhaps with an eye to taking over the family business. He deferred to his mother's wishes. ... In any event, flying conditions are generally better in California than on the east coast. If he had followed his passion, he would be alive today and competing with Matthew McConaughey for roles of moody loners.

Had he learned how to turn on the autopilot in his plane, he'd probably still be alive.

Virgil Hilts said...

They need to revise the Hollywood Squares. That would give the poor guy something to do, assuming he's funny and entertaining.

paminwi said...

I've never heard Ronam Farrow sing. Maybe he has a future in the recording business.

Going off the deep end here, since he worked for the State Department before he could back to the State Department and talk to all of those folks worldwide who don't like us and bat his eyes (since they are a very distinctive feature) and get them to go along with whatever we want.

I mean Obama and Kerry have used just the talking thing and it's not working, so why not add a little beauty to the table and see what happens.

Mark O said...

Flunked the bar exam? Then, he should have married Bill Clinton.

He should devote himself to finding his real father.

Doug said...

Does he have to DO anything? He's probably got a trust fund ... couldn't he just stay out of productive people's way?

FWBuff said...

Maybe Ronan could be a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn or a king. Once he's been up and down and over and out, he'll know one thing. Each time he finds himself flat on his face, he'll pick himself up and get back in the race. That's life.

J Lee said...

If Ronan is as smart as all the media hype has tried to convince us he is (I believe he got his high school diploma from his mom's OB-GYN during the delivery), he really shouldn't have any problem finding a post-MSNBC job.

Finding a high-profile and/or easy job post-MSNBC might be a little tougher. The stories are the Clinton State Department both created and eliminated Ronan's six-figure job position with his arrival and departure, which is something a hot young 'name' might receive, but one who isn't showing the same star power might not.

Farrow probably has at least one more big something-for-nothing job coming if his MSNBC gig continues to take on water, but eventually he may have to justify his pay by the content of his work, as new hot names with the proper social and political connections rise to the surface.

Titus said...

becum a porn star.

Titus said...

He could rake in big token on chaturbait.

PB said...

Maybe he should start the show out with a song. Perhaps a Frank Sinatra tune. Isn't that what everyone's expecting?

Ann Althouse said...

I don't think Ronan Farrow failed the bar exam. It's JFK Jr who failed twice… but then he passed it.

Above the Law talks about famous bar exam failures here:

Jerry Brown: Attorney General of California (and former California governor). Failed the California bar once before passing.

Hillary Clinton: Former First Lady; graduate of the Yale Law School. Brilliant, delicious, and everyone should vote for her. Future president of the United States. Failed the D.C. bar exam in the 1970s, but passed the Arkansas bar — where she went on to have a successful legal career, as a partner in the Rose Law Firm….

Kathleen Sullivan: Former dean of Stanford law school, leading constitutional law scholar, and possible Supreme Court nominee (or Solicitor General pick) in a Democratic administration. Failed the California bar exam when she took it in July 2005.

Tom from Virginia said...

Rhetorical Question of the Day: How is it that I, a political news junkie from the age of 10, learned only today that Hillary failed the bar exam?

Sam L. said...

The rest of his life? Live in shame and sorrow!

Ann Althouse said...

"That's not a fair question. Ditches serve a useful purpose."

I note that you are reading this blog, presumably not from a ditch.

Ann Althouse said...

Many very smart people fail the bar exam, and there are a number of reasons why this can happen.

1. They don't study and learn what the graders are looking for in sufficient detail, and they treat it like other exams they've taken and it just doesn't work.

2. They write thoughtful well-written answers instead of following some kind of pattern that you need to know and use.

3. The graders are grinding through piles of exams with a deliberately conventional checklist of what they want to see.

eddie willers said...

I've never heard Ronan Farrow sing. Maybe he has a future in the recording business.

He probably has his father's looks and his mother's voice.

glenn said...

Well, being that he got this job because of who he is and not what he knows he'll probably get another one pretty fast. He's famous isn't he?

Revenant said...

I'm pretty sure there are public-access shows with much higher ratings than Ronan's.

MikeD said...

C'mon, he's a young man raised by batsh-t crazy Mia. Ronan is a really smart guy, graduated college at 15 and all. I'd suggest he gets outta the public sphere and into the private one. I'll bet he could be a great M&A guy for a WS firm.
BTW, how'd this get off-thread to "bar-exam", unless one of the more cognizant posters has been listening to C&W music (Derailers-Bar Exam).

Anonymous said...

I haven't seen the NY Post, but this story should be headlined "Golden Girls Beat Golden Boy"

Presley Bennett said...

I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with Ronan Farrow but people who fail the bar exam usually do so because they let nerves get to them, are bad at multiple choice questions and don't understand that you mostly have to try and pick the least wrong, not necessarily the most right, answer and don't adequately prepare for the state law portion of the exam because they're so much attention focused on studying the multistate subjects. And some people are just bad test-takers.

Anonymous said...

"They need to revise [sic] the Hollywood Squares. That would give the poor guy something to do, assuming he's funny and entertaining."

Yes. They could have put him between Paul Linde and Martin Mull.

Anonymous said...

"I'm not exactly sure what this has to do with Ronan Farrow but people who fail the bar exam usually do so because they let nerves get to them, are bad at multiple choice questions and don't understand that you mostly have to try and pick the least wrong, not necessarily the most right, answer and don't adequately prepare for the state law portion of the exam because they're so much attention focused on studying the multistate subjects. And some people are just bad test-takers."

Why not go back to the way would-be lawyers always used to take the bar exams, with two or three days of hand-written essay answers?

THAT used to separate the men from the boys (or women, mutatis mutandis).

John henry said...

I'd not realized that JFK Jr, ever passed the bar exam.

I did know that having failed it twice, he was still able to get a job as an assistant DA.

Apparently being a Kennedy qualifies one for anything.

At least being one of those Kennedy does.

John Henry

Anonymous said...

"Hillary Clinton: Former First Lady; graduate of the Yale Law School. Brilliant, delicious, and everyone should vote for her."

OMG...I thought. "delicious". I knew Ann was a Hillarista, but I never thought of her as a...lapdog.

(then I realized it's a quote from someone else. Whew!)

William said...

I would recommend to any young man who is debating the pros and cons of starring in a major motion picture or going to law school, that he choose the major motion picture option. That was JFK Jr's choice. He chose poorly.......I've never seen Ronan's show. Apparently he's not good at it. Maybe, like JFK Jr, his heart is not really in it. What bright 27 year old wants to be a pundit? He's young and done a lot of things right. There will be other acts in this drama. If you're smart, rich, and good looking, there's a lot of redundancy built into the system. It can be done, but you've really got work at it to become a failure.

tim maguire said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim maguire said...

I took two bar exams at the same time and passed both. If the multiple choice part (the part you find out your score for) is any indication, passed with plenty of room to spare. Bully for me, yeah, I'm brilliant.

Well no, not really. I'm only kind of smart, which I supplement with a work ethic.

The bar exam is easy. If you prepare. Preparing for the bar is hard. Hard physically, not hard mentally. There's a clear and well marked path. If you follow that path, if you do the work, you will pass. Even if you're not particularly smart.

If an intelligent person fails the bar, that failure says something about their character, about who they are as a person.

Then again, plenty of famous, well credentialed people who are not very smart get described as smart because, well, because they're famous and because the describer wants to believe they're smart.

Johanna Lapp said...

Had his show succeeded, he'd forever be humbled by reminders that "You didn't build that." But spectacular failure leaves him useless to the leftist glamour machine.

When Hillary! launches The Great Leap Forward, this privileged son of the rich will learn humility collecting night soil on a people's farm.

El Camino Real said...

What's he supposed to do? How about living off his inheritance wisely and finding work that fits his natural gifts?

Jason said...

Reminds me of that time Chelsea Clinton got that job with... who was it? CNN?

If you're the right kind of libtard, or have the right libtard pedigree, they will roll out the red carpet for you.

If you're conservative or libertarian, you have to have 30 IQ points on the libtard in almost any media organization just to get noticed. This is how a fundamentally stupid to average Juan Williams became a prominent commentator at NPR. He's an idiot, but he's an idiot in the RIGHT WAY. (Until he stepped off the rez just once and got a sympathy gig from Fox just to highlight NPR's intellectual corruption. But Williams is still stupid.

Same with Diane Rehm. How the hell did THAT libtard get her own weekly radio show? She's dumb as a box of rocks and has a lousy radio voice to boot!

The examples are legion.