Margalit Fox: evaluation

Transcript context

…Edward Lowe — he’s the man who invented Kitty Litter. I believe you’ve heard of him. Do you feel he should be more or less famous? In American society as a whole, do you feel the fame incentives for people like Edward Lowe are too strong or too weak? Edward Lowe in 1947, as memorialized in the famous obituary by our late great obit writer Robert McG. Thomas, was the man who, because he had an idea one day, invented the product that became known as Kitty Litter. And it did indeed cause social change because it made cats much easier to keep indoors than formerly. For the first time, a few decades later, cats actually passed dogs as the most popular American pet. So, again, here’s somebody who did something spontaneously because he was inspired and who put a wrinkle in the social fabric. He changed the culture. Now, he wasn’t doing it to get famous. I don’t — you know, Andy Warhol hadn’t yet said, “In the world of the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” I think very few people about whom we write do things for fame. The fame comes post hoc, applied by people like us in the news media. I don’t think there’s any incentivization of fame for the vast majority of people about whom we write. In fact, it never even occurred to me. You’re one of the gatekeepers of one of the world’s most exclusive clubs. Numbers I’ve seen — every year about two-and-a-half million Americans pass away. And in that same year, the New York Times might run about, what, a thousand obituaries?…

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