In the 80s, on the Cosby Show, the Huxtable’s Brooklyn Heights brownstone was a realistic home for an OB/GYN (Heathcliff) and lawyer (Claire), especially because it pre-dated the New York housing boom of the last ten years. On the other hand, could a Florida undercover police officer, like Sonny Crockett on Miami Vice, really afford to live on a boat and wear Italian suits and Espadrilles?

MSN has a nice article on the actual median salaries of television characters. It shows that Ugly Betty’s lead character’s position as an executive assistant has a real life median salary of $37,810. Knowingly, it note that she is probably making less than the median because she works “in a notoriously low-paying media niche (fashion magazines).” Of course, she does get the benefit of living at home and free swag for her sister and nephew.

On the other hand, newly announced Presidental canidate Fred Thompson plays New York DA Arthur Branch on Law & Order. They cite the current New York County DA makes $150,000 per year. The article doubts that he could afford an apartment in an upscale New York neighborhood where the average apartment goes for $1 million. Maybe he bought in the 80s like the Huxtables. (I realize that they are fictional characters… really.)

Although these comparisons seems amusing at best, these representations do have an effect on people’s (in particular young people) conceptualization of the workplace and reality. The event planning industry got a boost in employee interesting after the success of Sex in the City’s Samantha. Most people working in PR now need to explain that they generally don’t throw events and get their clients on Page Six.

The relationship between a job’s fictional representation and it’s real world daily activities has deeper issues that will be worth exploring in future posts.

Before and after

Steve Case, post-AOL/Time Warner, just launched a new ambitous web 2.0 project, Revolution Health, which tackles health care.

I’m glad to see him turn up again, with a new business relating to wellness. Case is a bright guy, proven by buidling up AOL and selling it at the peak of its value. (Although Time Warner shareholders might not share the same feelings. He did make the correct decision for the people he was supposed to be looking after, AOL shareholders.)

In Case’s press photo, he looks older, calmer, and a little heavier. Seeing him reminds me of… Al Gore, who also underwent a similar transformation in terms of body and career.

The last week of May is here, which means 3000 sailors from the US Navy will be descending the city for Fleet Week. Apparently, this year marks the 20th anniversary. So, for a week, we can expect to see men and women in gleaming white uniforms traipsing the streets of New York.

I don’t know why I find the iconic uniforms with white bell bottoms and sailors caps so campy. It’s just so… On the Town. That is, they haven’t seemed to change since WWII, because our memory of that war has been tempered through time and cinematic revision. Where as, current images of the US Army that we tend to see in the media reflect modern warfare.