Frank Bruni Saw a Movie

Frank Bruni—who, as a New York Times columnist, holds one of the most coveted jobs in all of newspaper journalism—reveals today exclusively in the paper of record that he saw a movie not too long ago.

Frank Bruni saw a movie called Her. Frank Bruni is required to produce two newspaper columns per week. Frank Bruni is not particularly good at his job. What do these three facts add up to?

In "Her," the very nature of Johansson's operating system is to adapt to and evolve from her interactions with Phoenix. She's a projection of his needs. She blooms in accordance with his wants (and has an aurally explosive orgasm on cue). He needn't doubt himself, compromise or color outside the lines. "Her" takes what's happening in American politics and so much of American culture and transfers it to the realm of romance.

It's a parable of narcissism in the digital world, which lets you sprint to the foreground of everything, giving you an audience or the illusion of one. To monitor Facebook or Twitter right after Nelson Mandela's death last week was to be struck by how many people weren't so much passing along the news as laying claim to it: Here's what I thought of him. Here's when I intersected with him. Here's the personal reverberation.

In addition to seeing a movie, Frank Bruni looked at Twitter recently.

You can't have Frank Bruni's job, because Frank Bruni has it.

[Photo: AP]