Perhaps, though the specifics always matter. It’s sad in his case because things like degrees, mates and children, as he put it, are more readily achieved (and certainly more normal choices), when you’re playing life on an easy setting. He evokes these things in a discussion of the intelligence and depth of news reportage, of the worthiness of its subject matter.
So I think it’s informative to show his own life’s context, when he suggests that young people haven’t “lived their lives” until they’ve reached certain milestones–milestones that were relatively easy for him to attain or forego.
He implies that the young, and their frivolous software, aren’t the New York Times’ ideal readers, or subjects, as far as his whining applies to either. Fair game for a privilege check, IMO.
