The New York Times Shows What A Little Hard Work Can Do.

Ben Casnocha is an amazing kid. He’s accomplished so much by the ripe old age of nineteen. No wonder he got a fawning profile, complete with photo, in the business section of June 17’s New York Times. He’s “precocious, informative and entertaining” . . . and he’s proof that capitalism works.

Sure, Ben can sound a little pompous. “I don’t want to be normal,” he declares in [his “entrepreneurial how-to manual”] “My Start-Up Life.” “I want to be something else.” And he can seem a little overprivileged: his lawyer-father gave him free office space, and he somehow raised a quarter of a million dollars to start a business when most kids couldn’t get twelve bucks to buy the new My Chemical Romance CD. Still, he’s amazing, simply amazing. I’ll let the Times tell you just how spectacular he is.

At 12, he started his first company.

Wow! Isn’t that great? He started a company!

At 14, he founded a software company called Comcate Inc.

Another wow! Another company! That’s two he’s got going! Clap clap!

At 17, he was continuing to prosper as an entrepreneur.

Okay, this one isn’t quite as impressive. In fact, it translates in non-BS-speak to “He didn’t die.” But you know, a lot of people did, so still more applause for Ben!

The piece gushes and slavers for over a thousand words, quoting Ben on his secrets for success. “Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible,” Ben advises. “Attend conferences no one else is attending. Read books no one else is reading.” Oh. Okay. Thanks for the tip, bud! I just reserved “Chariots of the Gods” at the library, so I’m mere days from the cash pouring in.

Somewhere near the bottom, though, Harry Hurt III -- yeah, that’s probably a clue as to why this article appeared in the first place -- seems to recognize that his emperor is flashing major beav.

Unfortunately, “My Start-Up Life” fails to give a coherent account of Comcate’s financing and the current status of the company, which is privately held. In a recent telephone interview, Ben said he withheld those kinds of details for proprietary reasons because his company is a developing enterprise.

It’s at this point that all the red flags we’ve been sensing go flying high into the air. Nobody knows how much money Ben’s companies have made? A hundred dollars, a million dollars, three cents? Yet when he writes a book about his “secrets” -- without providing a word of evidence he’s done anything -- he gets a gasping, groveling profile in the Times?

In fact, about the only concrete fact Mr. Hurt III mentions is this: Mr. Casnocha was named “entrepreneur of the year” by Inc. magazine. So though the Times doesn’t provide any evidence, the kid must have done something right, right?

Nope. A week later, the Times offers a correction. The Off the Shelf column last Sunday . . . referred erroneously to one aspect of [Mr. Casnocha’s] background. He was not named “entrepreneur of the year” by Inc. magazine.

See, this is why I think of the Times as New York’s stupidest paper. Yet again, mixed in with the consumer porn and vanity pieces about obscenely rich folk, they try to show how well capitalism works by profiling some determined sap who rises to the top through sheer force of will. And yet again we discover this sap is just another asshole with rich parents and a PR guy.

Still, this whole charade hasn’t been a total waste. We’ve answered a couple questions that have been bugging mankind since time began:

Does the New York Times print just about any crap at all? and

If Donald Trump and Paris Hilton got married, what would their offspring be like?