The Stalin Applause Index (formula by Matt Taibbi)
CONFORMITY * (FEAR + CONSEQUENCES) / BALLS = DURATION OF WORSHIP.
via rollingstone.com
Strategic Marketing Dude. Aging guitar hacker. I have been known to howl at the moon on occasion.
Currently working on my Social Media Strategy chops at Consensio.
CONFORMITY * (FEAR + CONSEQUENCES) / BALLS = DURATION OF WORSHIP.
"The Decision" was simultaneously the most painful and most hilarious television show I've seen in a long time. Its entertainment value rested almost entirely in its scope -- the same way a person goes to the Niagara Falls or to the Grand Canyon for that take-your-breath-away moment when the heretofore unimaginable vastness of the vista is first perceived, I watched "The Decision" in breathless awe of the sheer scale of the narcissism involved.
By any measure it was a landmark moment in the history of human self-involvement, eclipsing previous peaks in the narcissism Himalayas (Nero's impromptu fiddle concert as Rome burned, the career of the prophet Mohammed, Kim Jong Il publishing "The Popularity of Kim Jong Il") mainly because it was a collective effort. You can understand the citizens of Tsaritsyn cheering the decision to rename their city; if they didn't like "Stalingrad," they were getting lined up and shot.
But what was our excuse? The weird thing about this Lebron story is that seven or eight years ago, he seemed like a nice kid. All he did was step into a media machinery deisgned to create, reward, nurture, and worship self-obsessed assholes. He was raw clay when he went in, and now he's everything we ever wanted him to be -- a lost, attention-craving narcissistic monster who simultaneously despises and needs the slithering insect-mortals who by the millions are bent over licking his toes (represented in The Decision by the ball-less, drooling sycophant Jim Gray).
Click on the link above to read the rest of his post.
This just in from Matt Taibbi:
The point is that this gesture by Eric Holder to drop to his knees and pray at the altar of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin is one of those things that both sides are going to end up seriously regretting.
There’s always room for Goldman Sachs (at the SEC)
The Securities and Exchange Commission hired a 29-year-old former employee in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s business intelligence unit as the first chief operating officer in the agency’s enforcement division, according to people familiar with the decision.
via SEC unit hires ex-Goldman Sachs worker as chief operating officer — latimes.com.
Could life get any better? Really, aren’t things just about as good as they can possibly get at this point?
Oh, man. This is so great. This guy Grayson is a lawyer's lawyer. He makes the other guy - the General Counsel of the Fed no less - squirm and wish he were somewhere else. Anywhere else.
I think the accusation he is making - "front running" - is that somewhere down the line the Fed executes trades through retail brokers. And these retail brokers, just before they push the Fed's order through, execute an order of their own so they benefit from the Fed's trade. They trade "in front" of the Fed order. This is insider trading of the highest order - and Grayson wants the right to audit these transactions.
Fascinating. And read Taibb's complete post for an entertaining story about his own encounter with Grayson.
