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Alfred Gingold and Helen Rogan

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from: Helen Rogan

The Giddy Crushes of Businessmen

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2001, at 12:59 PM ET

Alfie,

Big news! On the subway I read the first snippets of Jack: Straight from the Gut in the papers. Welch's "$7.1 million business book," as it's generally called, will be excerpted in October's Vanity Fair. Let me whet your appetite: "Arrogance is a killer, legitimate self-confidence is a winner," says Welch. Also, "Knowing when to meddle and when to let go was a pure gut decision." Are we the only two people in America who are profoundly turned off by books like this? Since he's the current business hero (despite the little GE-Honeywell setback), millions of Welch wanna-bes will go rushing off to ingest his maxims. And what that makes me realize, yet again, is that while businessmen may look like rational people, with their orderly clothing, their five-year plans, and their PowerPoint presentations of this and that, they're just as swoony and impressionable as your average teen-ager. They want someone cool to tell them what to do. Lurching from the wisdom of the samurai to the stratagems of Queen Elizabeth I, from Lee Iacocca to Donald Trump, they get a giddy crush on someone or some theory and live accordingly until their adored one falls from grace or the next one comes along. For months on end, it seemed, everybody was talking about the genius of Thomas Middlehoff. Now where is he? Was it the Napster thing? Who's next? And what Big Book are you planning to read this fall?

H

P.S.: Thanks for what you said about the museums.

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Helen Rogan

The Giddy Crushes of Businessmen

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2001, at 12:59 PM ET
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Alfred Gingold has written eight books (including three with Helen Rogan) and for numerous magazines and Web sites. Helen Rogan, his wife, is the executive editor of My Generation, the AARP's magazine for baby boomers, and has written books and magazine articles.
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[Notes from the Fray Editor: Reparations and museums were the hot topics here. There was news from Tony Adragna that there is an African-American museum in DC. Elusive Fray poster Amyntas started a splendid discussion on reparations and taxcuts here, featuring posts titled "A nonsensical argument" and "Typical disingenuous twaddle." A high moral tone, and criticism of young women, were the common themes in two posts: a most unusual view on the Chandra Levy affair, here, and one on Tea Leoni here.]


The ambiguity of the reparations debate is what I like most about that entire issue. Whether reparations ever get paid or not (I suspect that they won't), to the extent that national attention gets focused on this issue, we'll be talking about basic moral issues.

Any serious discussion of this issue will involve questions of duty and obligation, culpability, history, values, rights and wrongs. In short, it will be (finally!) a public debate worthy of a democratic nation. Whatever conclusions we reach, either individually or as a nation, it seems likely that we will be better for having thought about these matters in depth

--Thrasymachus

(To reply, click here.)


 The CD-ROM thing is scary. How's Bloomberg going to top it? Will he try to make his hologram appear in all our living rooms?

--Claude Scales

(To reply, click here.)

 (8/28)

Didn't it ever bother anybody else that the Weathermen took their name from a line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" that implied that a weatherman is superfluous under the circumstances? Is this part and parcel of the Marxist-v.-Leninist- historical-determinist conundrum? (i.e., that if historical/economic forces are pushing toward an inevitable result, why do they need me to help them along? As it is sometimes put, if Marx didn't exist, it would be unnecessary to invent him.) That felt good--somebody call me a jackal, it really brings me back...

--Ex-Fed

(To reply, click here.)


 I happened to walk by the site of the Village explosion the morning of the event. The exposed apartments, with their wall clocks and tables precariously clinging to the ordinary around the gaping proof of anti-civic rage; the apartments seemed like a stage set for some kind of apocalyptic Beckett drama. The scene was mute, webbed with the yellow crime scene tapes of the municipal police. A mix of fear and curiosity animated the passers-by. I stood and stared, hearing the news in bits and pieces. Suddenly I noticed a sign, hand lettered, pinned to the police sawhorse. I looked closer and saw a few others, same hand, same posting method. In repeated, and therefore intentional orthography, the phrase "nothning is free" was scrawled in black marker on typing paper.

The phrase burned itself into my subconscious. I have never seen it since, nor heard it mentioned in the context of the Weathermen or other underground groups.

Nothning is free. Even if it has escaped justice. Especially if it has escaped justice.

--Zeitguy

(To reply, click here.)

 (8/31)





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