I cannot believe we got an Infinity Gauntlet movie that was a reasonable interpretation of Jim Starlin's comics.
I understand why that series gave them something to build towards. However, short of the OG Secret Wars series, there isn't any other of those "event" series I can see them adapting outside of things that require the X-men.
I am still enjoying the movies. As someone with a young daughter and a family member dying from cancer on their own terms, Thor spoke to me in a couple of ways. I hope we get another round with Waititi to wrap up his thoughts on the thundered.
Parr of the problem is choosing characters poorly. I appreciate the need for an Asian hero, especially when Disney was clearly planning to pander to China. But instead of Master of Kung Fu, never a great character, how about Amadeus Cho? The Eternals were always uninteresting in my comic reading time. I don't know that Kirby adapts as easily to now as Jim Starling does.
I really think Marvel's mistake was firing James Gunn at the behest of internet trolls. They lost a great point man at a critical time. They also shook his faith in them by tossing him to the curb. Noticeably, when they hired him back, it wasn't to architect the phases. That's our loss for the stories and Disney's loss for the money.
I have to say that JVL is my most favorite Bulwark writer. That said, Sonny Bunch is terrific and I very much enjoy/appreciate his insight into entertainment. Like all of the Bulwark folks he writes very well and always has a point of view that I may have not considered.
Jul 30, 2022·edited Jul 30, 2022Liked by Jonathan V. Last
The truth is that we incentivize the Weinsteins of the world because we tell them that it's okay to do these things so long as they have the money and power to silence their victims or beat them in court. Forget Weinstein, this has literally been Trump's mode of operation since the 1980's and all we ever did about it was roll our collective eyes until that one time he came down that golden escalator.
If you don't punish excessive wealth, you encourage the concentration of it by showing men in each generation *exactly* how much they can get away with if they can afford the right lawyers and big cash settlements to victims that are like pocket change for these guys. Much in the same way that American cities deal with bad cop problems by paying off the families of innocent victims killed by police, we deal with the victims of rape and sexual harassment by having their abusers pay them off and then we call that justice. Well, if money can absolve even the most vile sins, then why not just become rich and then do whatever the fuck you want to do within the limits of the two-tier system? We're telling them exactly what they can get away with over and over and over again. We let them accrue wealth to insane amounts for said legal protections to pay off victims with, and then we get collectively upset when they keep doing it all over again? Like, PEOPLE, you can't fix the rich men problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amounts of wealth just like you can't fix the gun problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amount of guns.
Keep licking the boots of the rich folks. I promise, it's going to fix all of these problems just like you want it to.
Amazing that the "primitive" 19th century farmers and rural folks as well as city folks knew had bad it was to concentrate wealth in the hands of wealthy - Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc. Yet our so-called enlightened peoples are handing the rich whatever they want, including our lives and souls.
18th century too. There's a reason the state capitols of the original colonies were often far from their industrial centers. Albany, Harrisburg, Trenton, Annapolis, etc. Don't put the politicians right next to the richest people in their state.
As the Chinese communists discovered, when the opportunity to work to better your situation is removed, people don't work. Communes produced their government-required quota, and no more, because there was no motivation to work any harder. Probably the number -one motivator is the opportunity to work toward a better life to pass on to the kids and grand kids.
Exactly how much should people be allowed to accumulate and pass on? How much is enough? If you go to a website like Bigger Pockets, according to them it is impossible to have enough. The website encourages people to build bigger and bigger real estate portfolios. Trump's tax law doubled the amount from $5.5 million to $11 million before even a dollar of estate tax kick in. This doubling will expire 2025 and drop back to $5.5 million. The vast majority of American are not licking anybody's boots and have zero to do with either civil or criminal penalties/pay-offs..
Money does not absolve sin. However, in many cases, restitution is the only practical relief for the victim.
As an aside, I totally disagree with the contingency practice of lawyers taking a third of the judgement amount for themselves while leaving a pittance for the victims, especially in class action suits wherein after the award is divvied up to all members of the class, each individual member of the class, irrespective of the often much higher amount of damages actually suffered by the individual.
I do not think the rich should be punished or scapegoated. Hasn't MAGA taught all of America the societal destructiveness of scapegoating any group. However, the rich should not be allowed various tax loopholes to hide money and avoid taxes. Even though the obscenely wealthy pay 90% of all income tax collected, as a percentage of their income, they boast they pay little to no income tax regardless of tax brackets. We need broad financial policies to prevent the relentless redistribution from the bottom to the top, not punishment., and not destruction of motivation.
By today's standards, nobody needs to have a net worth in excess of $2 million (all assets) to support even a large and well-blessed family. If you need two houses, half a million in stocks, and all of your kids to go through the best schools in the country, chances are you're over-doing it at the expense of everyone else. Live within the means of normalcy. Getting excessive and going decadent is a drain on all of society and it depletes our culture. I'm sure you'll be here to defend families with more than $2M though. Tell me how people need a shot at getting three homes in order to work hard, as if hard work should be reduced to the excessive spoils one can rake in. Trust me, plenty of working class people would be satisfied busting their asses at whatever for far less than these spoiled rich kids apparently drool over. But go ahead, defend greed in culture and the inequality it drives as a great thing.
Only about 6.25% of American households have a net worth of $2,000,000. Not a lot people with the money to make the whole society decadent according to your own standard. A lot of retirement calculators are worthless because 1) they fail to include inflation in their estimates. 2) they overestimate the percentage of annual yield on retirement savings, and 3) they fail to account for the large increase in medical expenses as retirees age. $2,000,000 is likely what you will need in retirement savings to live modestly until age 95. Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data from 2019. The Fed estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average of $255,200. It is not that our society is decadent. The problem is that for a country that claims to be the richest on earth, most of its residents will retire without enough for even a modest retirement.
6.25% is 20.6M people. And again, when you look at the top 10%, that number isn't too far off. It was my highball number to give room to be honest, and I'd rather cap it at $1.5M net worth. That get us closer to 10%?
If you simply put your savings into index funds your money will grow on average 10% year over year, which is more than enough to beat inflation. Index funds also have an insanely low managing fee because they are automated, so you're not chopping off 0.9% for the fund manager who probably doesn't even beat the market. If your job matches up to 5% put away 7-10% of your pay check into their 401k and then take whatever else you can put into short term savings plus some money for index funds each money. Between that and making sure you get into home ownership as early as possible, and hopefully you buy somewhere smart, people would live comfortably without going overboard. Do that, don't drive a ridiculous car, and don't live for excess and you'll probably be fine. People who need more than $1.5M for they household these days are living in excess. If they didn't, the cost of living would be a lot more affordable. Sprinkle that 10% of Americans (some 33M people) across every major metro in the country and ask yourself what it does to the cost of living for everyone else. There's a reason the most expensive coastal cities are bleeding middle class residents into other states, and part of that is because of the cost of living going up do to the most decadent households in said cities.
The point is the rest of society, that is 90- 93.75%, by your standard, are not the decadent rich.
Yes, of course, the best plan is to put your savings in a broad index fund, such as SP500. Avoid the boutique "index" funds that have sprung up. And yes historically if you simply leave it it alone, your savings should average 10%. However, even if you do all that individual results vary. If your working life happened to comprise the years from say 1968-2008, and you were invested in a broad market fund the whole time, your growth for the whole period was 11% or 0.3% year over year. I dealt with a large crowd of dismayed retirees in 2008 who (perhaps ill-advisedly in an effort to stem the bleeding) cashed in their broad market funds, and found they still had to pay tax--the deferred income tax on the principal and capital gains tax on that 11% gain.
You never know what segment of the full historical time frame your experience will fall in. That segment may be very different from the historical statistics. Furthermore, many economists say future yields have already been dragged in the present and may well depress historical yields for some time. Since 1965, homeownership rates have averaged only 66%. The "same as rent" part (property tax, insurance, utilities, maintenance) you pay even if you own your typical 3/2 house free and clear increases every year, and is roughly tracks comparably to average rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
You make a number of assumptions that can basically be summarized as if all the stars align, a $1.5million net worth at retirement might suffice. Contingency planning calls for making sure there is a cushion in case all the stars do not align. If all you have in $1.5million after a working life of 40 years, you don't have that much a certainly not enough to spend your retirement years living "decadently." However, admittedly you are likely to be better off than most Americans.
The expensive coastal cities are not bleeding middle class residents to other states. The vast majority move to another community in the same state. The poster child, California, had 83,000 net of exits and entrants, or just 0.2% of California's population. You are making a claim you have not supported about the so called decadence of the rich. Being in the upper 10% in net worth does not necessarily make a household decadent according to the usual definition of decadent, not Douthat's idiosyncratic definition.
In fact, the usual definition of decadence would include smoking weed, and what you characterized as free sex. Money definitely makes a decadent lifestyle easier to afford, that's all. It does not mean that having money equals living a decadent lifestyle.
Difficult Men by Brett Martin is a pretty good read discussing the golden age of cable TV prestige dramas, marked in the book from the Sopranos to Breaking Bad (which IIRC was either still airing or just finished when the book was published.)
The creators covered ranged from outright tyrants (David Chase, Matt Weiner) to kinda incoherent (David Milch) to argumentative-but-not-a-dick (David Simon) to genuinely affable (Vince Gilligan).
Gilligan in particular interests me- by accounts, he's a legit nice guy and he has a very interesting fill in the blank methodology (he filmed the opening scene of the final season, which turned out to be key set up for the series finale, without having plotted out the end of the series or knowing what form the ending would take. He just wrote the first ep figuring that he'd figure out what the scene meant by the time he got there.)
And he followed his smash hit magnum opus series with a prequel series that for a lot of people (myself included) has turned out to be better than the original series.
Whereas for David Chase I think The Many Saints of Newark showed where he goes when he doesn't have the elder Gandolfini to carry the production.
I hadn't seen Breaking Bad, but started with Better Call Saul. Completely love it. Now on to Breaking Bad (was somewhat freaked by first episode, just this side of horror movie.) Best tv ever, along with The Wire and first season of True Detective. I've heard about the sequel to The Wire, but will have to wait for DVD on Netflix, crappy rural internet.
I don't think he was worth that much then (or now to be blunt). If was before he became a fake celebrity due to the Apprentice and before he got the idea of marketing his name that people were dumb enough to buy into.
"But is it really the personality defects which make these people successful? Or is it more the case that one of the privileges of success is that repercussions melt away and people are liberated to be their worst selves?"
Mostly the latter. While it's impossible to Do All Good Things at once, and focusing on one's own particular "genius" can mean letting other duties slide, the neglect of other duties isn't positive abuse of others.
If you and your "genius" render yourself "indispensable" enough, others will put up with a lot from you before deciding they've had enough. Since people know this, one way to signal that you're "indispensable" (even if you aren't) is to be a massive jerk. The more those around you (especially those in charge) buy into the "nice guys can't be geniuses" myth, the more likely this con is to work. Sometimes the success of this con outlasts the lifetime of the conman.
How many aspiring whatevers have been advised that being perceived as successful is half the battle, so you should look like you're successful even when you aren't yet? Cultivating jerkitude in order to appear like someone successful enough to afford abusing others is part of this whole game, though not a necessary part. But it really works on some people.
The one person I know with extensive experience inside Hollywood says this con is endemic there. And I've witnessed firsthand its occurrence in conservative media.
Another disagreement with you, sir! MJFs article in the Atlantic is pretty good, but I used to listen to her regularly on her pod, THE NEW ABNORMAL, and I frequently thought that I had socks that were more astute than she was. It doesn’t bother me that she’s left of me politically —- I read people with whom I disagree, both left and right. And its not that she gets people’s names and their offices wrong —-its gotta be hard to do these podcasts. It’s that she is neither astute, prescient, original or anything else that would make one want to listen to her. Sorry.
You guys need to watch EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! for you other show. It is the best on screen baseball I’ve ever seen. Plus its Linklater so it’s like Dazed and Confused in college plus amazing baseball. https://youtu.be/agsAFTOK2ss
I worked in that industry for twelve years and on the studio lot Miramax had an office. I will not and cannot condone his deplorable behavior; however, this behavior has been going on since the silent era with no condemnation. Not saying it's alright but Harvey found the industry that turned their heads and allowed this to happen. This is no different than politics or religion both that can show thousands of years off looking away.
Harvey was well known on the studio lot as one who supported the old 'studio system' of casting.
The casting couch tyrant is such a Hollywood myth, going all the way back to the early days of movies. The question has always been do people really behave that way, not just Weinstein but all the people who put up with the abuse just to be famous or work next to the famous, I guess we got the answer.
The next question, is it the whole system that is morally bankrupt? Is Weinstein an aberration or just business as usual, just what happens when we turn talent into a commodity.
But Weinstein does not into the mold of the casting couch tyrant, that would be bad enough but he was worse. The fuck of it is the casting couch is a real thing and that’s why he got away with predation and outright rape, Hollywood has been willing to look the other way on casting couch creeps and the whole “you do this for me and you’ll get this”. Some people around him knew it was much worse, some people knew he was committing assault and rape but most didn’t want to look too hard.
So you seem to believe that Harvey was a unique villain, where as I am seeing a whole system that is morally bankrupt. He was able to do it for so long because he was in a system that condoned it. Why? is the question, imo. Harvey isn't the only villain in this movie.
Men using their power to get what they want from women is a major problem in our society but Harvey is a sociopath, a predator and a serial rapist. Unfortunately that men largely have not been held to account for their abuses toward women allowed Harvey, a unique villain, to hide in plain site next to somewhat lesser villains because our culture has allowed toxic masculinity to abound unchecked.
I’ve read Catch and Kill, She Said, and Auletta’s recent book on Harvey, if you haven’t I suggest giving them a go I think reading the mountains of victim statements and reports you’ll see Harvey closer to how I do.
Harvey Weinstein could have gone down in history as one of the truly great empresarios of stage and screen having been responsible for some of the best plays and films of the 21st Century instead he has chosen to only be remembered as a gross serial sexual predator.
And were his cultural contributions worth the pain and suffering inflicted on his victims? No. Not one.
Did he really make any unique cultural contribution or if you take him out of the picture (as should have been done) someone else would have taken the same talent and create equally worthy entertainment.
Jul 30, 2022·edited Jul 30, 2022Liked by Jonathan V. Last
Absolutely right that Harvey is not in the category of a Jobs or Wintour or Oppenheimer. They were all certainly tyrants at times but they were the singular focus type, using their power and ability to manipulate others in service of being the best or first or the greatest (it doesn’t at all excuse them) but Harvey is a predator through and through (Auletta’s book tracks instances of his predatory behavior back to Harvey as a kid, so it’s not something that started because of his fame and power) and he sought the status and power simply to abet his predation and alibi him from the consequences.
But not for long, he would have soon been back in his mothers basement whining to his online friends about that bitch that got him fired. It was the system that gave him the power to be all he could be.
The Bulwark IS refreshing!!!! Not “regular”, informing and often unsettling!!!! Thank you!!!
I cannot believe we got an Infinity Gauntlet movie that was a reasonable interpretation of Jim Starlin's comics.
I understand why that series gave them something to build towards. However, short of the OG Secret Wars series, there isn't any other of those "event" series I can see them adapting outside of things that require the X-men.
I am still enjoying the movies. As someone with a young daughter and a family member dying from cancer on their own terms, Thor spoke to me in a couple of ways. I hope we get another round with Waititi to wrap up his thoughts on the thundered.
Parr of the problem is choosing characters poorly. I appreciate the need for an Asian hero, especially when Disney was clearly planning to pander to China. But instead of Master of Kung Fu, never a great character, how about Amadeus Cho? The Eternals were always uninteresting in my comic reading time. I don't know that Kirby adapts as easily to now as Jim Starling does.
I really think Marvel's mistake was firing James Gunn at the behest of internet trolls. They lost a great point man at a critical time. They also shook his faith in them by tossing him to the curb. Noticeably, when they hired him back, it wasn't to architect the phases. That's our loss for the stories and Disney's loss for the money.
I have to say that JVL is my most favorite Bulwark writer. That said, Sonny Bunch is terrific and I very much enjoy/appreciate his insight into entertainment. Like all of the Bulwark folks he writes very well and always has a point of view that I may have not considered.
This is my favorite Bulwark newsletter
Most criminals are not especially talented, so I doubt there's even a correlation, let alone causation.
The truth is that we incentivize the Weinsteins of the world because we tell them that it's okay to do these things so long as they have the money and power to silence their victims or beat them in court. Forget Weinstein, this has literally been Trump's mode of operation since the 1980's and all we ever did about it was roll our collective eyes until that one time he came down that golden escalator.
If you don't punish excessive wealth, you encourage the concentration of it by showing men in each generation *exactly* how much they can get away with if they can afford the right lawyers and big cash settlements to victims that are like pocket change for these guys. Much in the same way that American cities deal with bad cop problems by paying off the families of innocent victims killed by police, we deal with the victims of rape and sexual harassment by having their abusers pay them off and then we call that justice. Well, if money can absolve even the most vile sins, then why not just become rich and then do whatever the fuck you want to do within the limits of the two-tier system? We're telling them exactly what they can get away with over and over and over again. We let them accrue wealth to insane amounts for said legal protections to pay off victims with, and then we get collectively upset when they keep doing it all over again? Like, PEOPLE, you can't fix the rich men problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amounts of wealth just like you can't fix the gun problem without getting rid of the exorbitant amount of guns.
Keep licking the boots of the rich folks. I promise, it's going to fix all of these problems just like you want it to.
Amazing that the "primitive" 19th century farmers and rural folks as well as city folks knew had bad it was to concentrate wealth in the hands of wealthy - Rockefellers, Carnegies, etc. Yet our so-called enlightened peoples are handing the rich whatever they want, including our lives and souls.
18th century too. There's a reason the state capitols of the original colonies were often far from their industrial centers. Albany, Harrisburg, Trenton, Annapolis, etc. Don't put the politicians right next to the richest people in their state.
As the Chinese communists discovered, when the opportunity to work to better your situation is removed, people don't work. Communes produced their government-required quota, and no more, because there was no motivation to work any harder. Probably the number -one motivator is the opportunity to work toward a better life to pass on to the kids and grand kids.
Exactly how much should people be allowed to accumulate and pass on? How much is enough? If you go to a website like Bigger Pockets, according to them it is impossible to have enough. The website encourages people to build bigger and bigger real estate portfolios. Trump's tax law doubled the amount from $5.5 million to $11 million before even a dollar of estate tax kick in. This doubling will expire 2025 and drop back to $5.5 million. The vast majority of American are not licking anybody's boots and have zero to do with either civil or criminal penalties/pay-offs..
Money does not absolve sin. However, in many cases, restitution is the only practical relief for the victim.
As an aside, I totally disagree with the contingency practice of lawyers taking a third of the judgement amount for themselves while leaving a pittance for the victims, especially in class action suits wherein after the award is divvied up to all members of the class, each individual member of the class, irrespective of the often much higher amount of damages actually suffered by the individual.
I do not think the rich should be punished or scapegoated. Hasn't MAGA taught all of America the societal destructiveness of scapegoating any group. However, the rich should not be allowed various tax loopholes to hide money and avoid taxes. Even though the obscenely wealthy pay 90% of all income tax collected, as a percentage of their income, they boast they pay little to no income tax regardless of tax brackets. We need broad financial policies to prevent the relentless redistribution from the bottom to the top, not punishment., and not destruction of motivation.
By today's standards, nobody needs to have a net worth in excess of $2 million (all assets) to support even a large and well-blessed family. If you need two houses, half a million in stocks, and all of your kids to go through the best schools in the country, chances are you're over-doing it at the expense of everyone else. Live within the means of normalcy. Getting excessive and going decadent is a drain on all of society and it depletes our culture. I'm sure you'll be here to defend families with more than $2M though. Tell me how people need a shot at getting three homes in order to work hard, as if hard work should be reduced to the excessive spoils one can rake in. Trust me, plenty of working class people would be satisfied busting their asses at whatever for far less than these spoiled rich kids apparently drool over. But go ahead, defend greed in culture and the inequality it drives as a great thing.
You have completely misrepresented my views.
Only about 6.25% of American households have a net worth of $2,000,000. Not a lot people with the money to make the whole society decadent according to your own standard. A lot of retirement calculators are worthless because 1) they fail to include inflation in their estimates. 2) they overestimate the percentage of annual yield on retirement savings, and 3) they fail to account for the large increase in medical expenses as retirees age. $2,000,000 is likely what you will need in retirement savings to live modestly until age 95. Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data from 2019. The Fed estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average of $255,200. It is not that our society is decadent. The problem is that for a country that claims to be the richest on earth, most of its residents will retire without enough for even a modest retirement.
6.25% is 20.6M people. And again, when you look at the top 10%, that number isn't too far off. It was my highball number to give room to be honest, and I'd rather cap it at $1.5M net worth. That get us closer to 10%?
If you simply put your savings into index funds your money will grow on average 10% year over year, which is more than enough to beat inflation. Index funds also have an insanely low managing fee because they are automated, so you're not chopping off 0.9% for the fund manager who probably doesn't even beat the market. If your job matches up to 5% put away 7-10% of your pay check into their 401k and then take whatever else you can put into short term savings plus some money for index funds each money. Between that and making sure you get into home ownership as early as possible, and hopefully you buy somewhere smart, people would live comfortably without going overboard. Do that, don't drive a ridiculous car, and don't live for excess and you'll probably be fine. People who need more than $1.5M for they household these days are living in excess. If they didn't, the cost of living would be a lot more affordable. Sprinkle that 10% of Americans (some 33M people) across every major metro in the country and ask yourself what it does to the cost of living for everyone else. There's a reason the most expensive coastal cities are bleeding middle class residents into other states, and part of that is because of the cost of living going up do to the most decadent households in said cities.
The point is the rest of society, that is 90- 93.75%, by your standard, are not the decadent rich.
Yes, of course, the best plan is to put your savings in a broad index fund, such as SP500. Avoid the boutique "index" funds that have sprung up. And yes historically if you simply leave it it alone, your savings should average 10%. However, even if you do all that individual results vary. If your working life happened to comprise the years from say 1968-2008, and you were invested in a broad market fund the whole time, your growth for the whole period was 11% or 0.3% year over year. I dealt with a large crowd of dismayed retirees in 2008 who (perhaps ill-advisedly in an effort to stem the bleeding) cashed in their broad market funds, and found they still had to pay tax--the deferred income tax on the principal and capital gains tax on that 11% gain.
You never know what segment of the full historical time frame your experience will fall in. That segment may be very different from the historical statistics. Furthermore, many economists say future yields have already been dragged in the present and may well depress historical yields for some time. Since 1965, homeownership rates have averaged only 66%. The "same as rent" part (property tax, insurance, utilities, maintenance) you pay even if you own your typical 3/2 house free and clear increases every year, and is roughly tracks comparably to average rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
You make a number of assumptions that can basically be summarized as if all the stars align, a $1.5million net worth at retirement might suffice. Contingency planning calls for making sure there is a cushion in case all the stars do not align. If all you have in $1.5million after a working life of 40 years, you don't have that much a certainly not enough to spend your retirement years living "decadently." However, admittedly you are likely to be better off than most Americans.
The expensive coastal cities are not bleeding middle class residents to other states. The vast majority move to another community in the same state. The poster child, California, had 83,000 net of exits and entrants, or just 0.2% of California's population. You are making a claim you have not supported about the so called decadence of the rich. Being in the upper 10% in net worth does not necessarily make a household decadent according to the usual definition of decadent, not Douthat's idiosyncratic definition.
In fact, the usual definition of decadence would include smoking weed, and what you characterized as free sex. Money definitely makes a decadent lifestyle easier to afford, that's all. It does not mean that having money equals living a decadent lifestyle.
Difficult Men by Brett Martin is a pretty good read discussing the golden age of cable TV prestige dramas, marked in the book from the Sopranos to Breaking Bad (which IIRC was either still airing or just finished when the book was published.)
The creators covered ranged from outright tyrants (David Chase, Matt Weiner) to kinda incoherent (David Milch) to argumentative-but-not-a-dick (David Simon) to genuinely affable (Vince Gilligan).
Gilligan in particular interests me- by accounts, he's a legit nice guy and he has a very interesting fill in the blank methodology (he filmed the opening scene of the final season, which turned out to be key set up for the series finale, without having plotted out the end of the series or knowing what form the ending would take. He just wrote the first ep figuring that he'd figure out what the scene meant by the time he got there.)
And he followed his smash hit magnum opus series with a prequel series that for a lot of people (myself included) has turned out to be better than the original series.
Whereas for David Chase I think The Many Saints of Newark showed where he goes when he doesn't have the elder Gandolfini to carry the production.
I hadn't seen Breaking Bad, but started with Better Call Saul. Completely love it. Now on to Breaking Bad (was somewhat freaked by first episode, just this side of horror movie.) Best tv ever, along with The Wire and first season of True Detective. I've heard about the sequel to The Wire, but will have to wait for DVD on Netflix, crappy rural internet.
Thanks for reply. I get a kinda "I'm rich!" feeling when I know I have something good to watch on a warm summer evening.
I love to hear that. It's genuinely refreshing to see somebody hit that level of genius without having to be a complete dick about it.
Wow! If Ivanka only got $14 million that's just .2% of Donald's $6 billion net worth. I'm gonna need to see those financial statements.
I don't think he was worth that much then (or now to be blunt). If was before he became a fake celebrity due to the Apprentice and before he got the idea of marketing his name that people were dumb enough to buy into.
"But is it really the personality defects which make these people successful? Or is it more the case that one of the privileges of success is that repercussions melt away and people are liberated to be their worst selves?"
Mostly the latter. While it's impossible to Do All Good Things at once, and focusing on one's own particular "genius" can mean letting other duties slide, the neglect of other duties isn't positive abuse of others.
If you and your "genius" render yourself "indispensable" enough, others will put up with a lot from you before deciding they've had enough. Since people know this, one way to signal that you're "indispensable" (even if you aren't) is to be a massive jerk. The more those around you (especially those in charge) buy into the "nice guys can't be geniuses" myth, the more likely this con is to work. Sometimes the success of this con outlasts the lifetime of the conman.
How many aspiring whatevers have been advised that being perceived as successful is half the battle, so you should look like you're successful even when you aren't yet? Cultivating jerkitude in order to appear like someone successful enough to afford abusing others is part of this whole game, though not a necessary part. But it really works on some people.
The one person I know with extensive experience inside Hollywood says this con is endemic there. And I've witnessed firsthand its occurrence in conservative media.
Another disagreement with you, sir! MJFs article in the Atlantic is pretty good, but I used to listen to her regularly on her pod, THE NEW ABNORMAL, and I frequently thought that I had socks that were more astute than she was. It doesn’t bother me that she’s left of me politically —- I read people with whom I disagree, both left and right. And its not that she gets people’s names and their offices wrong —-its gotta be hard to do these podcasts. It’s that she is neither astute, prescient, original or anything else that would make one want to listen to her. Sorry.
I stopped listening to The New Abnormal when Rick Wilson had to leave. I agree with you on MJF, just nothing interesting, original.
Agreed. The pod was good with Rick on it & never the same after The Daily Beast dropped him.
You spelled "Eight Men Out," wrong JVL
No he spelled “EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!” wrong, which is the greatest baseball movie. No one denies this.
Everybody Wants Some!! https://g.co/kgs/znAxUA
I love Eight Men Out. It's my favorite Sayles movie (and I think I've seen all of them, weirdly enough).
Bull Durham is still the best.
You guys need to watch EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! for you other show. It is the best on screen baseball I’ve ever seen. Plus its Linklater so it’s like Dazed and Confused in college plus amazing baseball. https://youtu.be/agsAFTOK2ss
and great Van Halen song
“Or is it more the case that one of the privileges of success is that repercussions melt away and people are liberated to be their worst selves?“
This
Can you just imagine what would happen if one of these narcissistic sociopaths ever became President of the United States?
I worked in that industry for twelve years and on the studio lot Miramax had an office. I will not and cannot condone his deplorable behavior; however, this behavior has been going on since the silent era with no condemnation. Not saying it's alright but Harvey found the industry that turned their heads and allowed this to happen. This is no different than politics or religion both that can show thousands of years off looking away.
Harvey was well known on the studio lot as one who supported the old 'studio system' of casting.
The casting couch tyrant is such a Hollywood myth, going all the way back to the early days of movies. The question has always been do people really behave that way, not just Weinstein but all the people who put up with the abuse just to be famous or work next to the famous, I guess we got the answer.
The next question, is it the whole system that is morally bankrupt? Is Weinstein an aberration or just business as usual, just what happens when we turn talent into a commodity.
But Weinstein does not into the mold of the casting couch tyrant, that would be bad enough but he was worse. The fuck of it is the casting couch is a real thing and that’s why he got away with predation and outright rape, Hollywood has been willing to look the other way on casting couch creeps and the whole “you do this for me and you’ll get this”. Some people around him knew it was much worse, some people knew he was committing assault and rape but most didn’t want to look too hard.
So you seem to believe that Harvey was a unique villain, where as I am seeing a whole system that is morally bankrupt. He was able to do it for so long because he was in a system that condoned it. Why? is the question, imo. Harvey isn't the only villain in this movie.
Why? Because it's what the powerful can do to those they have power over. "When you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."
Why hasn't the disgraced ex-president been held to account over the two dozen charges of sexual assault and the one accusation of rape?
Men using their power to get what they want from women is a major problem in our society but Harvey is a sociopath, a predator and a serial rapist. Unfortunately that men largely have not been held to account for their abuses toward women allowed Harvey, a unique villain, to hide in plain site next to somewhat lesser villains because our culture has allowed toxic masculinity to abound unchecked.
I’ve read Catch and Kill, She Said, and Auletta’s recent book on Harvey, if you haven’t I suggest giving them a go I think reading the mountains of victim statements and reports you’ll see Harvey closer to how I do.
But without the system's support he doesn't reach that level of depravity. He is not unique, prisons are filled with men like him.
Harvey Weinstein could have gone down in history as one of the truly great empresarios of stage and screen having been responsible for some of the best plays and films of the 21st Century instead he has chosen to only be remembered as a gross serial sexual predator.
And were his cultural contributions worth the pain and suffering inflicted on his victims? No. Not one.
Did he really make any unique cultural contribution or if you take him out of the picture (as should have been done) someone else would have taken the same talent and create equally worthy entertainment.
Absolutely right that Harvey is not in the category of a Jobs or Wintour or Oppenheimer. They were all certainly tyrants at times but they were the singular focus type, using their power and ability to manipulate others in service of being the best or first or the greatest (it doesn’t at all excuse them) but Harvey is a predator through and through (Auletta’s book tracks instances of his predatory behavior back to Harvey as a kid, so it’s not something that started because of his fame and power) and he sought the status and power simply to abet his predation and alibi him from the consequences.
I think that's right. Like I said: I suspect he would have been committing the same crimes if he managed a 7/11.
But not for long, he would have soon been back in his mothers basement whining to his online friends about that bitch that got him fired. It was the system that gave him the power to be all he could be.