Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. New York Time Op-Ed. March 14th 2012:
TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
[more inside]
posted by Skygazer
on Mar 14, 2012 -
150 comments
"We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated," he said in his lawyer voice. "What does that mean?" I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for most kids, declaring emancipation is an extreme measure -- something you do if your parents are crack addicts or deadbeats.
"You would need to become financially independent," he said. "You could work for me at my law firm and pay rent to live here."
This was my moment of truth as an objectivist. If I believed in the glory of the individual, I would've signed the petition papers then and there. But as much as Rand's novels had taught me to believe in meritocracy, they had not prepared me to go it alone financially and emotionally. I began to cry and refused.
posted by fernabelle
on Apr 15, 2011 -
102 comments
"Porn films are not about sex. Sex is airbrushed and digitally washed out of the films There is no acting because none of the women are permitted to have what amounts to a personality.The one emotion they are allowed to display is an unquenchable desire to satisfy men, especially if that desire involves the women’s physical and emotional degradation." In his most recent book,
Chris Hedges navigates our culture of narcissim, from porn (in the linked segment), to the WWE, to Ivy League graduation ceremonies and reality tv — exposing, according to his publisher "an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion". Hedges is a former foreign correspondent for the New York times, has previously gone to war with
Christian Fundamentalists,
The New Atheists,
War itself and his own employer, resigning from his job rather than submit to the Times's reprimand over his outspoken opposition to the Iraq War and the press "cheerleading" that preceded it.
posted by psmealey
on Oct 16, 2009 -
207 comments
Elizabeth Wurtzel writes:
Because I need to make a point, I’m just going to be immodestly candid: I was a remarkably adorable child, the kind with such rosily expressive cheeks that grown-ups couldn’t resist pinching them. So when I became a teenager and then an adult, I was what you would call a hot number or something like that—at any rate, they put me half-dressed on the covers of my books to sell them, so draw what you will from that. Now that I’m in my forties, people say, I think kindly, She still looks good. This is to be followed by a phase of …for her age, which is hot on the trail of handsome, and then—then who knows? I think it deteriorates from there, enough so that the vain among us start to look forward to death, or at least stop resisting its horrific pull. (via)
posted by Joe Beese
on May 29, 2009 -
175 comments
A little old, but chock full of enough wackadoodle quotes to be your morning cup of head-go-boom-iness.
FOX News on Mr. Rogers and his effect on "the narcissistic society he gave birth to": "
This evil, evil man has now ruined a generation of kids." "Do you think that Mr. Rogers [...] ruined a crop of our newest, youngest generation?" "Instead of telling them 'you're special, you're great', why didn't he say, 'there's a lot of room for improvement, keep working on yourself'?"
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posted by WCityMike
on Apr 6, 2009 -
191 comments
Kerouac's On The Road: The 50th Anniversary Of A Book I Had Not Read I can't be the only one whose impression of the book, from hearing about it but not actually reading it, was that it was about young, potent men, lost in a growing commercial society, two coiled springs ready to pop, looking for adventure-- America style. And this Road Trip that launched a thousand, other boring, useless road trips, was about young men looking to experience the world, really see, really live, really feel, free of the constraints of an artificial post war soulless society . . . That impression is wrong. You know what the book is really about? It's a primer on how to be a narcissist.
posted by jason's_planet
on Oct 18, 2007 -
136 comments
"Spotlight Live ... puts guests in the limelight in a way that will surpass their wildest dreams. Guests can walk in the door for dinner and walk out the door a star"
In the age of American Idol, why go to see a show on Broadway, when it's your birthright to be a show on Broadway, complete with your own
professional back-up singers and dancers?
posted by stagewhisper
on Mar 17, 2007 -
9 comments
