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Bernard Madoff - Source: Reuters -
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Just as there is honour, supposedly, among thieves, there is an espirit d'corps (based it's true largely on schadenfreude) among journalists covering breaking news... non-competing journalists covering breaking news, that is.
That spirit, the conviviality was there outside the apartment of disgraced Wall St titan, Bernard Madoff, on the Upper East Side. Madoff, you may have read, operated a giant pyramid scheme ripping off the illuminati. Some are suggesting he may now be responsible for the demise of the whole hedge fund industry. A problem with trust and greed.
On that chilly street, I was lucky enough to meet New York Post photographer Tim Wincis. He had such a good New York accent, I mis-spelled his name the first time I wrote it down. I identified myself as a New Zealander, and Wincis, who toils for Rupert Murdoch, immediately commenced such an egregious attempt at an Australian accent, that I couldn't not be amused.
He told me about the gang bang, or what civilians call "the press pack" - photographers and TV news shooters all vying for the shot of Madoff, crowding around him, and getting so close that he shoved them. They shoved back. "He was smiling," Wincis told me. "He was grinning from ear to ear."
"Nervous-smiling," I asked, "or enjoying-it smiling?"
"Enjoying it," said Wincis. "It's my personal opinion he was enjoying it."
As we talked an SUV drew up, and Matt Lauer emerged. Matt Lauer is the King of American breakfast television, the man whom Tom Cruise infamously chided for being glib during an interview last year.
Of course, chiding a television host for glibness is like complaining about the professional blue of a morning sky.
"He didn't know that Madoff lived in the building," said another snapper of Lauer. "He only found out the other day."
Setting aside Madoff's reclusiveness, and the anonymous quality of New York life that the writer E. B. White has correctly identified as the worst and best aspect of the metropolitan experience, I was struck by the fact that a television star could live in the same building, and at the same level as a man who (ostensibly) controlled around $90 billion.
It seemed a particularly American juxtaposition: one dealing in ephemera, while living on real money, the other putatively growing money at a solid ten or so percent a year, and whose every appearance of normality was fraudulent.
Much is being made of the faux aspects of American life right now, the necessity for reality, for correctives, for harsh medicine.
This is as much of a fantasy as the previous suggestion that we will all be rich and live forever.
You see, America itself is a fantasy. It is a fantasy of freedom, and subjugation, of capitalism, of market totalitarianism, of sentimentality and hardness. Hence the insistence on conformity. I remember the time when you couldn't not wear an American flag pin on the lapel of your suit jacket, and hope to participate successfully in politics. Fantasies are brittle.
Sometimes, as I did last night, while walking amongst the Christmas-shopper throng, I feel New York has a dream-like quality, the too-much-ness of it. It's easy to imagine the country itself is a giant dream held in place by the somnolence of its citizens. But it is reactive, just as when you sleep, and you hear a siren outside, and a police car travels through your dream.
During the weekend I sat in a restaurant that looked like one of the many deserted buildings you see in NYC these days. Newsprint covered the windows. It appeared shut. Well, shut if you don't know the right people.
I got in there by knowing the right people. At first I recoiled, but then I relaxed. The room sparkled with that particular blend of ambition, self-regard and the hope to be regarded that fuels the city. There were designers, photographers, wealthy kids spending their parents' money, and writers too.
You know how it felt? It felt like before the time that you looked around a party and wondered who would be there next year, given the generally-agreed-upon end of easy money. It felt like 2007, or 2005, or perhaps the 90s. It felt like before the time that people like Madoff were being held up as symbols of an inherent rotteness within the US.
What a ripping time. We drank wine. I had a very dirty martini made with Hendricks gin. A friend said she'd known people caught up in the Madoff saga, people who helped sell Madoff's bogus financial products, and who profited immensely from them.
"Did you sense anything that suggested they were up to something?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said.
"Really?"
"I don't know."
That's it, and perhaps that's why Madoff did so well. Year in, year out, consistent returns. As reliable as clockwork. In a country where even the very wealthy know the precariousness of success, Bernie Madoff may have created an empire of lies by peddling security.
Have you got an opinion on the issues that Tim discusses? Share them on the message board below.
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Add a Comment:
Post new commentNewzgal said on 2010-01-03 @ 15:46 NZDT: Report abusive post
Hi Tim, great blog. I agree right wingers have a Hobbesian view of existence, and like many I welcomed Obama’s presidency. However I always watched Fox News just to see how they were framing up the news (which far too many people rely on). I now find it more useful than ever to tune into the right just incase there is a kernel of truth in their rants as it seems the media and world have been far too soft on the new president and democrats, perfect recipe to slip things in!
jackdoitcrawford said on 2009-09-11 @ 23:24 NZDT: Report abusive post
Please don't label all people you disagree with, and put them in the same camp. Ayn Rand was pro abortion, achievement, reason, freedom, capitalism and happiness. She was definitely neither a conservative nor a libertarian. She also didn't want to live under a dictatorship. I see nothing wrong with this at all.
Kiwi in USA said on 2009-09-11 @ 17:58 NZDT: Report abusive post
I would have to disagree with Tim saying Bill ORielly is a right wing loon as if it were. He is defintly a independet and he always tells his viewers that. I know that there is plenty of loons like rush but come on, Obama is really turning America in the wrong direction. He has spent more money than all the presidents have combined. America is in trillions of dollars worth of debt.