MEDIA WATCH: New York Times is searching for a different kind of Superman in 'An Oligarch of our own'
The New York Times's editors have finally figured out that they can't fill their news, Style, and 'Business' pages with the kind of CEO worship that was the mainstay of their brands of economic journalism for more than a decade before the 2008 collapse of finance capitalism and the people they'd touted as heroes. Celebrity worship as CEO worship is still too late 20th Century to be gotten away with while the U.S. economy (except for the superrich) has creating increasing misery as the third winter of the Greater Depression looms for the growing number of homeless and jobless across the USA. So, as the Halloween edition of The New York Times magazine shows us, they are coming up with something more exotic to fixate ruling class minds on: Russian Oligarchs, cleaned up by the spin machine for the masses of overeducated and underskeptical readers who believe that if it's in the times it's TRUE.
In the fawning article "An Oligarch of Our Own," The Times outdoes itself in mendacity, cupidity, and off-stage pornographic leering. The profile of the new owner of the New Jersey Nets, a character who seems to be a combination of characters from Doestoevsky and Sieg Larssen, has all the qualities that made the novel "American Psycho" such a hit with a certain brand of suspendered Times readers a decade or so ago. Taller than tall, with exotic exercise routines, a carefully crafted celebrity bio, and a deft way of avoiding the nuts and bolts of how he became "The Playboy of the Eastern World."
We've got to hand it to The Times, on one thing, at least.
Even Doestoesvsky would never have tried admiring a whore in print by celebrating her "high cheekbones."
From the same people who brought you "Superman" (Geoffrey Canada) and a host of other mythologies: The Oligarch not as predatory 21st Century plutocrat, but as cool guy who can stand on his head...
