Here is a link to a NYT mini interview with Arthur Levitt. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=1
This thing must have been done at night because I think both of these people represent well the respective positions of their ignorant armies. Levitt is an arrogant functionary, a guy living of the gravy of the land in business and politics, who has no real confidence in the structure or the workings of the programs he is essentially responsible for. He stays at it, bravely, because the peons and the little people like us need leadership and, laughably, have faith in what he is doing even though he does not. He tolerates interviews like this because he knows the interviewer will come across badly because he is so fine.
The interviewer comes across badly because she is a devout believer in the progress of government and its perfectibility. She believes that the S.E.C. can actually catch somebody who lies to them because they are efficient, caring professionals rather than rapacious freeloaders feeding off the productivity of others. Her prime source of her investigative journalism is Michael Moore who stages confrontations with professional actors and is then taken literally by everyone who wants to believe the event true and dismissed by everyone who doesn't want to believe it. The coup de gras is her Carlyle Group insinuation. The Carlyle Group is an investment organization who owns Dunkin' Donuts. If there is a story there--especially showing collusion or conflict of interest other than a lot of guys who go to the same restaurants--investigate it, publish it, win the Pulitzer Prize and glow with satisfaction when they take the criminals away. But my bet is there is no such investigation coming.
These two probably bonded well because they indeed have a common bond. Smugness. The guy in the business suit, the girl in the gypsy dress--both bathed in self righteousness and knowing they are doing as much as they can within the limits of this all-too-human world.
This thing must have been done at night because I think both of these people represent well the respective positions of their ignorant armies. Levitt is an arrogant functionary, a guy living of the gravy of the land in business and politics, who has no real confidence in the structure or the workings of the programs he is essentially responsible for. He stays at it, bravely, because the peons and the little people like us need leadership and, laughably, have faith in what he is doing even though he does not. He tolerates interviews like this because he knows the interviewer will come across badly because he is so fine.
The interviewer comes across badly because she is a devout believer in the progress of government and its perfectibility. She believes that the S.E.C. can actually catch somebody who lies to them because they are efficient, caring professionals rather than rapacious freeloaders feeding off the productivity of others. Her prime source of her investigative journalism is Michael Moore who stages confrontations with professional actors and is then taken literally by everyone who wants to believe the event true and dismissed by everyone who doesn't want to believe it. The coup de gras is her Carlyle Group insinuation. The Carlyle Group is an investment organization who owns Dunkin' Donuts. If there is a story there--especially showing collusion or conflict of interest other than a lot of guys who go to the same restaurants--investigate it, publish it, win the Pulitzer Prize and glow with satisfaction when they take the criminals away. But my bet is there is no such investigation coming.
These two probably bonded well because they indeed have a common bond. Smugness. The guy in the business suit, the girl in the gypsy dress--both bathed in self righteousness and knowing they are doing as much as they can within the limits of this all-too-human world.
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