The Flim-Flam Gals

 

 I have come to this conclusion. People aren't very smart.

My kin would say people have a lot of "book smarts" but they lack common sense. Or as my dad would say, "Horse sense".

I say this based upon watching a couple of TV shows.  You can't say I haven't done my research.

We've been watching the Hulu series "The Dropout," which is about this smarty pants blonde that whoo-dooed a bunch of corporations along with some wealthy and powerful men.

Her pitch: she has a vision. The vision: give her a  bunch of money.  Her plan:  become very rich and appear on magazine covers.  How:  you see here, we have this machine that will diagnose all sorts of maladies with, now watch closely, with one drop of blood.

That sounds sort of far-fetched, even if we live in the days of miracles and wonder.  But hey, twenty-five years ago, we were still taking photographs with a camera and schlepping the film to the drug store for development like a loser.

This young lady was Elizabeth Holmes, a college dropout who discovered the way to get powerful corporations with bright, well-credentialed executives to give her money was to wear tight black turtlenecks, which helped to emphasize her considerable bosoms.  (The actress who plays Holmes has considerable bosoms, but I don't know if Holmes does in real life. I also saw "Considerable Bosoms"  open for the Talking Heads)

She wears the turtlenecks when she is talking to her board, which has the likes of Henry Kissinger,  Jim Mattis, and George Schultz on it. I can guarantee you this thought was running through the minds of these august and distinguish men as she was going "blah, blah blah, one drop of blood":  She sure is built.

Goals vanish. Promises are broken. Deadlines were missed. But all Elizabeth has to do is put on her magic turtleneck and the men that stared down the Soviet Union were putty in her hands.

Her machine that was supposed to revolutionize health care never came close to working.  So she did the next best thing: obtain a device from another company and taped her company's name (Theranos) on it.

George Schultz's grandson got hired in, and soon he turns on Elizabeth because even though he almost flunked out of college, he could tell nothing worked at the company.

The Wall Street Journal gets involved and exposes Elizabeth as a fraud and (SPOILER ALERT) causes Theranos to shut down. In January of 2022, Holmes was convicted of fraud and is awaiting sentencing while living in a mansion with her Uber-rich husband.

All of the people involved were highly educated, and most of the board graduated from Ivy League Schools. So how could they fall for such a stupid scheme that is just one step above "I can tell you where you got them shoes"?

FOMO? (Fear of missing out)  Old men taken in by a pretty girl that sort of sounded like she knew what she was talking about. (Most likely)

Or is it my new theory: maybe people aren't as smart or as they (we) think they are.

Not that younger people are exempt from flim-flam artists. The other show in my research was "Inventing Anna," which is about this trailer trash girl from the Ozarks laundering drug money for an amoral couple from Chicago.

Check that. "Inventing Anna" stars Julia Garner, the aforementioned trailer trash girl from the show "Ozark," she plays a Russian who somehow convinces all of the New York party kids that she is a wealthy German heiress.  Garner does this by talking loud and shouting obscenities as she does in "Ozark," except this time she does it with a Russian accent.  Think Eva Gabor with Tourette Syndrome.

She tries to obtain loans for a fake foundation and basically sponges off her friends. Then, she gives a seminar on how to "gaslight" your friends for fame and fortune.  Even the movie falls under her spell because the reporter that exposes her feels sorry for her at the end of the series. This has something to do with the Subprime Loan Crisis of 2008. Whatever.

But again, the people she fleeced are people that should have been skeptical of a con. They went to all of the best day schools and colleges. On top of that, they were NEW YORKERS.  

They were also YOUNG and lived in THE DIGITAL AGE.  How could they fall for something like, "MAH FARTER HADDN'T WHYARED ME THUH MUNNEY YET.  WHA ARE YOU SO STOOPID?"

Maybe they think women can't be con artists.  Maybe they was so busy looking down their nose at the fly over people who fall prey to everything they didn't know they were vulnerable to the con too.

Maybe they didn't realize there's a sucker born every minute.

 

 

Freddie's Gone

I know there's a war in the Ukraine. I know gas prices are so high you have to take out a home equity line of credit. Or, if you're my age, a reverse mortgage. That's not to mention all of the other ills that plague our society.  I wish to address the most important news story in Atlanta this week.

Freddie Freeman has left The Atlanta Braves.

Not only has he left The Braves, but he also signed with The Los Angeles Dodgers, who need Freddie Freeman like Tom Brady needs another Super Bowl ring.

The saga of "Will Freddie Be Back" started after he caught the last out in the World Series when the Lord, in his great wisdom, blessed Atlanta with a championship because, let's face it, we were owed a couple.

All of his teammates said, "Pay The Man", meaning Freeman because Freeman was such a good player and such a positive example in the clubhouse. Of course, a good clubhouse is essential in baseball, but I remember the Oakland A's winning three straight World Series, and they spent all their time in the clubhouse shooting birds at each other. 

Frankly, the Braves lolly-gaged in their contract negotiations with Freeman through last season. The owners decided to lockout the players in December, which meant the Braves and Freeman could not negotiate a new contract in the off-season.

When the lockout ended, everybody (and by everybody, I mean people in the Atlanta area on Twitter) thought the first thing that would happen would be Atlanta signing Freeman.  

Wrong.  As we say down South, you see, what had happened was, was this:  the Braves signed free agent Matt Olson to an eight-year year contract for 168 million dollars, signaling the end of Freddie Freeman's time in Atlanta.

Matt Olson is a local boy from Gwinnett County and played first base for the Oakland A's.  If you can't have Freeman, Olson is as close to Freddie as you are going to get, plus he's younger.

Freeman was a little shocked, to be sure. Then, however, he turned around and signed a six-year 162 million dollar contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Adding Freeman to the Dodgers batting lineup is like adding Paul McCartney to Crosby, Stills, Nash, And Young.  The Dodgers are definitely the team to beat.

Braves fans were a little shocked, too. We thought Freddie would be like Chipper and stay a Brave forever, which is a little unrealistic.  Aaron didn't stay a Brave forever. Neither did Niekro. Neither did Murphy.  Neither did Warren Spahn. 

The Braves offered Freeman 135 million for five years.  That's not chopped liver.  Freeman wanted six years.  The Braves said bye.

It is rich that people are lamenting the loss of Freeman like they are sitting by the rivers of Babylon. The Braves will be OK. Last year, they won the World Series without a starting pitching staff and their best player.

Freeman will be fine too. After all, the Dodgers are going to win a lot, and Freeman lives in Southern California. 

It is a win-win for both sides.

It is interesting how people bring their politics into a story like this.  Liberty Media owns the Braves, and they make gobs of money (I don't know what standard of measurement a gob is, I know it is a lot).  Some people, like Jeff Schultz, think all a player needs to do is state a dollar amount, and Liberty Media will just come up with it like a magical corporate genie.

Even nameless, faceless corporations with gobs of money have budgets and hold their executives accountable to bring in a balanced budget.  That's where Alex Anthopoulos comes in at. 

On the other side, the baseball player has an opportunity to make as much money as he can while he can.  There's a small supply of people that can play major league baseball and a high demand for them.  Freeman was trying to get as much as he could from the Braves.  That didn't work out, so he went to the Dodgers.  Don't cry from him, Argentina. 

I'm with Jerry Seinfeld on this. 

"Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify, because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You're actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it. You know what I mean? You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt; they hate him now. Boo! Different shirt! Boo!"

 

Freddie's wearing a different shirt, so Boo Freddie!  Look, I don't make up the rules.

 

P.J.

 

A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, came the news that P. J. O'Rourke died.

It is hard to describe the hole this has left because O'Rourke was not only a talented writer, he was funny, as we used to say, as all get out.

He came up through the ranks of National Lampoon magazine. It was The Onion on steroids. Everybody was fair game for that magazine. Republicans, Democrats, hippies, straights, the religious, the non-religious, everybody was goofed on and made fun of.

He kept that spirit of the fair game throughout his career, calling Jimmy Carter "goofy tooth" and likening Trump to a toddler at the top of the stairs.

He noted the most dire environmental predictions are always 15 years in the future- far enough out that it is hard to remember when the predictions don't come true.

He noted that when famous people talk about being reincarnated, they were always a prince or princess in their former life. They were never just a regular old person because these people are always special.

But P.J. was mainly about writing in an honest, humorous way. He took a big hit when he announced he would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. He said,  "I am endorsing Hillary, and all her lies and all her empty promises. It's the second-worst thing that can happen to this country, but she's way behind in second place. She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters."

Who is out there that can replace P.J. O'Rourke? 

Nobody.

The best way to remember P.J. O'Rourke is to read his books.  If you can't read his books, the following are a few quotes I've cobbled together.

 "Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them."

 "Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."

 "The principal feature of contemporary American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things — war and hunger and date rape — liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. People who care a lot are naturally superior to we who don’t care any more than we have to. By virtue of this superiority, the caring have a moral right to lead the nation. It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."

 “We acknowledge the Bible as the word of God.  And -- the one attribute that we absolutely share with our Creator -- we have a sense of humor.  Right off the bat there's Genesis 1:27: ‘God created man in his own image.’ And then I look in the mirror.”

 "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

" This brings us to a more drastic method of getting an audience: be one. Listen patiently while other people tell you about themselves. Maybe they’ll return the favor. This is risky, however. By the time they get done talking about themselves and are ready to reciprocate, you may be dead from old age. Another danger is that that if you listen long enough you may start attending to what’s being said. You may start thinking about other people, even sympathizing with them. You may develop a true empathy for others, and this will turn you into such a human oddity that you will become a social outcast."

 "We had a choice between Democrats who couldn’t learn from the past and Republicans who couldn’t stop living in it, between Democrats who wanted to tax us to death and Republicans who preferred to have us die in a foreign war. The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle."

 "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

 "It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money."

"Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs."