Mrs. CC and I are headed off to Switzerland tonight for a week of winter sports and debauchery high-minded panel discussions in the mountain resort of Davos. I will be posting regularly and even, heaven forfend, vlogging.
But before I go, I’ll leave you with these encouraging words from Arthur Jensen, the big-media CEO (played by Ned Beatty) from the movie Network. He’s giving Howard Beale, the Lou Dobbsian network anchor (played by Peter Finch) a talking-to:
There is no America, there is no democracy, there is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon … The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale, it has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve the common good, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
And yes, I’ve used that line before. Just trying to keep you amused on behalf of my holding company.
