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When The Wall
Street Journal finally turned on Dick Grasso, you could
see it in his face. For years the paper had used the above-left
stock image of Grasso in its articles. But suddenly, one day,
they began using the one on the right.
Grasso, former chairman of the New
York Stock Exchange, was once one of those "darlings
of Wall Street" as the saying goes. To the folks of the financial
world, he could do no wrong.
But in 2003, the Exchange was engulfed by a corporate
governance scandal. At a time when most stockholders were losing
their shirts in the wake of the bursting dot-com bubble,
it came to light that Dick's astronomic salary and bonus compensation
(he made $193 million during his tenure, according to a subsequent
investigation).
The board of directors benchmarked Grasso's salary,
which was much larger than any of his predecessors, to the pay
of some of America's most richly compensated CEOs. Critics said
that Grasso, as the head of what is technically a not-for-profit
regulatory body, should have been paid a salary more in line with
that of other regulators.
For a good while during the summer months in which
the scandal unfolded, The Wall Street Journal rallied to
his defense. But the scandal got uglier and uglier and, finally,
the Journal could no longer defend its fallen champion. Sadly,
I don't remember the exact day the paper made this image switch,
but, I do remember not needing to read one word of the accompanying
article to see that the Journal had changed its tune on Mr. Grasso,
who eventually resigned in September 2003.
That same month, the below set of faces in the
news appeared in the financial monthly, Institutional
Investor.
While these may appear to be two issues of the
magazine, they are in fact, one issue with two different covers.
One is the U.S. edition. The other, the international edition.
Can you guess which is which? Yep, the one featuring the Bush
cover story was distributed here in the U.S.. The one with Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf as its main event was distributed everywhere
else.
This struck me as the perfect example of how U.S.
news organizations reinforce the cultural and intellectual retardation
of the American people. Americans are some of the most inwardly
looking people in the world, and seem to have an inability to
grasp onto any sense of internationalism. We hardly know that
any other people or countries exist, let alone consider ways we
might interact with them in such a way as to keep them from chopping
our sons' and daughters' heads off.
But news organizations, like most of our institutions,
help solidify our ignorance by creating the impression that American
news is much more important than international news...unless,
of course, the international news is about foreign people chopping
Americans' heads off.
When I visited Europe, I could not believe how
absolutely kick ass CNN was. It was 24-hours of world news. Really.
World news. Not American news, with some international stuff thrown
in. For example, on the international edition of CNN you will
see stories about African countries that don't have to do with
famine or war! Who
knew anything happened in Africa besides suffering?
The profound difference between CNN news coverage
in America, and that in its "not America/rest-of- the-world"
broadcast is impossible to convey in words. You really have to
see it for yourself. CNN in the U.S. sucks ass. A big, stinky,
American
ass.
The anchors for CNN's international channel report
from desks in the U.S., UK, Germany, Hong Kong, and other countries—basically
from wherever it happens to be daylight working hours at the time.
Here, all the anchors report from Atlanta, New York, and maybe
Washington, D.C., no matter what time it is.
In Europe I switched between CNN, Sky
News, and Euronews to
get some of the best television news coverage I'd ever seen.
In America, the best I could do was subscribe
to digital cable. Then, I got News
World International (which features news show feeds from the
Canadian Broacasting Company, Al Jazeera, Poland, Germany, Turkey,
etc.), CCTV
(a 24-hour English-language news channel that is surprisingly
independent and objective, considering it comes from mainland
China), among others.
Also, sometime around midnight, CNNfn (the network's
financial news channel) would go off the air, and be replaced
with "CNN World," which is basically just the aforementioned,
real CNN that is seen everywhere outside the U.S. For the
majority of Americans, news is red, white, and blue.
And, for our last
segment of faces in the news, I give you images of former AIG
chairman and CEO, Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg. You can
read about Hank and AIG here,
but I insert the below pictures to support my assertion that Hank
never shows his teeth when he smiles (just like robber
baron pimp daddy John D. Rockefeller actually — see below),
and that this is indicates he has something to hide . I used to
work for Greenberg (well, actually I worked for the AIG corporate
Secretary, who worked for Greenberg) and just always thought he
was sleazy. To me, his no-teeth smile was indicative that he was
hiding something (that is, that he was every bit the unscrupulous
thief that most powerful U.S. corporate executives are).
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