Nattering Nabobs of Narcissism...

...and other Trumpian, OZY-esque flights of fantastical fancies.

Me, Mike, Karl Rove. Discussing? Outside of the destruction of the Western world? Narcissists. And punching them. At OZYfest festivities.

“Is Lydia showing her tits again?”

Lydia Lunch and I were walking into one of her shows and she overheard some woman snipe as we made the march in, past the queue of waiting attendees. Never one to let an opportunity skid by, she stopped and added, “Damn right honey.” Then something about how moneymakers can make you money.

I think of this on the occasion of the most recent OZY article in Alta Magazine. The article is part of their Weekend Edition under the rubric of Inside the Downfall of Ozy: Ozy Onward. I’d originally written it two days after my former boss and CEO of OZY was arrested in New York for a multitude of crimes connected to his helmsmanship of OZY.

“You don’t really want to see them go to jail?” Asked another former staffer about Carlos Watson and COO Samir Rao. “Do you?” Her head tilted at angle that saw her eyebrows knit into a sort of generalized sympathy. So, before she could offer her more kindly rejoinder I answered. Quickly.

“Sure do.”

[I]t had been years of me telling anyone who would listen precisely who and what the monster was, only to have them humor me, agreeing out of kindness…

You see, the arrest itself had capped off an over-decade long dissonance where it seemed like I was the only one that could see the monster. Like the kid screaming through the opening of Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the kid running and screaming that his mother was not his mother, it had been years of me telling anyone who would listen precisely who and what the monster was, only to have them humor me, agreeing out of kindness, or quietly, and safely, assuming that this was just more…anti-management hysteria.

But when the then-New York Times media journalist Ben Smith yanked the whole blanket off of the craptastic escapade that OZY had become? Well, it wasn’t quite vindication, but it was close. And when the New York Times asked me to write about it all? Double quasi-vindication. Moreover, over the two other articles penned about the decade in hell spent at OZY, it felt damned near liberating.

However when the tailings of the story started to feel stale there was always something to juice the goose, most recently a warning from a federal judge whose limit had been reached in Watson’s switching of legal teams. And like an onion, each new wrinkle both revealed and renewed my prior sentiment regarding incarceration. Not the least of which was when Elizabeth Holmes, or as she’s known to the New York Times, Liz, finally had her date with destiny in the stony lonesome.

So when Alta Magazine came a’calling, though this may have approached the Tits of Lydia Lunch phenomena, I remained game for the same reason she suggests, and more. Firstly the process of getting my previous piece for them to life was thorough, even more so than the New York Times. Facts were checked and double checked, sometimes triple checked. They even reached out to the now-criminal defendant Watson, repeatedly, but to no avail.

Right up until the day before publication. Given that Alta is both online and print, deadlines are a serious deal.

“Do you know a Tom G.?” Alta asked in a call that barely masked a certain panic. “He’s calling us back for the Watson fact check.”

You see those that believe nothing will routinely count on those that believe anything to back their plays for the me-me-me’s they care so much about.

I knew one Tom G. but he was a former employee and I couldn’t see him carrying water for the former tyrant Watson. Turns out it was a Tom Galvin, a name unknown to me. He refused to answer their questions but maintained that the piece was incorrect about the circumstances regarding my initial firing. (Except it wasn’t.)

The delay tactic had failed to work and the piece hit two days ago. Right around the time former President Donald Trump was responding to the 37 counts in a federal indictment regarding his ham-handed handling of classified documents post-the end of his presidency. In a made-you-look moment to end all made-you-look moments, Trump’s response has been what is now called “Classic” Trump.

Not only is he denying all claims, dismissing them all as the products of a hoax and/or witch hunt, but he, not so subtly, is trying to will into existence another January 6 insurrection — incidentally the issue that’s next up on his docket it seems — with no one mistaking the violent undertones he fully intends to have you hear. So, the question is always, as ever with Trump: is he a true believer in any of what he says or merely a cynical opportunist? I tend to think he’s the most dangerous kind and that is, a true believer in cynical opportunism.

All of which is fueled by a narcissism that will require the full faith and credit of the entire machinery of the United States of America to bring it to heel. So as he convinces MAGA-ites and MAGA elites that an attack on him is really an attack on them, and as Republicans line up in the Kool-Aid line to drink the kind of Kool-Aid that kills, I am sure of only one thing: Trump will stop at nothing to keep from going to the only place that he really needs to go. Prison.

I’m not even suggesting that Trump deserves to go to prison. From his point of view, and mine too actually, he recalls no one if not Johnny Boy from Mean Streets, the Martin Scorsese break out film: “You see, I borrow money all over this neighborhood, left and right from everybody, I never pay them back. So, I can't borrow no money from nobody no more, right? So who would that leave me to borrow money from but you? I borrow money from you, because you're the only jerk-off around here who I can borrow money from without paying back, right? You know, 'cause that's what you are, that's what I think of you: a jerk-off…I fuck you right where you breathe, because I don't give two shits about you or nobody else.”

Between Trump as Johnny Boy and the America who elected him, only one of us doesn’t get it. And that’s not Trump.

This is the magic of narcissism. It’s the same magic that made one of the OZY-abused question whether or not Watson really needs to go to prison. Even after the ritual humiliation of working for the man. It’s precisely what led him to declare “I am not now and never have been a ‘con man.’ I am and have been, a hard-working entrepreneur who has helped build a special company from scratch.” This in response to a Justice Department claim that a “con man” is precisely what he was.

You see those that believe nothing will routinely count on those that believe anything to back their plays for the me-me-me’s they care so much about. So, really, we’re not sending them to prison to punish them, who will never change, but to protect us, so we don’t have to…stop believing that the good will, and can, make right this evil wrong.

So, “You don’t really want to see them go to jail, do you?”

I sure as hell do. And so should you. For us. Who care about us.

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