troll - noun. goblin, hobgoblin, gnome, demon, monster, bugaboo, ogre. - Merriam Webster.
troll - noun. someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages...with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion. - Wikipedia.
I hereby nominate AIG as the greatest troll of the century, if not all time. Why should I bestow such a dubious distinction on such a dubious corporation?
Well, consider their actions since the bailout began along with me after the, er, bridge...
I must warn you. This dramatic recount of the events of the past half year is truly gruesome and may cause undue strain on your heart and vasculature.
Act the First
On Sept. 16, 2008, the US government, under the proviso of the Board of Governor's of the Federal Reserve, lent AIG a shit-ton of money. AIG withdrew $28,000,000,000 the next day. On October 9, three weeks later, $38,800,000,000 more was lent. By then end of October, AIG's additional withdrawals from their loan totaled an astronomical $122,800,000,000. That is the annual income of over 2,500,000 American households (the median in 2006 was $48,000). 2.5 million households = 4% of America. In November, a further $40,000,000,000 was invested by the U.S. Treasury. That's another million households.
As Clara Peller, were she still alive today, would say, "Where's the money?"
The week of Sept. 21, 2008, the week after receiving the annual earnings of almost 600,000 American households, AIG executives found themselves in California, getting mud baths and drinking mimosas, all for the low low cost of 10 households' annual income ($444,000).
October 17th, a week after getting their second lifeline party ticket, executives spent a paltry $86,000 on a hunting trip to England.
The very same day that the U.S. Treasury invested, news broke that AIG spent over $300,000 on a trip to a lavish resort in Phoenix (the very same one where McCain spent his election night...just a week previous).
After each of these incidents, the cry goes up, "How much?!" Flabbergasted politicians appear before news cameras to decry the utter gall of these executives! The populist fervor demands that heads roll after the executives ate everyone's cake. News outlets can't stop talking about it. Scientists scurry to work trying to harness the power of righteous anger in an effort to reverse the economy's downward spiral!
And then quiet. Four months, all quiet on the Western Capitalist front.
Now, $165,000,000 is being spent on bonuses detention retention awards. The beast is re-awoken, and those same stilted politicos head out into the glare of the cameras, this time calling for executives to perform Seppuku (cough cough Chuck Grassley cough. By the way, does anyone have a Ricola?). The Huffington Post's front page is plastered in red with the blood of innocents to show just how freaking urgent and awful the whole thing is. Scientists claim that a breakthrough on a new renewal energy source powered by the steam coming out of everyone's ears is imminent.
<--Intermezzo-->
A five-minute interruption from this high drama is now required to maintain adherence to local safety laws. Please allow your blood pressure to return to normal before proceeding.
Act The Second
In Summer of 2008, back when we were young and easy under the apple boughs, when we were green and carefree, the New York Times published a lengthy article in its Sunday magazine section about Internet Trolls. The article is a very good summary of recent, high-profile acts of "trolling," as defined at the very top of this diary. It also contains a biopic of one of the so-called "Greatest Internet villain," Jason Fortuny. Though I recommend reading the article in its entirety, it is really long, and the most important part follows:
While reporting this article, I did everything I could to verify the trolls’ stories and identities, but I could never be certain. After all, I was examining a subculture that is built on deception and delights in playing with the media. If I had doubts about whether Fortuny was who he said he was, he had the same doubts about me. I first contacted Fortuny by e-mail, and he called me a few days later. “I checked you out,” he said warily. “You seem legitimate.” We met in person on a bright spring day at his apartment, on a forested slope in Kirkland, Wash., near Seattle. He wore a T-shirt and sweat pants, looking like an amiable freelancer on a Friday afternoon. He is thin, with birdlike features and the etiolated complexion of one who works in front of a screen. He’d been chatting with an online associate about driving me blindfolded from the airport, he said. “We decided it would be too much work.”
A flat-screen HDTV dominated Fortuny’s living room, across from a futon prepped with neatly folded blankets. This was where I would sleep for the next few nights. As Fortuny picked up his cat and settled into an Eames-style chair, I asked whether trolling hurt people. “I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘Oh, God, please forgive me!’ so someone can feel better,” Fortuny said, his calm voice momentarily rising. The cat lay purring in his lap. “Am I the bad guy? Am I the big horrible person who shattered someone’s life with some information? No! This is life. Welcome to life. Everyone goes through it. I’ve been through horrible stuff, too.”
“Like what?” I asked. Sexual abuse, Fortuny said. When Jason was 5, he said, he was molested by his grandfather and three other relatives. Jason’s mother later told me, too, that he was molested by his grandfather. The last she heard from Jason was a letter telling her to kill herself. “Jason is a young man in a great deal of emotional pain,” she said, crying as she spoke. “Don’t be too harsh. He’s still my son.”
"Am I the bad guy? ... No!"
Trolls do what they do to get a rise out of people. Is that what AIG is doing? Let's consider some numbers.
$162,800,000,000 - Amount of Government taxpayer money loaned (given???) to AIG
$830,000 - Amount of money spent by AIG execs on outrageous junkets
$165,000,000 - Amount of money for detention bonuses
.00051% - Amount of total taxpayer money spent on junkets
.101% - Amount of total taxpayer money spent on bonuses
Where has the lion's share of media attention and public vitriol gone? On a sum total of .102% of the money loaned to AIG.
In my opinion, AIG executives are the greatest trolls since that one under the bridge. Why? Because they have hijacked the conversation about AIG to make it about chump change. Sure, the "wasted" money is still the annual incomes of 3500 American households. But in the big picture, it is nothing. What we should be talking about, legitimately, is how $160 BILLION went down the tubes so fast that the government needed to loan a huge company the money so that it wouldn't go under.
How would you like another number?
$13,840,000,000,000 - GDP of the US in 2006. The money used to bail out AIG is 1% of the entire productivity of the United States of Freaking America for ONE ENTIRE YEAR. How did it vanish? Why aren't we talking about it?!
Because of the greatest trolling ever conceived, let alone executed.
I rest my case.