I visited Newport, RI a few days ago, so I’m kind of into stories about rich people acting like jackasses. So, with no further ado, the giant portrait of Jamie Dimon from Jamie Dimon’s house in Chicago. Dimon is one of those CEOs whose fee-fees are always being hurt by Obama, btw.
(via)
WereBear
Portrait of a man with no brains and no balls?
Makes sense.
brendancalling
I’m from newport, where did you go?
licensed to kill time
A portrait without a head? Just looks like any generic uptight suit to me. The faux Greco-Roman decor is suitably both snobbish and tacky.
The carpet is beautiful, though.
ZenPoseur
That portrait is perfect. Just a suit, no cranium.
DougJ
@brendancalling:
We did a harbor cruise, a bit of the cliff walk, had dinner at Tucker’s Bistro, then caught a concert at the Breakers.
ZenPoseur
I see everyone before me had the same thought THAT I TOTALLY HAD FIRST.
aimai
Oh, its a reverse Portrait of Dorian Grey. It won’t matter what’s on his face, as he ages, because his arms in the conventional suit will never change.
Well, its slightly better taste than Rush Limbaugh’s pervert palace, but that’s because the taste of this house (including the odd leftover glass in the corner) is so utterly, boringly, conventional. I wonder how much he paid for the portrait? Unless he bought it wholesale, he overpaid. Finally, what a phenomenally tacky thing to have on display.
aimai
Cat Lady
His head’s too big to fit on a canvas. Hoocoodanode.
trollhattan
What is it with McMansions and the random scattering of surperfluous columns? I especially like the one blocking access to the stairway.
Still kain’t buy taste, kin we?
Comrade Javamanphil
On the other side of that wall is the portrait of him mooning the little people.
cat48
I hear Dimon expected an invite to the signing ceremony yesterday which is odd since he didn’t support the bill and whined throughout. He probably has hurt fee fees today. I think Pandit was invited because he did support the bill, but nonsupporters were not invited.
Pancake
A terrific post. Always love to see some good old-fashioned class envy rear its head. Good job, Doogie.
Face
As a Richie, he doesn’t have this problem where he works.
Makes every Code Brown an instant Code Red.
dmsilev
More photos of his humble abode here.
I’m guessing he’s not really a fan of moderation in decoration.
dms
FormerSwingVoter
Jesus. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just masturbate in the hallway every time he enters his house?
DougJ
@Pancake:
I don’t know if you’re a spoof or serious, but that me laugh out loud.
gnomedad
It’s a kneeling peasant-eye view.
danimal
I’d like to kick him in the lightbulb.
TuiMel
Ugh.
gnomedad
@Face:
Holy crap (so to speak). Talk about a story that could have been lifted from The Onion.
Omnes Omnibus
@FormerSwingVoter: Who says he doesn’t?
Sad_Dem
Clearly one is meant to stand between the columns (placement wtf?) on the prayer rug and admire The Suit of Achievement. A head is unnecessary, because heads think, which is mopey, money-losing thing to do.
Michael
@Pancake:
Go die in a fire, you piece of shit.
And wipe your chin. Dimon and the rest of the Titans you fellate splooged you good.
Church Lady
Doug, it is pretty obvious, given your travels, that you are not exactly worrying about where your next meal is coming from or how you will pay the electric bill. Why the constant bashing of the wealthy?
Corner Stone
@Pancake:
I’ve never seen this as any kind of insult. I know you can do better.
Omnes Omnibus
@Church Lady: Why not?
slag
You know. I’ve always wondered why rich people put up with such bad design. It’s almost like they gravitate toward it. Always impractical and stupid-looking.
Like the tie. Or, let’s be honest, the suit and tie. What kind of bullshit is that? You can’t even wash that stuff in a machine–or even clean it yourself, in most cases. And it looks stupid. But rich people are the first ones that lap that shit up and force the rest of the peasantry into following. Is it some kind of mean joke?
These people rave about value of efficiency and pragmatism and yet they’re the least efficient and pragmatic people I’m aware of. What is that about?
Sue
Not big on subdued lighting, I see, but I guess that’s important to keep from running into those columns.
For some reason the picture made me think of Mad Men; maybe he’s a fan.
I’ll bet he uses that big beer glass on the high table thing for his keys and change.
Bob L
Sort of a bit ’70s in style, don’t you think?
Dimon portraying himself as a faceless suite is perfect. The artist who talking him into putting that picture up in house it must be laughing their behinds off right now.
Greg
I worked for Chase. Mr Dimon was always coming to cities and holding pep rallies where he talked about how important customer service was and how employees were their most important asset. Which is odd because they treat their customers like sh*t and their employees even worse. I only made it a year before I said good-bye.
wengler
@Pancake
No, I’m pretty sure with that type of money I could do a far better job decorating my house. If you are objectively pro-fraud bankster though I’m sure Mr. Dimon wouldn’t mind a supporter, no matter how mentally unstable.
freelancer
@DougJ:
Pancake is serious. Anytime he is funny is when he inadvertantly pratfalls into Irony.
MikeJ
Making fun of idiots = ok.
Making fun of idiots that have a lot of money = class warfare.
Got it. Thanks to those who stepped forward to defend our betters.
sukabi
oh look, a portrait post head-on-pike…
Jager
I attended a charity event at Donald Trump’s Mar Lago in Palm Beach, as you walk in the first thing you see is an oil painting of “The Donald” in tennis clothes. The painting is about twice life size and it looks like the artist put Trump’s head on a world champion body builder’s body!
People were glancing at “The Donald” and then back to the painting all night long.
licensed to kill time
This kind of place makes me think of those macaques with the huge red bottoms that are primarily for the purpose of attracting females.
Zoogz
@Greg: Currently in the middle of year 4 myself. I continue to be amazed at the amount of overhead this place generates as well as all of the extremely inconsequential things that continue to need “management oversight”, to justify eleven levels of management when it is completely unnecessary.
BTW, I had no idea that promotional speaking was so lucrative.
thomas
@sukabi:
i think we have a winner!
r€nato
Those columns are spectacularly ill-placed.
Zifnab
@MikeJ: If the confused hillbillies don’t defend the Fratboy-in-Chief, who will?
First they zinged our overpaid, arrogant, aristocrats and I did nothing…
Sly
Most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich, then face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us…
To the right! Ever to the right! Never to the left! Forever to the right!
Zifnab
@Zoogz:
It’s amazing to discover what a gasbag can make giving a speech, knowing the guy would have yammered on twice as long for free.
trollhattan
@licensed to kill time:
FTW. I’ll add that simply typing “huge red bottoms” would have sufficed, but the entire comment is
goldenred.demo woman
NYTimes knows design.
El Cid
I too prefer to see Dimon with his head off.
SiubhanDuinne
A Dimon is Forever.
MarkJ
Yet he’ll stop “producing” if forced to pay even a small fraction more of his untold sums in taxes.
Meanwhile, the teabaggers portray the poor black folks looking back fondly on slavery because they were “taken care of”, which implies that they’re willing to do back breaking labor for three hots and a cot.
One guy gets paid millions and might go Galt if his top marginal tax rate increases. The other will work for sustenance. The latter is the “lazy” one.
Bostondreams
@Sly:
One of the best little ditties about the privileges of class ever. I love this musical, and use it when I teach about the Revolution.
Bob L
You know something that strikes me; if I had all the money in the world my house would be made of stone, wrought iron and wood. There would be dead animals on the walls, the Swedish bikini team dressed as Valkyries would be my servants and Wanger would be piped thew the house . Ok, it’s over the top and millage may vary but basically it’s vaguely the kind of thing a man would want. So WTF is with all the conservative alpha males and their effeminate dream houses?
Limbaugh lives in scented candle version of Louis XIV frilly palace (The Sun King wore high heels for God’s sake) This guy lives in something out of ’70s Better Homes and Garden; Midwest Housewife Edition. Their prize wives putting them up to this? What man would willingly want to live in something like that?
trollhattan
@demo woman:
Dear lord, don’t let TBogg’s bassetts see this or he’s going to be spending some spactacular sacks o’ cash.
Anne Laurie
@Comrade Javamanphil:
WIN!
licensed to kill time
@trollhattan:
huge red bottoms could be a tag for this kind of display, hmm…
brendancalling
@DougJ:
oh fun!
One of the best parts about growing up in Newport was the vast quantity of swimming holes and non-sandy beaches along the cliff walk. My favorite was, and remains, Doris Duke’s. Her mansion borders the cliff walk at an area where it’s at least 30 feet down to the water, water which even at low tide is so deep your feet don’t touch bottom. She had this crazy menagerie back there when she was alive, including camels. it was bizarre.
it was a weird place to grow up…
Michael
@Bob L:
Rather than scented candle, I thought Limbaugh’s crib was more akin to something by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light.
Gaudy and cheap looking, yet overpriced.
Anne Laurie
@slag:
Back in the 80s, John ‘Dress for Success’ Malloy drew a certain amount of media outcry when he pointed out that men historically wrapped something expensive, high-maintenance & frivolous around their necks to indicate obesiance to a higher authority — apart from neckties, the main remaining example in our society are the ‘dog collars’ worn by priests, although Malloy thought doctors wear stethescopes for some of the same reasons. In larger terms, wearing an expensive hand-tailored outfit that must be cleaned & repaired by someone else is a way of indicating that one has money to throw away… or, for those of us in the lower ranks, that one submits to the social authority which claims the suit & tie as its emblem. It may be “mean”, but it ain’t no joke.
TuiMel
@Corner Stone:
Besides, the disgust (in my case anyway) has nothing to do with wealth per se. It is about the ego and self-aggrandizement that is so prominently on display. Mr. Dimon cannot possibly have even a passing acquaintance with the meaning of “humility.”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
My thought exactly. All we need is a matching painting of a basket with a head in it.
Pat
I would prefer Dimon on the soles of my shoes.
tworivers
Je n’aime pas Monsieur Dimon.
Il est un mauvais garcon (a bad waiter).
And his taste is very questionable
tworivers
If you have a Dimon a nickel and another Dimon you have a quarter
ruemara
Very good portrait. Even he thinks he’s brainless. Now we can all verify he’s tasteless.
Michael
@Pat:
I’m partial to the notion of seeing his battered teeth and jaws wrapped around the corner of a parking curb coated with his spit, snot, tears and blood. Preferably shortly after he whines about the ass kicking he is preparing to get by complaining “there’s no need to get so angry – it is just smart business, these decisions aren’t personal”.
Xecky Gilchrist
Never mind that! Let’s see those counter tops.
13th Generation
Those column placements were probably mandated by the structural engineer (and royally pissed off the architect I’m guessing.)
BR
@MikeJ:
And Zifnab:
It’s like Derrick Jensen said in the list of premises for his amazing book Endgame:
But he’s just a DFH environmental activist, so he’s probably wrong.
And in case anyone is questioning premise five, don’t forget about this, also here.
Hugin & Munin
See, I am nowhere near as obnoxious as Church Lady.
trollhattan
Bet he serves this to his BFFs.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/07/22/dead-stuffed-animal-holds-the-world%E2%80%99s-strongest-beer/
celticdragonchick
@ZenPoseur:
Heh! I think that is the most craptacular portrait I have ever seen.
celticdragonchick
@Bob L:
I think you mean Wagner…
David in NY
Recently read Conspiracy of Fools about the collapse of Enron. Hardly a person in it that didn’t make me want to puke. A feeling I was reminded of by the mention upstream of Dimon’s “holding pep rallies where he talked about how important customer service was and how employees were their most important asset.” Customer “service” at Chase is just trying to find new ways to stick them with fees or lousy investments.
Shoulda let ‘me fail, or better, nationalized ’em. Maybe we’ll have to yet. Can’t believe their balance sheets are really clean.
Mayur
@67:
Maybe he means Winger.
Dave
Since no one else has, let me congratulate Doug on another fine post title. Tom Waits FTW!
shortstop
Forget the portrait. Who decorated this room? Carmela Soprano?
BR
@MikeJ:
And Zifnab:
It’s like Derrick Jensen said in the list of premises for his amazing book Endgame:
But he’s just a DFH environmental activist, so he’s probably wrong.
BR
Oh and don’t forget about the banksters literally destroying the lives of those below:
http://www.wdm.org.uk/food-speculation
kommrade reproductive vigor
Looks like the mob was rather hasty when they shoved him into guillotine. Not that I’m suggesting anything.
Mike in NC
Dammit, I lived in Newport for three frickin’ years and not once did I get invited into somebody’s mansion!
El Cid
Told you — once the right wing racist machine started going, they were going to use the “Sherrod is Racist” propaganda campaign to attack the entire Pigford V [USDA] settlements as shiftless race pimp lazy Negro failed farmers who are lying to get gubmit money.
That was what the shitbag “Washington Examiner” was pumping the moment it Googled Sherrod — citing her heroic story as a rural development center official to prove she and her husband and former (1960s founded) coop farm were just lying, money thieving race pimps.
The article is hinting that perhaps the upcoming settlements vote was the reason racist fraudster Breitbart (or his ‘source’) was targeting Sherrod.
(It’s also maybe why the USDA hierarchy had such a hairtrigger on one of their employees as one of the lead plaintiffs on Track B.)
catclub
@celticdragonchick:
No he meant Wanger! Conducted by Fertwanger.
I really like the ‘thew the house’, which is the same usage
as ‘he thew the fooball’.
There might also be a see-ment pond.
JWL
Someone gave the “picture” some thought, too. Notice that its background blends with the color of the ceiling, and the rug, and the curtains in the adjacent room.
And yet it’s tantamount to placing a compost pile in the middle of a living room.
Unless some one is going for a laugh.
That’s got to be it.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Also 2: The placement of that light sconce is REALLY LOLtastic.
Is that a lightbulb in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
SiubhanDuinne
@demo woman:
Clearly, John Cole failed to consult the right designers when he moved a few months ago.
SiubhanDuinne
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
It’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking anything when I read that . . .
scav
on the upside, the resale value of that portrait should be fairly good for the next brainless CEO to inhabit the place (so long as they don’t do anything unexpected with the gender).
DougJ
@Pat:
It doesn’t work as well here.
Douche Baggins
@celticdragonchick: I read “Wanger” and I thought “Winger?” Still some pretty fucking righteous tunes to be blasting through your own private Valhalla…
Keith
Kudos for the Tom Waits reference in the headline!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSnghcGigzY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SXA07I8hDc
LikeableInMyOwnWay
I don’t see what the big deal is. That looks just like my house.
The house I think I am in while I am fucked up on peyote, I mean.
c u n d gulag
@aimai:
I think it’s his portrait, post-Guillotine.
Remarkable resemblence, wouldn’t you say?
But, where’s the blood?
The head in the basket must be further down the hall. Or, more likely, down the stairs! :-)
Mayur
@86: Check the YouTube clip I posted above.
alicia-logic
@Church Lady:
One would think an entity referring to itself as “Church Lady” might align itself with Jesus on this point. One would be wrong.
MikeJ
@alicia-logic: Jesus ≠ “church”.
She’s aligned with Mammon.
ericblair
@tworivers:
noooOOOO….that means “boy”, and is what the Dimon prick might call a waiter, but unless you want some French saliva in your carpe au vin de St Pourcain just say “excusez-moi”.
tworivers
@ericblair:
I was kind of kidding about the garcon meaning waiter part. And you’re right that it’s awful to call a waiter “garcon”. But calling Dimon “garcon” seemed fitting somehow.
tworivers
Simple Dimon met a pieman going to the fair;
Said Simple Dimon to the pieman “Let me taste your ware”
Said the pieman to Simple Dimon “Show me first your penny”
Said Simple Dimon to the pieman “Fuck you – I own this town”.
JAHILL10
Shame on you for sullying a perfectly good Tom Waits lyric with this jerkwad’s name.
asiangrrlMN
What.The.Fuck. No, seriously. What the fuck. As if I don’t have enough nightmares as it is. I bet he paid six figures for this piece of shit. Idiot.
grumpy realist
Another example of why the structural engineer should take a look at your ideas before you let the architect have his way…
It’s so bad it’s as if they didn’t bring in the structural engineer until the damn thing was built, had to get him to sign off on it to meet code, and he acted as an engineer rather than a peasant. Hence those tacky columns shoved in willy-nilly.