I believe that trolling is the highest form of human expression. Art, music, and literature are too often about fantasies, the notion that the world is beautiful, that human beings have some decency, things that no adult could possibly believe. Trolling, by contrast (when done properly), illustrates the most profound eternal truth, that people are mostly ignorant, delusional sociopaths. I believe that the Socratic method is just a sophisticated form of trolling since its goal is to get people to say things so stupid that they’re temporarily shocked into trying to think.
This clip of Alex Pareene on CNBC is trolling at its best. Pareene says Jamie Dimon should step down as head of JP Morgan because of all the JP Morgan scandals. Who knows if he’s serious or not — though his point about bad PR is more relevant than his interviewers want to admit — but he gets Maria Bartiromo to sputter “the New York Times!”, revealing to all that she’s a teahadist whack job who has no place in journalism.
(via)
WereBear
Are you postulating that annoyance is an art form?
Sad_Dem
Socrates was a great troll. Too bad he suffered the fate of great trolls.
cathyx
@WereBear: It can be if it’s done right.
Nicole
Of all the goddamn earworms you had to get stuck in my head on a Friday night…
cathyx
@WereBear: @Nicole: See? That’s how it’s done right.
pillsy
That first paragraph was… pretty awesome, really.
srv
Doug has always been a hit generating machine and it is just absurd to think he should go.
trollhattan
I share this link to a recent photo of Sutter Brown to fend off the inherent evil created by the mention of Jamie Dimon. His human is doing something that pisses off Republicans, so it’s a twofer.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/130927-Jerry-Brown-bill-signing.jpg
JPL
Dear Maria, Please spend the rest of your life hunting with your gal pal in the wilderness of Alaska.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan:
I never tire of Sutter Brown.
(If we have a state dog in Virginia, he’s probably gotten $900 in unreported dog treats from Star Scientific.)
Belafon
That sets an interesting bar for our resident idiots. Of all of the people here, JSF would be the closest to being a troll by your definition, and he really isn’t part of the list. The rest of them, not worth consideration.
ETA: Edited for clarity.
Hawes
To be a good troll, it would have been nice if Pareene had more hard evidence: specific fines, specific charges beyond the nepotism charge (although the nepotism charge did bring out the hypocrisy from the others, which was nice.)
Villago Delenda Est
Send a copy to my lawyer, gonna start a new life!
Baud
Guilty.
Doug Milhous J
@Hawes:
The nepotism charge won the whole exchange. If they hadn’t bit on that, he would have looked dumb….but they bit.
Sometimes you eat the troll, sometimes the troll eats you. It’s an eastern thing.
JPL
For those who want the real ear bug.. here it goes
doug, you are just cruel
hildebrand
The smile on Pareene’s face is priceless. If the others on that set couldn’t tell he was simply taking the piss out of them, well, they would work for CNBC. That segment was worth the six minutes of my life just to listen to them lose their shit.
Villago Delenda Est
Dimon should be beheaded. Along with everyone on that panel but Pareene.
Steeplejack
The subtext of that discussion is chilling: nothing is considered wrong as long as the company is making money hand over fist. Pareene is dismissed as a kook because he dares to suggest otherwise, or that Dimon is not the only person in the whole world who can run the company.
My brother is an investor, so occasionally I get roped into watching CNBC, Bloomberg, etc., and I have noticed that attitude a lot: real-world “externalities” are dismissed as almost irrelevant distractions from the real issue of whether the company in question is making money hand over fist, no matter what the hell it’s doing. J.P. Morgan’s colossal malfeasance, for which it is going to pay a record fine, is treated like settling a traffic ticket or correcting a bookkeeping error (which, given the company’s size, may be just that—a relatively minor cost of doing business).
And another thing: Maria Bartiromo started out as an engaging and mildly informative “money honey” back in the day, but now she is like the Tokyo Rose for the 0.01 percent.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@efgoldman:
Try this: “I Feel Love” – Bronski Beat & Marc Almond.
srv
Mistakes are made, just look at that genius Barney Frank who missed the whole impending crash from his seat on the Banking committee. Lose a trillion, no big deal. Lose a few billion every few years, turns into a witch-hunt.
The fact that JPMC is so successful proves that it is not too big to fail and Mr. Dimon practices a form of Capitalism that will survive this era.
JGabriel
DougJ:
I love the sarcastic way Bartiromo shouted “Oh, the New York Times,” as if it were the National Enquirer or Weekly World News. It really is mind-boggling how often ostensibly media savvy people unthinkingly make complete asses of themselves on national TV. It’s like watching self-proclaimed gun experts repeatedly shoot themselves in the gut while cleaning their rifle collection.
Tokyokie
@Villago Delenda Est: But, but, but, Dimon’s making money for stockholders! What else on earth could possibly matter? Never mind that he’s done so through crooked, nonproductive behavior that’s nearly destroyed the world economy and has been conducted at such an enormous scale that nobody involved will ever face criminal penalties. Making money for stockholders is the only standard by which he should be judged!
raven
Bulldog City!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was talking about this earlier and Schroedinger’s Cat asked how many people listen to the “Fish Lipped Money Honey”, so I made a google and it looks like as the crawl deeper in to the pockets of the Jamie Dimons of the world, their ratings are hitting twenty year lows.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I call my best buddy Fish Lips!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JGabriel: Didn’t surprise me at all. I remember on the Maher show in 2004 she was gleefully predicting a landslide for Bush, and I have some vague memory of some hardcore Romney fangirlism.
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
It is just a cost of doing business. That’s the problem with the system as it’s currently operated. Offenders aren’t punished regularly or vigorously enough to serve as an effective deterrent, so it winds up being more profitable to break the rules than to follow them. The whole corrupt system needs to be brought down.
RobertDSC-Power Mac G5 Dual
@srv:
Are you out of your goddamned mind? Get the fuck out of here.
Kyle
@srv:
Hahaha!
That’s a great parody of CNBC ends-justify-the-means corporatism. Especially when you blamed the financial crisis on one House member from the minority party.
fuckwit
@Steeplejack:
That’s sociopathy. Almost by definition. And that’s capitalism.
It’s amazing that nobody has been better able to sum up the problems of capitalism than the movie “The Corporation” in like 2004 or so. If corporations were people, they’d all be in jail serving time, or in a mental institution for the criminaly insane.
These are, I think, the beginnings of the end times for “free market” capitalism of the American variety. Soon even here, people will realize that democracy and capitalism are antithetical to each other.
srv
@Kyle: Truth and facts are so ephemeral to you folks. Sadly, the democrats were the majority in the House and Mr. Frank was the Ranking Member.
muddy
Jack Benny had a wonderful bit about the difference between annoyance and aggravation.
Keith P
So she doesn’t like to throw around statements that aren’t absolutely proven facts? That’s good to know.
raven
@efgoldman: We had one in the area a couple of weeks back and it could be smelled for a square mile.
burnspbesq
Slow night in the Armpit of Upstate New York?
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
Your pathology is showing. Again.
tybee
@Nicole:
i bought that 45 some years ago….
wasabi gasp
Earworm OFF
raven
@tybee: You watch my Dawg vid?
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
Your message has been received by someone who is in a position to do something about it. Mary Jo White said in an interview yesterday that the SEC is going to start going after more individuals.
raven
@burnspbesq: The SEC RULES, GO DAWGS!!!
Suffern ACE
@raven: the SEC rules are arcane and need to be repealed and replaced.
Narcissus
@fuckwit: I agree with this. The Washington Consensus is now where Communism was in 1986.
Patrick
@JGabriel:
It is funny coming from somebody at CNBC, which is not much different than FoxNews. They are very partisan and not all credible.
BTW – Back in 2009 during the ACA debate, Maria Bartiromo warned that responsible hard-working people would be insulted if they had to pay for other people’s healthcare. The stupidity…
Who the hell does she think is paying for their healthcare now, all those emergency visits for people without health insurance? Also, I don’t recall Maria Bartiromo warning that responsible people who were against the idiotic Iraq war would be insulted if they had to pay for it.
Smiling Mortician
I made it past the NYT scoffery and all the way until Bartiromo said “Witch hunt!” and then my hand clicked pause in an act of pure mercy for my eyes, ears, and brain.
debbie
@JGabriel:
The best part for me was when Pareene pointed out that “outside the financial bubble,” there was a very different opinion of Dimon and JPMorgan. They looked at him like he was from another planet.
burnspbesq
@burnspbesq:
ETA: JPMC is having to admit wrongdoing. That’s a major policy shift by the SEC, and has the potential to cost JPMC billions in private litigation damages because they’ll be collaterally estopped from denying wrongdoing.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Isn’t that the truth? Despite the lack of “celebrities” the state house is the most fun it’s been since…Jerry Brown was governor. Sutter isn’t the only Brown twitter-tweeting lately.
https://twitter.com/annebgust/status/382359531625271296/photo/1
burnspbesq
@Suffern ACE:
Don’t for a minute think that you slipped that one by anybody.
‘Sides, the SEC’s rules are arcane for a reason. They have to be able to deal with the infinite creativity of people whose job it is to continually devise ever more arcane ways to take your money.
trollhattan
@burnspbesq:
Jamie should be shackled and made to clean graffiti and public bathrooms the rest of his life.
Don Blankenship should be beheaded.
eemom
I kept my cool, I ain’t no fool, lemme tell ya what happened then….
I am quite fond of that little ditty.
eemom
@Steeplejack:
Glad to see you back….I was gonna add you to the commenter MIA list a few threads back.
Did you see the comment from General Stuck’s sister the other night?
Xecky Gilchrist
I believe that trolling is the highest form of human expression.
Encyclopedia Dramatica is not dead! It just smells that way.
Suffern ACE
@burnspbesq: hey. I’m in the accounting industry. The more arcane the better. I was thinking this was a college football thread.
NotMax
For those between the ages of 8 and 13, most certainly. Adults (of the not clinically dysfunctional nor temperamentally stunted sort) have access to practice from an arsenal of more subtle and refined tools.
The Lodger
If you think the most senior person in the majority of a House committee can be called the ranking member, you probably don’t belong in a thread about INTELLIGENT trolling. Comments about the skunk in efg’s neighborhood are more in line with this bozo’s skills.
Jose Arcadio Buendía
“There’s only a little bit of poison in the food.” Pareene rules.
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
Like that’s going to make a flea’s fart bit of difference.
I thought that they didn’t break the law. That the laws were written in their favor so they didn’t need to break them to steal all the money. Or have I misunderstood once again and spoken out of turn?
Bob
Jesusfuckingchrist, I just love it when MB says, “legal problems aside….” Well, sure, let’s just put that aside. Jesusfuckingchrist!
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
He should be stripped of all his assets, including pensions, and forced to spend the rest of his life working as a Walmart associate. So should most of the other big dogs on Wall Street, including the Waltons.
Mike with a Mic
Pareene and Beutler are the only things I read Salon for. I’m glad Greenwald left (I can’t stand him), I’m iffy on Walsh (she can be hit or miss, I rarely like her but she rarely makes me want to scream), but Sirota is enough to make sure I don’t give them any traffic despite making an effort to hunt down what Pareene contributes on other sites.
The same thing happened to The Atlantic with me. I like some of their writers a ton, but Connor is so fucking obnoxious I don’t bother with their site on my mobile devices. Salon is good enough to put the author next to the piece (so I can avoid another Sirota rant), The Atlantic not so much. So I avoid them and just hunt down what TNC and some of the tech writers I like posted when others respond to it on other sites.
Salon really needs to tell Sirota to get off his chair, the government doesn’t care about him sexting Greenwald, that he is not the savior of the media, liberals punishing Democrats and not voting will not create some utopia, that people care more about having an income and healthcare than drones, and to lay off the fucking cocaine. They also really need to try and explain to Walsh she’s not the ambassador of white people, should stop trying to tell white people what to think of other people and what non whites are actually like, and she really shouldn’t keep assuming non whites don’t know how whites think.
Pareene rocks, but Walsh and Sirota seem to unite to form “out of touch white people with first world problems talking out their ass” constantly. That said, Walsh seems to be reasonable and just out of touch. Sirota seems to have some real issues boiling under the surface, dude needs some help.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
The collaborators, like you, should be punished as well.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
Been lurkin’. I was out of town September 13-18, with limited blog access (by choice), and when I got back I realized I had sort of enjoyed that, especially since Balloon Juice was going through one of its “everybody seems really pissy” phases. Now feeling refreshed and easing my way back in.
I belatedly saw the comment from Stuck’s sister. Did anyone have any more contact with her? And did she really end up with Charlie?
gbear
I’ve got the ultimate earworm from hell to add here tonight.
This is what it sounds like when Rodney Crowell and Vince Gill troll the hell out of country music. They’re both bitter enough to not go half-way about it.
BBA
If you want trolling, read Matt Levine of Bloomberg (formerly of Dealbreaker). His articles are well-written meticulously detailed explanations of all manner of financial scandals, but from the perspective that fraud should be legal. Sure they were lying, but if you were foolish enough to believe them then they deserve to get your money!
dww44
@eemom: I’ve been out of town and off the internet for two or three days. Do you have a link to the comment by Stuck’s sister?
Steeplejack
@dww44:
The comment I saw was very minimal: just “I love you guys” and “Someone get in touch with me,” but no e-mail address or information given. I haven’t seen any follow-up since that.
Bob In Portland
@WereBear: Which reminds me of my punk band. We did a version of “Take A Letter Maria” called “Send a Cable To Kabul”. This was when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. “Send a cable to Kabul, address it to Amin. Say, ‘Look out your window, the tanks are rolling in.'” It was kind of an annoyance as art thing.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@dww44:
@Steeplejack:
She posted an email address in the “garlic aroma” thread right below this one.
Pogonip
Nonsense. The highest form of human expression is burping.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Hope to catch up on your blog this weekend. I did do my homework and watch Love Me Tonight the other day.
eemom
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
So she did, and right while we were talking about her. Kewl!
I loves me some synchronicity.
pseudonymous in nc
@srv:
I see what you did there.
eemom
Also too I would note, based on the General’s sister’s kind comments, that maybe there is something to this “community” thing……and some of us who followed up on the General’s absence maybe aren’t such creepy stalker freaks as a certain never-to-stalked Texas uber-asshole, among others, made us out to be. Jussayinzall.
Ferd of the Nort
Speaking as an Agent of the State….
Repeatedly settling regulatory enforcement actions with fines indicates repeatedly breaking the the law.
Dimon is a crime lord. He breaks the law for profit.
PeakVT
Shorter CNBC bobbleheads: How dare you suggest that rich guy ass might not taste good?
Crude, but they’re not worthy of anything more.
RepubAnon
@Steeplejack: Yes, I found that appalling as well. The question to ask the CNBC hosts would be: The character Walt in “Breaking Bad” makes lots of money as well – does this mean he’s an asset to his community?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Take two letters, Maria; FU.
Mike with a Mic
@RepubAnon:
Walt isn’t listed on the DOW and doesn’t give returns to share holders, so this isn’t a good way to argue with them.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Steeplejack:
I will freely admit, I had a Stanwyck Moment with Chevalier — I never understood what was appealing about him until I saw this film. Now I get it.
Chris
@Narcissus:
I can only hope.
PIGL
I been drinkin’ and I’m tired and I’m too blue to go to bed…
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
My problem with Chevalier—and it’s not really a problem, because I like him—is that he always comes across as a “fake” Frenchman to me. I imagine the director yelling, “Cut! Hey, Mo, dial it back from 11, would you? What? That’s your real accent? Christ.”
My “moment” in Love Me Tonight was seeing Myrna Loy burn up the screen. Damn, she sexy. Especially in that costume ball outfit. I had forgotten what a long career she had, usually as an exotic femme fatale, in silents and early talkies before she hit it big with Vanity Fair and The Thin Man. I always think of her as the later, sexy-but-wholesome Myrna Loy.
A Humble Lurker
But if that were the case, there’d be no need for trolling or at the very least it wouldn’t work. I don’t think sociopaths care about what other people think. Being…you know…sociopaths and all.
Trolls actually illustrate the exact opposite: when some racist or xenophobic or even just annoyingly ignorant comment shows up here, there are ten comments making fun of it, arguing with it or even correcting it good naturedly. Ironically, trolls tend to bring much people than themselves out of the wood work, restoring my faith in humanity for one more day.
piratedan
after watching that, I can certainly understand the desire of some folks to let Wall Street burn down and piss on those peoples ashes. Morals? Ethics? fuck that, we’re they profitable, well CNBC, maybe you can make a few more shekels peddling Maria’s ass down on the commodities market.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Got a face like Charles Bronson
Straight outta Green Bay Wisconsin
Not just a wanker in the thread
He’ll puke on you, he’ll fuck your mom, he’ll smoke while huffing gas
He was the trollest mother fucker I ever did see
Hell he’s even more troll than me
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Steeplejack:
“Could you go for a doctor?”
“Certainly! Send him right in!”
Also, at least according to Wikipedia, Chevalier did exaggerate his accent and spoke English much better in real life than he did onscreen.
Also, I have links showing that he was NOT a Nazi collaborator, despite rumors to the contrary, so that was kind of a relief.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Just have to add that I have never, ever “gotten” Jeanette MacDonald, and Love Me Tonight confirmed that in spades. Even with her shedding clothes right and left for various medical exams, tailor’s fittings, etc.
Elizabelle
Here’s the comment from General Stuck’s sister on the garlic thread just below.
She goes by Lady G; comment about 137 or so.
Ruckus
@eemom:
The line between stalking and concern of acquaintances really is not that fine.
divF
@burnspbesq: “collateral estoppel” – I love it when lawyers talk dirty.
Phil Perspective
@Patrick: Bartiromo has always been this way. She once talked, on-air, about an off-the-record conversation she had with Ben Bernanke not long after he became Fed Chief. She’s such a tea bagger that she’s willing to crap on her fellow .01%ers. Also, too, CNBC was Jack Welch’s baby. It’s always been a channel that blows the plutocrats.
James E. Powell
If I am understanding Bartiromo correctly, what she means is that Jamie Dimon always made money for his partners.
What Pareene did not make clear, and I guess he never will because he wants to be on shows like this, is that people like Bartiromo and the others on CNBC consider these practices normal business because they increase the wealth and power of the ruling class. That’s all that matters.
We, the people, the chumps, regard these things as corruption. They don’t. They never do.
James E. Powell
@burnspbesq:
Collateral estoppel or issue preclusion?
goblue72
Frankly, I find that Pareene got owned and pushed aside by the other panelists. Like a lot of these media libs, he’s too afraid of not getting invite back to go for the jugular. There were so many openings to attack the completely weak arguments of the Wall Street apologists. He also seemed completely unprepared in terms of having laid out in advance his plan of attack, and having done the homework to have the facts on his side.
Take when he brought up JP Morgan’s hiring of the sons and daughters of Chinese officials. The Wall Street douche on the panel scoffed that everybody does it and its not illegal. Pareene ACCEPTED THE PREMISE of the counter-argument and replied yeah but its shady. NEVER ACCEPT THE PREMISE OF THE OPPOSITION.
I don’t even need to do any homework to know that the appropriate response was – and this is completely off the top of my head – “No, actually it is – its a felony under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The United States holds itself to a superior standard under our laws – its why we have the most robust, most deeply capitalized equity markets in the world – and are the envy of Europe, Japan, China and the rest of the planet. In order to ensure the money invested in our capital markets is completely clean, transparent and above board, it is a crime to bribe foreign officials. Hiring the children of Chinese officials in order to land business is a crime – and JP Morgan is under investigation for having violated federal bribery laws. Dimon is a bad CEO because the only way he made money is by breaking U.S. law. That’s why the Justice Department of the United States of America is demanding the largest corporate fines in U.S. history from JP Morgan. If the United States Justice Department show up at your front door, you aren’t an innocent.”
I pulled that completely out of my butt. Why can’t these media progressives show some balls once in a while. Its like they are too afraid of getting punched in the face, so they refuse to throw a punch back.
Mino
@goblue72: Hell, even I knew that from the Lockheed Martin scandal that occurred in 1976. That is how long it has been illegal. Uneducated gits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals
Arclite
@pillsy:
Yeah, I thought so too. Kind of profound actually, and one of the best things DougJ has written. I was kind of blown away, not that that’s a hard thing to do.
James E. Powell
@goblue72:
Why can’t these media progressives show some balls once in a while. Its like they are too afraid of getting punched in the face, so they refuse to throw a punch back.
This problem has been observed and talked about going back to the Clinton days. I don’t say that to be dismissive, but to express that I and millions like me share your frustration.
Part of it has to be the fact that any liberal who speaks out will not be invited back. A liberal who speak in strong language and gets in the face of the hacks and the flacks is banned. A right-winger who does the same thing is invited back even more because now he or she is “controversial.” See, e.g., the entire career of Ann Coulter.
c u n d gulag
JAYZOOS!
What a bunch of sycophantic hacks!!!!!
I’m sure that under those desks are kneepads.
And I’m sure that on commercial breaks, they all have to wipe the Randian Overlord jizz off their lips.
Patrick
@Phil Perspective:
Yes, Jack Welch. I will never forget when he accused the Obama administration of outright fraud when the monthly jobs numbers started to improve in 2012. He made the accusation without an ounce of evidence. It begs the question; what value does he even add to conversation? One now has to question anything he says. Yet, he is a regular guest on CNBC. Go figure…
mick
doug j just made me rethink trolling and why i do it. yes, it is a valuable art form! what was Dostoyevsky, after all, but one of the finest literary trolls who ever lived?
White Trash Liberal
@mick:
Indeed, Notes From The Underground and his Grand Inquisitor passage from Brothers are epic trolling.
Other great literary trolls include Artaud, Jarry, Beckett, Miller, Ionesco, RA Wilson… And what is Kafka’s The Castle but a troll getting counter trolled?
The Ancient Randonneur
Yes, Maria, the Very Serious People at “the New York Times!” are quite unlike the Very Serious People at CNBC, aren’t they?
Commish
@Steeplejack: It’s making me late for an appointment but Stepplejack’s comment was worth scrolling down.
Also Doug’s first graph in the OP deserves to be stickied somewhere.
centerfielddj
Maria Bartiromo, teahadist whack job.
Delicious title, brother.
Shinobi (@shinobi42)
I think the more compelling lol is “What’s a fact?” When you’re asking what a fact is you’re losing the argument.