The Cranky Media Guy

I don’t want to belabor what a bunch of shit Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is/was.  I’ll just say that it’s an elaborate justification for being a selfish asshole–pretty much the perfect “philosophy” for the douchebags who infest the current administration, along with its cheerleaders in the mainstream media.

Oh, OK, I’ll go a little further with this.  Quoting from the article:

“Rand had a reputation for living for her own interest. She is said to
have seduced her most serious reader, Nathaniel Branden, when he was 24
or 25 and she was at least 50. Each was married to someone else. In
fact, Mr. Britting confirmed, they called their spouses to a meeting at
which the pair announced their intention to make the mentor-protégé
relationship a sexual one.”

Oh, so she was a cheating bitch.  Good role model there.  I’m sure her husband appreciated the objectivism that went into her decision to fuck a younger guy behind his back.

More:

“Last year, bookstores sold 150,000 copies of the book. It continues to hold appeal, even to a younger generation. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who was born in 1958, and John P. Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, who was 3 when the book was published, have said they consider Rand crucial to their success.”

I’m not aware of anything terrible that Mark Cuban has done, but he does have a widespread reputation for being pretty fucking cuckoo.  Didn’t he get fined a huge amount of money for screaming at refs during a Mavericks game?

As for the guy who runs Whole Foods, that asshole got caught recently putting anonymous postings on a business-oriented web site’s message board disparaging his biggest competitor, saying that it was poorly run, etc.  Oh, funny story, he just BOUGHT that competitor.  What’s that, Randians?  Oh, he was just acting in his “rational self-interest,” not being a flaming douchebag who lied about his competition to lower its sale price?  Oh, no prob, then.

“The book’s hero, John Galt, also continues to live on. The subcontractor hired to demolish the former Deutsche Bank building,
which was damaged when the World Trade Center towers fell, was the John
Galt Corporation. It was removed from the job last month after a fire
at the building killed two firefighters.”

Yeah, turns out (not that the New York Times seemed to think that this was worth telling you in this article) that the John Galt Corporation never demolished anything before.  Hey, who needs experience when you have self-interest to service and powerful fellow Rand fans to grease the skids for you?

Know what?  I’ve changed my mind.  I take back “fuck Ayn Rand.”  Fuck Ayn Rand AND all the assholes who think that her elaborate rationalization of selfishness constitutes a “philosophy.” 

Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism - New York Times