You can call Donald Trump a lot of things—and believe me, I have, I have—but one thing you can’t call him is “boring.” Which is more than can be said You can call Donald Trump a lot of things—and believe me, I have, I have—but one thing you can’t call him is “boring.” Which is more than can be said of “the kids” (as Donald calls them), AKA “Javanka” (as everybody else calls them). Javanka is (are?) boring.
This lies at the heart of everything that is wrong with Vicky Ward’s Kushner, Inc. Ward is a competent journalist, who possesses the necessary gifts of clarity and discernment, but she cannot overcome this one central fact: Jared and Ivanka are boring. This spoiled, entitled Daddy’s boy, this spoiled, entitled Daddy’s girl are tedious. Our callow mini-mogul without a gift for detail who fancies himself a diplomat, and our second-rate Gwyneth who sold fashion instead of Goop and now is busy selling out the country are—let’s face it—tiresome. If the book had been about their sires—those two unregenerate old pirates—it might have amused me, and I might recommend it. But it wasn’t, it didn’t, and I don’t.
(Apropos of of Charlie Kushner, that old pirate: the first chapters this book do deal with him, and they hold up better than the rest. He's certainly an enigmatic figure. I mean, how can an observant Jew like Charlie, a man devoted to family, hire a hooker to seduce his brother-in-law, film the entire encounter, and send the videotape to his own sister? This book tells the story, and, sleazy as it is, it is definitely not boring.)
I’m not going to explore the book in detail. Instead, I’ll just make two points: 1) Javanka is (are?) boring because they know nothing and read nothing, and 2) just because they are boring doesn’t mean that they aren’t dangerous.
First, on the subject or not knowing and not reading:
At one Astor Place dinner party, Richard Mack . . . did remember that at one point in the conversation, Ivanka was adamant that “libertarianism” and “liberal” were the same thing, and would not be dissuaded . . . Elizabeth Spiers . . . noticed during a visit to Jared and Ivanka’s apartment that there was not a book in sight and that the pair had zero intellectual curiosity. (Others dispute that “no books” claim: they recall ”a few art books”—or “decorator-curated books.”) . . . Jared once complained to Spiers about an Observer story concerning the move of author Martin Amis from London to Brooklyn . . . “Nobody knows who this Martin Amis guy is,” he told Spiers. “Nobody reads novels.”
Second, on the subject of how dangerous they are, both to their father’s presidency and to the world. At various points in the book, Vicky Ward—who, to be fair, relies heavily on Bannon and Cohn, neither of whom are fans of Javanka—presents testimony that the pair were instrumental in promoting the following bad decisions: the hiring of Manafort as campaign manager; the appointment of Flynn as National Security Advisor, as well as encouraging him to engage with the Russians; the search for a back channel to Russia through the Russian embassy; the firing of Comey; the addition of Scaramucci to the Communications Office; the strengthening of ties with MBS (which almost led to a war with Qatar, as well as contributing to the White House’s embarrassment in the wake the Kashoggi affair); and the blocking of Michael Cohen from a White House position, thus making him more likely to turn informer. (Maybe the Donald’s hunch was right: Ivanka should have married Tom Brady).
To end the review, here’s a piece of pointless trivia. Number of The Apprentice episodes in which Ivanka appears: nearly 90. Number of The Apprentice episodes in which Tiffany Trump appears: 0....more
Did you watch Zuckerberg testify before the Senate committees about Facebook and the 2018 election? Were you struck by how blithely unrepentant he see Did you watch Zuckerberg testify before the Senate committees about Facebook and the 2018 election? Were you struck by how blithely unrepentant he seemed, how convinced that his titanic, poorly monitored data base—which he habitually describes as “a community”—is an unalloyed benefit to us all? “Facebook was not originally created to be a company,” Zuckerberg claims, “It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.”
So how is it that a billionaire like Zuckerberg can presume to appear so smugly virtuous? Although a few reasons come immediately to my mind—a poorly chosen defense strategy, the habitual arrogance of wealth, some personality or character defect—I believe the truer explanation is more universal. It lies in the philosophical attitude toward wealth and social change of all the Silicon Valley billionaires, which is shared in large part by the Wall Street/Clinton Foundation crowd too. Such people inhabit a distinct intellectual universe, and an excellent way to learn about their world is to read Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridhardas.
Giridhardas calls this universe “MarketWorld”, and he encountered it up close and personal when, in 2011, he was chosen as a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute, an “’organization of leaders’ that seeks to deploy a “new breed of leaders’ against ‘the world’s most intractable problems.’” It involved an inspiring series of one-week seminars, held in luxurious places, where he “mingled with the ultra-rich in decorated mansions.” Still something made Anand uneasy about the whole thing:
Even as I savored these luxuries and connections, I found something amiss about the Aspen institute. Here were all these rich and powerful people coming together and speaking about giving back, and yet the people who seemed to reap most of the benefits of this coming together were the helpers, not the helped. I began to wonder what was actually going on when the most fortunate don’t merely seek to make a difference but also effectively claim ownership of “changing the world.” . . .
I began to feel like a casual participant in . . . a giant, sweet-lipped lie. . . . Why were we coming to Aspen? To change the system, or to be changed by it? To speak truth to power, . . . or to help make an unjust, unpalatable system go down a little more easily? Could the intractable problems we proposed to solve be solved in the way that we silently insisted—at minimal most to elites, with minimal distribution of power?
Giridharadas continued to think about these matters, and five years later, at his Aspen Institute summer reunion, he delivered a speech in which he summed up what he called the Aspen Consensus: “The winners of our age must be challenged to do more good. But never, ever tell them to do less harm.”
This, essentially, is the philosophy of “MarketWorld.” We can all—especially the rich--”do good by doing well.” Apply market solutions, empower a few, attempt to solve a few isolated social problems, and—guess what?—we can make ourselves even more money and feel better about ourselves while we do it. We’ll work with governments, sure, but only if necessary (for democracy is messy and difficult to control), but please don’t speak to us about increasing corporate regulations, or raising marginal tax rates, or increasing estate taxes, and—while you’re at it—leave that deduction for the purchase of private jets alone too.
Giridharadas attends and takes notes on many MarketWorld events, conducts interviews with a few of the ultra-rich and many of their minions (an interview near the end of the book with Bill Clinton is particularly illuminating), and in addition he speaks with a number of aspiring entrepreneurs who adopt the MarketWorld philosophy.
But he speaks with critics of MarketWorld too, one of the most incisive being Chiara Cordelli, professor of political philosophy at the university of Chicago. She argues that one of the most dangerous things about the MarketWorld method is that it not only routinely marginalizes government institutions but also insists on benefits (tax breaks, elimination of regulations) which damage and hamper its mechanisms, and that as a result these institutions are becoming more and more ineffective. And after all, Cordelli says, “The government is us.”