Althouse: "The smart need money; the rich want to seem smart; the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called 'life among the lucrative and louche'..."

November 23, 2025

"The smart need money; the rich want to seem smart; the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called 'life among the lucrative and louche'..."

"... and Mr. Epstein needed to wash his name using blue-chip people who could be forgiving about infractions against the less powerful. Each has some form of capital and seeks to trade. The business is laundering capital — money into prestige, prestige into fun, fun into intel, intel into money. Mr. Summers wrote to Mr. Epstein: 'U r wall st tough guy w intellectual curiosity.' Mr. Epstein replied: 'And you an interllectual with a Wall Street curiosity.'... Mr. Krauss sends his New Yorker article on militant atheism; Mr. Chomsky sends a multiparagraph reply; Mr. Epstein dashes off: 'I think religion plays a major positive role in many lives. . i dont like fanaticism on either side. . sorry.' This somehow leads to a suggestion that Mr. Krauss bring the actor Johnny Depp to Mr. Epstein’s private island. Again and again, scholarly types lower themselves to offer previews of their research or inquiries into Mr. Epstein’s 'ideas.'... The earnest scientists and scholars type neatly. The wealthy and powerful reply tersely, with misspellings, erratic spacing, stray commas...."

Writes Anand Giridharadas, in "How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails" (NYT)(gift link, because there's lots of interesting stuff there).

18 comments:

Peachy said...: From the Free Link - NYT(D)

"At the dark heart of this story is a sex criminal and his victims — and his enmeshment with President Trump. "; 11/23/25, 10:10 AM
Peachy said...: Author at NYT - works very hard to not discuss Bill Clinton much.; 11/23/25, 10:21 AM
narciso said...: As shallow as i thought these people were they surprise you.; 11/23/25, 10:26 AM
Dave Begley said...: “ His exchanges with Ms. Ruemmler are especially striking — not for the level of horridness, but for how they portray this network at its most shape-shiftingly self-preservational, and most indifferent to the human beings below.”

Ms. Ruemmler is Chief Legal Officer for Goldman Sachs and she heads the Reputational Risk Committee.

What is painfully obvious to me is that the elite of this country are all liberal. And corrupt. Notice how CAGW is a given? They hate Trump for killing the CAGW scam.; 11/23/25, 10:30 AM
hombre said...: The Epstein thing was degenerate, but there has been no evidence of pedophilia. Meanwhile, Democrat consorts among illegal immigrants and cartels trafficked prepubescent children during the Biden invasion with impunity.; 11/23/25, 10:30 AM
narciso said...: Reputational risk like military intelligence?; 11/23/25, 10:32 AM
Aggie said...: Third paragraph: ..."At the dark heart of this story is a sex criminal and his victims — and his enmeshment with President Trump. ..."

Last paragraph: ..."In spite of that, the unfathomably brave survivors who have come forward to testify to their abuse have landed the first real punch against Mr. Trump....'

Trump is mentioned a couple of other times, but only as a subject being discussed, never as someone in any kind of communication with Epstein.

So you have to wonder? What enmeshment? What punch?

It's an interesting opinion piece on the hollowness of these strata. They're exclusive, but only because they have the power to exclude as a way of being alone and feeling important. Why can't the NYT write interesting things without using Trump as a defensive shield to avoid explaining themselves?; 11/23/25, 10:35 AM
Josephbleau said...: Aunaud is quite a writer,

“Nomadic bat signals get things going, and edge keeps them flowing, while underneath a deeper exchange is at work. The smart need money; the rich want to seem smart; the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called “life among the lucrative and louche”; and Mr. Epstein needed to wash his name using blue-chip people who could be forgiving about infractions against the less powerful. Each has some form of capital and seeks to trade. The business is laundering capital — money into prestige, prestige into fun, fun into intel, intel into money.”; 11/23/25, 10:50 AM
Bill, Republic of Texas said...: “ So you have to wonder? What enmeshment? What punch?”

Don’t bother to look for logic in a propaganda mill article. The NYT has long time jumped the shark. They don’t deserve the benefit of trying to understand what they are writing. They are writing propaganda to keep their tribe in a state of hate.

If there was ever a pause in the firehouse of propaganda, the tribe members might start to question the narrative.; 11/23/25, 10:56 AM
Jay Vogt said...: "Everybody wants money. That's why they call it money"

- David Mamet; 11/23/25, 11:04 AM
Lazarus said...: Chomsky has been called the most quoted and referenced intellectual of our time, so maybe he is one. Larry Summers? Not so much. More of a technician. Somebody you call when your economy is on the fritz.; 11/23/25, 11:26 AM
Wince said...: "The smart need money..."

How elitist: stupid people need money too!; 11/23/25, 11:53 AM
Old and slow said...: I thought it was a very well written and interesting article that described the perverse web of connections among our so-called elite. The two attempts to make it about Trump were ham-handed and silly given that he was so obviously not a member in good standing of this crowd. But I suppose it was essential to make the effort.; 11/23/25, 12:13 PM
Leland said...: Peachy said...
Author at NYT - works very hard to not discuss Bill Clinton much.

Yet they find the opportunity to drop Johnny Depp’s name, yet Depp, as described, would be more of a victim being coerced by evil men to go to the island. NYT isn’t interested in protecting victims.; 11/23/25, 12:18 PM
Jamie said...: 1. The smart need money; 2. the rich want to seem smart; 3. the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called “life among the lucrative and louche”; and 4. Mr. Epstein needed to wash his name using blue-chip people who could be forgiving about infractions against the less powerful.

I added the numbers for ease in responding.

1. "Smart" and "rich" are only exclusive categories to people who are smart in ways that don't make them rich (or that they haven't figured out how to parlay into wealth).

2. The first-generation rich are generally smart, it seems to me. Their children and grandchildren - it depends. But those children and grandchildren may or may not be interested in seeming smart. The ones for whom "seeming" smart is important have a status problem - maybe their wealth comes from low-status sources? Although among the wealthy I've known in oil and gas and its support industries, which of course are low-status if you ask the coastal wealthy, they know they're smart and don't seek status from Ivy League failures at creating wealth, so maybe it has more to do with whether you attended an Ivy as a legacy (or are afraid you were viewed as a legacy).

3. The "staid" want to seem louche? Why wouldn't they just be louche? What good does "adjacency" to depravity do them?

4. Maybe. But it may be informative for the rest of us to note which blue-chip (or should that be "blue-check"?) people proved to be "forgiving about infractions against the less powerful."

In short: this sentence seems to me to be an attempt to draw a convenient curtain across an embarrassing spectacle. Everyone was to blame, because everyone wanted something that someone else had. It's facile because as a truism it kind of works, but the specifics here damn (or at least expose) a lot of people the writer seems to want to excuse.; 11/23/25, 12:52 PM
narciso said...: Soeaking of enmeshed the detail mike benz re summers and the chinese princeling; 11/23/25, 12:53 PM
narciso said...: Yes depp is a kid from miramar who made it big in hollywood; 11/23/25, 12:54 PM
narciso said...: Miramar a suburb of hollywood florida.
In the big scheme of things hes small fry; 11/23/25, 1:02 PM