Learn To Love Big Brother

Oh, God, and I thought this whole Twilight saga was bad. We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet:

Get ready for “Goldman Sachs: The Movie.”

That isn’t a real movie title. But filmmaker Ric Burns, who created the PBS series “The Civil War” with his brother Ken, is shooting a documentary about the Wall Street firm. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is paying for the film, has editorial control and is overseeing the project through its marketing department, a Goldman spokesman said.

It’s not enough that they wreck the economy and pilfer the U.S. Treasury. It’s not enough they’ve driven the country into near penury while they prance around like the Bourbons or the Romanovs. It’s not enough that they own the US government and now, as a result of Citizens United, will own it for all time. No. They want more. They want us to love them for it. They have our bodies, now they want our souls as well. Why not? There’s nothing else left among the ruins they’ve created. It’s the only thing left to steal.

Apparently this movie is “for employees only.” So I guess this is going to be used as in-house propaganda to convince themselves that they aren’t, in fact, wicked parasites whose criminality is ushering us into an economic dark age, but just swell, hard-working folks who deserve six-figure bonuses and a house in the Hamptons. After all, they hire gardeners and maids, don’t they? What service to the economy do gardeners and maids provide, huh?

But that’s beside the point. This film will be leaked and Goldman knows it, just as surely as they knew the housing bubble would collapse. They are many things, but they aren’t stupid. When that movie does make the rounds on the Internet, we’ll all see the inner workings of Goldman Sachs precisely as they want us to see it. We’ll be embedded, as it were, and come away with whatever impression they want us to have.

Do you suppose it’s possible that our banker friends are panging for a little of the glamour that accompanies other wealthy professions? Let’s face it, bankers are boring. The only way they can achieve any color is by being villainous, but not even that works for the current gang on Wall Street, who manage to be both deadly villainous and deadly boring, Lex Luthors without charisma. This is doubly true for bald-headed, lisping Lloyd Blankfein, who would be selling life insurance or working as a grocery clerk in a just world. It must rankle that on any given day, he, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of the great Goldman Sachs, gets less — and less positive — media coverage than Justin Beiber or Lindsay Lohan. It’s all so unfair. The solution? Pimp yourself in the only medium that matters. Make a movie. It can make you a celebrity, and once you become a celebrity you are beyond good and evil in American culture.

I have no idea how big or little this story really is, but I know it must be true because I read about it in the Wall Street Journal.