Money Talks (and Talks)

One of the weirder aspects of our weird era is that people who have the biggest, loudest, and most covered voices are often the biggest and loudest voices of concern over free speech. William D. Cohan on one aspect of this weirdness in the NYT (Gift Article): How Loud Billionaires Convert Their Wealth Into Power. “Whether you think Mr. Ackman is a billionaire blowhard or a courageous iconoclast, he is part of a paradigm shift in social media in which rich people are increasingly able to convert financial capital into social capital. He’s hardly even the first or most outrageous beneficiary of this unfortunate reality: That distinction probably belongs to his fellow billionaires Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who, like Mr. Ackman, have also discovered that unfiltered, limitless social media platforms are heaven for those with unconventional opinions and God complexes.” (I’ve got both of those and I still can’t seem to go viral.)