Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Lone And Level Sands

Dubai is a place for the shallow and fickle. Tabloid celebrities and worn out sports stars are sponsored by swollen faced, botox injected, perma-tanned European property developers to encourage the type of people who are impressed by fame itself, rather than what originated it, to inhabit pastiche Mediterranean villas on fake islands. Its a grotesquely leveraged version of time-share where people are sold a life in the same way as being peddled a set of steak knives. Funny shaped towers smatter empty neighborhoods, based on designs with unsubtle, eye-catching envelopes but bland floor plans and churned out by the dozen by anonymous minions in brand name architects offices and signed by the boss, unseen, as they fly through the door. This architecture, a three dimensional solidified version of a synthesized musical jingle, consists of ever more preposterous gimmickry - an underwater, revolving, white leather fuck pad or a marina skyscraper with a product placement name that would normally only appeal to teenage boys, such as the preposterous Michael Schumacher World Champion Tower.

But if there is one problem with the shallow and the fickle, its that they are shallow and fickle...

The rest here (via Sullivan).

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

slow...

naked capitalism was way ahead of you

2/17/2009 7:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was going to send this to you today, but I figured you would have seen it. Wow. Strangely not surprising.

2/17/2009 8:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What? Gauche is no longer cool??
Who could have predicted.

2/17/2009 10:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Worth clicking through to read the comments over there. One by Tom S. in particular.

2/17/2009 10:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Agree, the comments on the original post are worthwhile.

2/17/2009 10:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so basically, Dubai is like America, only more so?

(only kidding, guys)

2/18/2009 10:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am not at all sure "nil" is kidding. Or should be kidding.

Bet'cha can find as many people in Dubai, white-skinned tourists of course, quoting Ayn Rand to approving listeners, as you could have found at a Fed Reserve meeting pre-2007, or an AEI board meeting today.

Hey, even if TCR is slow on the draw with this particular article, it's still good to see him back after a hiatus!

2/18/2009 2:45 PM  

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