The Vapidity of Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends
How is this acceptable?
(John Hinderaker) I have probably paid less attention than the average person to the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but in the wake of the latest, vast document dump I have been reading what some commentators are saying. So here, for what it is worth, are a few observations.
First, the dog that isn’t barking. I take it that in all of the millions of emails that have now been released, there is no evidence of anyone other than Jeffrey Epstein having sex with underage girls. I don’t think that is surprising: as I noted here, twelve young women gave evidence in the Florida prosecution of Epstein. Not a single one of them mentioned any man other than Epstein. Likewise, when the feds prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell for procuring underage women, they charged her with procuring girls for only one man: Jeffrey Epstein.
The idea that Epstein had a “client list” and ran some kind of international pedophile ring was always, I think, a myth. And this seems to be confirmed by the absence of any such evidence in the releases of Epstein documents to date. Although, to be fair, if Epstein supplied underage girls to anyone, Prince Andrew seems to be first on the suspect list.
So what do the Epstein documents show? The vapidity of the world’s supposed elite, I think. Epstein was a minor player in the world of finance, but he was regarded as an intellectual–a thinker!–with strong connections at both Harvard and MIT. Intellectuals like Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, were in his orbit, along with numerous members of the business elite.
James Marriott takes up this theme in the London Times: “Jeffrey Epstein circle’s ‘big ideas’ were vacuous guff.”
Whoever runs Private Eye’s fortnightly compendium of pretentious quotations, Pseuds Corner, could take the next few years off and delegate the task to an algorithm with access to the Epstein files.
***
Epstein retails banal opinions as if they are sage reflections (“I think religion plays a major positive role in many lives”) and tarot-and-crystals-adjacent woo (“The soul I describe as the dark matter of the brain”), as if he is reporting from the front line of science. The temptation is to chalk this up to “the banality of evil”. But it illustrates something else worth paying attention to: the vacuousness of the international business elite.
For all their self-importance, these powerful and wealthy men — always at a conference or on the way to Davos (“giving a talk tmrw about data visualization”) — display no remarkable insight into life or the world. “I’m wowed by people of great ideas,” said Epstein, meaning something like “I am wowed by the same buzzwords as everyone else in my circle”.
Like so many of his friends, Epstein was pretentious but, outside of the obscure financial niche where he apparently made money, …
How is this acceptable?
(John Hinderaker) I have probably paid less attention than the average person to the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but in the wake of the latest, vast document dump I have been reading what some commentators are saying. So here, for what it is worth, are a few observations.
First, the dog that isn’t barking. I take it that in all of the millions of emails that have now been released, there is no evidence of anyone other than Jeffrey Epstein having sex with underage girls. I don’t think that is surprising: as I noted here, twelve young women gave evidence in the Florida prosecution of Epstein. Not a single one of them mentioned any man other than Epstein. Likewise, when the feds prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell for procuring underage women, they charged her with procuring girls for only one man: Jeffrey Epstein.
The idea that Epstein had a “client list” and ran some kind of international pedophile ring was always, I think, a myth. And this seems to be confirmed by the absence of any such evidence in the releases of Epstein documents to date. Although, to be fair, if Epstein supplied underage girls to anyone, Prince Andrew seems to be first on the suspect list.
So what do the Epstein documents show? The vapidity of the world’s supposed elite, I think. Epstein was a minor player in the world of finance, but he was regarded as an intellectual–a thinker!–with strong connections at both Harvard and MIT. Intellectuals like Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, were in his orbit, along with numerous members of the business elite.
James Marriott takes up this theme in the London Times: “Jeffrey Epstein circle’s ‘big ideas’ were vacuous guff.”
Whoever runs Private Eye’s fortnightly compendium of pretentious quotations, Pseuds Corner, could take the next few years off and delegate the task to an algorithm with access to the Epstein files.
***
Epstein retails banal opinions as if they are sage reflections (“I think religion plays a major positive role in many lives”) and tarot-and-crystals-adjacent woo (“The soul I describe as the dark matter of the brain”), as if he is reporting from the front line of science. The temptation is to chalk this up to “the banality of evil”. But it illustrates something else worth paying attention to: the vacuousness of the international business elite.
For all their self-importance, these powerful and wealthy men — always at a conference or on the way to Davos (“giving a talk tmrw about data visualization”) — display no remarkable insight into life or the world. “I’m wowed by people of great ideas,” said Epstein, meaning something like “I am wowed by the same buzzwords as everyone else in my circle”.
Like so many of his friends, Epstein was pretentious but, outside of the obscure financial niche where he apparently made money, …
The Vapidity of Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends
How is this acceptable?
(John Hinderaker) I have probably paid less attention than the average person to the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but in the wake of the latest, vast document dump I have been reading what some commentators are saying. So here, for what it is worth, are a few observations.
First, the dog that isn’t barking. I take it that in all of the millions of emails that have now been released, there is no evidence of anyone other than Jeffrey Epstein having sex with underage girls. I don’t think that is surprising: as I noted here, twelve young women gave evidence in the Florida prosecution of Epstein. Not a single one of them mentioned any man other than Epstein. Likewise, when the feds prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell for procuring underage women, they charged her with procuring girls for only one man: Jeffrey Epstein.
The idea that Epstein had a “client list” and ran some kind of international pedophile ring was always, I think, a myth. And this seems to be confirmed by the absence of any such evidence in the releases of Epstein documents to date. Although, to be fair, if Epstein supplied underage girls to anyone, Prince Andrew seems to be first on the suspect list.
So what do the Epstein documents show? The vapidity of the world’s supposed elite, I think. Epstein was a minor player in the world of finance, but he was regarded as an intellectual–a thinker!–with strong connections at both Harvard and MIT. Intellectuals like Larry Summers, former President of Harvard, were in his orbit, along with numerous members of the business elite.
James Marriott takes up this theme in the London Times: “Jeffrey Epstein circle’s ‘big ideas’ were vacuous guff.”
Whoever runs Private Eye’s fortnightly compendium of pretentious quotations, Pseuds Corner, could take the next few years off and delegate the task to an algorithm with access to the Epstein files.
***
Epstein retails banal opinions as if they are sage reflections (“I think religion plays a major positive role in many lives”) and tarot-and-crystals-adjacent woo (“The soul I describe as the dark matter of the brain”), as if he is reporting from the front line of science. The temptation is to chalk this up to “the banality of evil”. But it illustrates something else worth paying attention to: the vacuousness of the international business elite.
For all their self-importance, these powerful and wealthy men — always at a conference or on the way to Davos (“giving a talk tmrw about data visualization”) — display no remarkable insight into life or the world. “I’m wowed by people of great ideas,” said Epstein, meaning something like “I am wowed by the same buzzwords as everyone else in my circle”.
Like so many of his friends, Epstein was pretentious but, outside of the obscure financial niche where he apparently made money, …
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