Louise Linton and the art of being fake

Kent Anderson
Aug 23, 2017 · 4 min read

Until the other day, I had no idea who Louise Linton was, not the faintest clue that she was an actress or married to Steve Munchin, the current Treasury Secretary or that she had written a book about spending time in Zambia that was widely panned and eventually pulled, not in the Clifford Irving, I-wrote-an-autobiography-Howard Hughes-even-though-I-never-spoke-to-him way, but more like a fiction-passed-off-as-truth, which, once exposed, got her self-published book off the shelves faster than Irving’s ever did.

This isn’t a post about the now infamous instagram picture of her and her husband departing a US Government Lear jet while looking just fabulous darlink. And then putting down a woman who dared to point out just how out of touch she is compared with the average woman who couldn’t afford a #hermes, #valentino, #roulandmouret, and #tomfordsunnies if she tried.

This is about character, not anything else. Linton bragged about all the diamonds she would be wearing before her wedding earlier this spring to a man 17 years older then her. It’s an ostentatious, over the top description which shows a lack of not only character, but self-awareness as well.

In 1999, there was a movie that came out called The Big Kahuna, which featured Danny DeVito, Kevin Spacey and a very young Peter Facinelli. DeVito, Spacey and Facinelli play three men who all are facing pivotal points in their lives and it all comes to a head in a small hospitality suite in Wichita. Why Wichita? Why the fuck not?

The three men are holed up in this suite for what seems like an eternity and the two older ones, Larry and Phil, good friends, are joined by Bob, an earnest young Bible huger who are essentially there to land “the big kahuna,” to save their company. Larry (Spacey) has financial difficulties, Phil has gone though an AA-style recovery program and Bob has recently married.

Mundane as it may sound, it is hardly that. It is a morality play, based on life experiences and what we learn from those experiences. The conversation gets heated as time goes on and Bob accuses Larry of unfaithfulness because he looks at other women. Phil tries to keep the peace and explain to Bob that lusting after another woman is in a man’s DNA, it’s whether he has the impulse to not act on it is the difference.

Eventually, after the “party” and everyone has left, except for Phil and Bob, after Larry threw up his hands at what he perceived as Bob’s failure to land the account with the “big kahuna,” Phil, after playing both sides and coming up frustrated each time, finally says his piece. It is a remarkably honest and forthright condemnation of everything that Bob and Larry spent 14 hours arguing about.

It is perhaps the best speech I ever heard on morals and character given. Ms. Linton, in her own, self-absorbed, insulated world, might reach that point at sometime in her life, but she possibly, probably won’t. She has no idea that it would take the average woman 56 weeks at minimum wage just to get enough money to buy a Hermes bag, or that said woman would have to forego rent, food, bills and everything else just to buy a purse like that.

Ninety years or so ago, Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, considered to be the Great American novel, or at least one of the best. The story centers around an enigmatic figure named Gatsby who flints his way in and out of upper-class society, ingratiating himself, disappearing and then reappearing. In the end, he is revealed to be a poser, just like Ms. Linton.

But Gatsby is fiction. So is Kahuna. But there is truth in fiction just as there is fiction in truth. It is the last line of Gatsby “and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” and Phil lecturing Bob about regret, honesty and character and coming up with the conclusion and the quandary we all face:

“The question is, do you have any character at all?

And if you want my honest opinion Bob, you do not. For the simple reason that you don’t regret anything yet.

You’ve already done plenty of things to regret. You just don’t know what they are.

It’s when you discover them. When you see the folly in something you’ve done. And you wish you had it to do over. But you know you can’t because it’s too late.

So you pick that thing up and you carry it with you. To remind you that life goes on. The world will spin without you. You really don’t matter in the end.

Then you will attain character because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself all across your face.”

That we are living in an age where honesty and character are looked down upon and ostentatious wealth, along with the ability to yell and scream and call a perfect stranger not worthy of their time because they’re not worth what you are says a lot about where we are as a country and society. Ms. Linton has issued an apology/not apology (as I always like to say, the best apology is the one you never have to make), but will do nothing to change her image as a out-of-touch, too-rich-to-be-bothered with brat. Perhaps it is a perfect metaphor for her newlywed husband and his boss, but I doubt anyone has the courage to tell her, her husband or his boss to stop lying and bragging about being who they really are.

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