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F for Fake


Work to do tonight, so I have to excuse myself from the second half of a pretty good Netflix pick. F for Fake is Orson Welles’ hard, bemused look at a successful scammers. The most entertaining of these is Elmyr, a top-notch art forger who floated through a bon-vivant’s life in Ibiza, ripping off the great museums of the world, making fools of the experts.

The “experts” have certainly been looking like fools recently. Could anything make you want to puke more than "fashion god" Michael Brown’s FEMAils? It is even more disturbing to think that cronies with little technical expertise are high-up in all our federal agencies, often foxes taking over for watchdogs in the hen-house. Yipes. The problem is local, too. Here in Chicago, cronyism and mismanagement at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center results in lots of already-troubled kids getting shit on.

Nobody is gets hurt by a fake Modigliani. Hell, I’d take one. But when we ask our government for accountability, it ought to extend to demanding officials and employees who know what the fuck they are doing.