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If this is not Culture War tell me, but I'm flabbergasted, I have to share that with you all.
So it seems there is a documentary out about Elizabeth Holmes. I had no idea until I stumbled across this trailer, and at first I thought it was a movie. Because it looks like a movie. And I thought this was two actors and one, at least, of them was going to turn out to be a serial killer.
No, it would seem this is indeed the one, the only, the real genuine pure-quill Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos infamy herself. And all I can say is holy crap.
Because she looks nuts. She looks like "I am about to slip some gelsemine into your tea and then sit by your bedside mopping your brow and cooing reassuringly as you slowly succumb to its effects, in the best traditions of the Golden Age of British murder".
It seems to be shot like a film, there has to be a hefty dose of acting going on because the guy playing? being? the director/narrator of the documentary looks like he is acting the part of "guy reacting to something he doesn't trust" with the hanging open mouth and sucking his tongue etc. reaction. But it seems like the filming really was that weird.
Gosh amighty. And there's a small child, a real small child and not "the script needs a baby" child actor, in this and everything. That really makes me concerned, because I would not leave that woman in charge of a goldfish.
The woman was either crazy as a loon or drugged out to the orbit of Pluto, or both. Because that kind of "pop your eyes wide open until the balls nearly fall out and stare unblinkingly and hold that stare for minutes" kind of behaviour, that is not normal.
How the hell did she get money from the supposedly rich and canny, the kind of hard-nosed business people whose job it was to sniff out frauds and schemers, who made tons of money by making the right decisions on investments and trades? Did the crazy only come out later?
First off, that's just a teaser. The full trailer dropped: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HvW_N5p1q44
Wealthy Boomer men have been very effectively trained to feel guilty about the opportunities they had that women didn't.
Holmes was very good at making them feel like she's the genius daughter / granddaughter they never had who just needs a chance.
More than that, she's from a well connected family and was born in DC. Her mom was a DC staffer. Her dad worked at USAID and ENRON.
There's a class of DC people who viewed her as "one of our own" getting rich and kicking ass in Silicon Valley.
You can see that when you look at the people who were on her board: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis, and Betsy DeVos.
I don't quite understand how her schtick as a hypnotic alien helped but somehow it did.
Okay, the full thing is more normal. But this really is a woman putting on a performance so constantly that I don't think she knows herself what's true or not. She has that "this is how a person who is [in X situation] would react, so I react like that" aura about her, which leads to the uncanny effect.
It looks like a very interesting production after all. The truth (or part of it) may be that Holmes has something off-balance about her but genuinely convinced herself that she was not scamming, that this would all work out, that she did not lie and deceive, and so she is convinced of her own innocence. But she is so removed from reality that she has trouble connecting with normal people, and this was her attempt at explaining herself.
That, or she and her partner really are accomplished liars and con artists.
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