As far as I can tell, it’s not an especially good time to be an oligarch. This is a rather new and startling development. I guess it just shows that if life can be hard for an oligarch, who among us stands a chance? They are the ones who had it made (or stolen).
My concern is that we redefine what it means to be an oligarch, in the same way we have lowered the standards within many sports halls of fame. To gain induction once upon a time, you had to be on par with Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio – immortals. People who no reasonable person could argue against. Then you get the likes of Harold Baines and Bill Mazeroski, who shouldn't be in the same zip code, let alone the same building.
The same thing is happening to oligarchs. In the old decaying days after the fall of the Soviet Union, to be an oligarch, meant to rule over a fiefdom. It meant owning hundreds of Brioni suits and dozens of yachts. It meant vacationing in the Black Sea, as well as the Adriatic. It meant eating caviar for three meals a day, bathing in vodka and champagne. Now, simply bathing puts in a suspect caste. The implication is that your leisure time extends well beyond the seconds usually allotted for a shower.
If there’s even a sniff of beluga on your person, you’ll get the oligarch stench – one that’s impossibly hard to rub off. What’s a yacht anyway? I grew up believing that in order for a boat to be considered a yacht, when measuring it you had to factor in the curvature of the earth. Apparently, these days any dinghy with a motor gets the elevated to yacht status.
I’ve had caviar. I’ve been on a boat. What am I, Ollie Garch?
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