Real Gone

I'm American made but I like Chevrolet
My momma taught me wrong from right.

I was born in the South
Sometimes I have a big mouth
When I see something that I don't like
I gotta say it.

Well, we've been driving this road for a mighty long time
Paying no mind to the signs
Well, this neighborhood's changed
It's all been rearranged
We left that team somewhere behind.

-Sheryl Crow "Real Gone"

I Ponied Up for Sheryl Crow?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 24, 2009

Maureen Dowd is Howard Beale mad-as-hell still at financial institutions flouting their fiscal prolificacy. This time it is at Northern Trust of Chicago which earns itself a couple of Rude Names™, a rare honor for a non-politician.

Northern No Trust had a lavish dinner at the Ritz Carlton on Wednesday with a concert by Chicago (at a $100,000 fee); rented a private hangar at the Santa Monica Airport on Thursday for another big dinner with a gig by Earth, Wind & Fire, and closed down the House of Blues on Sunset Strip on Saturday (at a cost of $50,000) for a dinner and serenade by Sheryl Crow.

Not only are they wasting taxpayers' money, they are doing it on bad AOR has-beens. And Maureen could have used the entire lyrics of 'Real Gone' (Crow's hit from the Pixar movie Cars) to emphasize the irony instead of just the verse she picked.

“Slow down, you’re gonna crash,
Baby, you’re a-screaming it’s a blast, blast, blast
Look out babe, you’ve got your blinders on ...
But there’s a new cat in town
He’s got high payin’ friends
Thinks he’s gonna change history.”

And it's not one of Dowd's now infamous rants without a BlingList®:

The entertainment Web site TMZ broke the story Tuesday that Northern Trust of Chicago, which got $1.5 billion in bailout money and then laid off 450 workers, flew hundreds of clients and employees to Los Angeles last week and treated them to four days of posh hotel rooms, salmon and filet mignon dinners, music concerts, a PGA golf tournament at the Riviera Country Club with Mercedes shuttle rides and Tiffany swag bags.

The second RudeName™ is tipped with a swizzle stick of sarcasm.

Northern Untrustworthy even offered junketeers the chance to attend a seminar on the credit crunch where they could no doubt learn that the U.S. government is just the latest way to finance your deals and keep your office swathed in $87,000 area rugs.

All this wild spending is summed up in a rather harsh Dowdversion®.

The bank cloaks itself in a philanthropic glow while wasting our money, acting like the American Cancer Society when in fact it’s a cancer on American society.

And she ends with a long rolling rile of a Alliteration Alert™ along with another Wolfe-ian aside.

[Andrew Cuomo] gets incensed about how ingrained, indoctrinated and insensitive the ex-masters of the universe are. “They think of themselves as kings and queens,” he said. And they’re not ready to abdicate.

Normally a Royal Reference™ is a good thing in a Dowd column, but lately she is fighting mad at those who act to the manor borne. And that is how revolutions begin. Perhaps another Sheryl Crow song sums it up: "A Change Would Do You Good."