read write ride roam home
Rachel F. Elson Brooklyn New York rachelelson@yahoo.com 415-336-5262		From KQED-FM's Perspectives series Aired August 22, 2002 From heroes to zeroes For a while, businessmen had become the new American heroes. But that was then and this is now. ----- In a summer of financial fraud, the debunking of eBay's creation myth may still be among the unkindest cuts. Dwarfed by corporate accounting scandals and a roller-coaster stock market, the story of the auction empire's fraudulent flackery made headlines for only a heartbeat before being pushed off the business page. But the revelation did much to explain America's shock at the latest executive misdeeds. The original eBay story told of a romantic geek with a gift for his Pez-dispenser-collecting girlfriend. Founder Pierre Omidyar, it seemed, had minted money just by being a good guy. This summer, though, the company copped to the lie: The Pez story was just something cooked up by a PR exec. The dot-com boom, it seems, has not been the only bubble to burst. A new civic myth that turned businessmen into heroes has exploded with it. After the "greed is good" '80s, a recession-burned public had eyed money men with distrust. But the high-tech economy changed that. It raised the nostalgic ghost of Horatio Alger; it celebrated self-made men. Venture capitalists turned up on People's list of eligible bachelors; geek chic got a new veneer of cool. The new mythology was vital to the boom. Trusting investors bet their retirements on guys with titles like "Chief Yahoo." SEC investigators ignored creative accounting, and GOP lawmakers pressed to dump Social Security funds into a seemingly infallible stock market. Another relationship, it seems, has gone down the drain. Three decades after Watergate, America still distrusts its government -- and that's just fine. A healthy dose of skepticism is good for democracy. So perhaps it's time that America fell out of love with its CEOs. In the wake of the tech boom and bust, lives are ruined, pension funds are decimated, and individual investors are left with monthly statements full of dollar stocks. The cultural pendulum has swung back again: High-flying executives are no longer the heroes. Ex-WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers hides a smirk while pleading the Fifth; even homey Martha Stewart has lost her clean-cut image. Bring out the black hats: Business is back to being bad. But as Martha would say, that's a good thing. With a Perspective, I'm Rachel Elson. From KQED-FM, San Francisco