What You Say About His Company Is What You Say About Society Analysis

In the chapter “What You Say About His Company Is What You Say About Society,” Chuck Klosterman defines what he believes makes a villain. His asserted definition, “the villain is the person who knows the most and cares the least” (Klosterman 3), rests on the idea that calculation or the “dispassionate application of intelligence” confers one the “villains cowl” (Klosterman 6). Klosterman explains his reasoning to us, exploring along the way the most evil action available (tying a woman to the railroad tracks), whether motives make a villain fearful, to how calculation is the hallmark of a true villain. Yet at the end of the chapter, when the reader is expecting him to come out and expose the worst villain (Newt Gingrich), he surprisingly
Klosterman acknowledges that we get distracted by villainous acts. In the case of Joe Paterno, one of the claimed villains in the chapter, he put it this way: “It has always been my belief that people are remembered for the sum of their accomplishments but defined by their singular failure” (Klosterman 4). Further, Klosterman understands Paterno's greatness will “become secondary memory solely because Paterno knew something he didn’t care about enough” (4). He sees that Paterno’s ambition was to selfishly preserve his sports reputation at the expense of “humanity,” yet he says “Paterno’s vilification is harder” (Klosterman 4). This may be because he once admired Paterno and probably still does. For example, he expressed his discontent with “media bottom-feeders” who “reveled in his[Paterno's] fall,” and claimed that Paterno’s funeral was “sad because the final weeks of his life we far sadder than the literal end of it” (Klosterman 5, 4). Perhaps the difficulty with people respecting Paterno is due to him knowing the most but caring the least about Sandusky’s actions. Whereas Klosterman shared in Paterno’s understanding for wanting to preserve his reputation as he notes Paterno “majored in English at Brown” and knew how “his obit was going to read” (5). Therefore,
Notably, Salman Rushdie who in the chapter is cited as calling Machiavelli a “democrat” and “messenger.” Although Klosterman writes “that’s a different argument for a different book,” (he is more concerned with the immutability of the negative connotation of “Machiavellian” we are nonetheless persuaded to consider this possibility. Perhaps Klosterman included this aside because it parallels his unconventional admiration for Newt Gingrich and in a like manner, although Machiavelli is "culturally unlikeable,” unconventional wisdom suggests the opposite. That is, society only views his mistake of “consciousness” but ignores what’s beneath the villainous veil—ambition, which is admirable (Klosterman