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Mining the American Dream

Aug 19, 2002  •  Post A Comment

“I want to focus on my salad. …”
-Martha Stewart
Perhaps the timing is not quite perfect for a TV series called “American Dreams,” one of NBC’s new fall shows. The poor old American Dream has been kicked around pretty badly this summer. Sometimes one wonders if there’s anything left of it.
What’s all too familiar to even casual consumers of media-electronic as well as print-is that for some people the American Dream is to get filthy rich as quickly as possible and screw everybody else. Each week brought new tales of CEOs tonsil-deep in scandal, and footage of some rich dude being led away in handcuffs or, more likely, nimbly ducking cameras and slithering off in a limousine, trusty lawyer at his side.
One of the best news reports of the summer told the story in appalling graphic