It’s been a minute and the hysteria has moved on to other things, so I thought I’d take a minute to reconsider Elizabeth Holmes. What a strange story it is, almost like it’s a puzzling myth looming out of antiquity to make us wonder. It might be any of several stories.
A technically adept undergraduate saw potential that her professors rejected and never acknowledged, yet the young genius persevered, only to be led astray by older, sneakier people more schooled in the corrupt ways of business.
Or perhaps she learned the basics of corporate fraud from her father, who was a vice president at the infamous Enron, and proceeded to promulgate her own nearly 20-year fraud at Theranos, beginning when she was, incredibly, an undergraduate student. She became the CEO of the fraudulent company, and amassed a personal value of billions before the fraud was uncovered. But the empire collapsed before she could collect the cash.
Or maybe the money was never the point. Centuries ago the story might have been about a changeling that captured the minds and the hearts, of many old, rich scions. There might have been a plan, but maybe there never was. The ways of the Fae are not ours. She extracted fortunes from the lords, although being a changeling she had no use for it and never touched the vast riches her treasury amassed. She was laid low for a time, but did not really notice. She had children with a human man, and as halflings they have the potential to change the world, if they ever find themselves.
More recently we would tell the same story just a bit differently, and when we talk about bewitchment now, it’s just a metaphor. She bewitched the older men who where all too eager to become bewitched. At night they dreamed about her and her strangely piercing blue eyes; her pale blondness; she embodied proof that their desperate racist hopes might be true. They directed firehoses of money in her direction, and elevated her to international icon and, if not a fashion model, their idea of what that might be. Until her shallow and absurd claims could no longer be shrouded in misdirection, and the puppet masters’ plots unraveled.
We also have something we call “journalism” these days, although the “journals” may well be headed for extinction. From that perspective, it’s just the facts — although what we think of as “facts” may not be what counted as truth in 1023. Elizabeth Holmes wants to be called Liz now, and she’s abandoned the weird baritone voice she adopted in her apparent attempt to become more convincing. She managed for years to convince that influential people that her company’s achievements were real, not illusory. She maintained the illusion for longer than anyone could have expected, but it finally collapsed. Liz Holmes is now in prison, where she’ll stay for the next few years.
There’s something timeless about this story, however you frame it. It’s a sad story, but for some reason it fascinates me. If it happened a few millennia ago, it would be perfectly obvious that the gods from Olympus had, once again, reached down and meddled in human affairs for incomprehensible reasons. Maybe that’s what makes ancient stories more real than contemporary ones; the notion that something might be incomprehensible doesn’t come easily to modern minds. After all, we’re the heirs of the age of reason, and everything is supposed to make sense one way or another. Elizabeth Holmes, though…
