A Lime For Our Time

When The Third Man was released sixty years ago (read a plot synopsis if you haven't seen it — spoilers ahead) audiences were chilled by Orson Welles's portrayal of the villainous Harry Lime. His scheme of allowing the terminally ill to die from inadequate treatment, just to line his pockets, established him as one of film's greatest sociopaths. His behavior was so horrifying that the protagonist accused him of that most heinous of all sins, Atheism. (This, Lime denies; some things are apparently too horrible even for film noir.)

Now, imagine that Harry Lime's initial flight through the sewers had led him not to the Russian Quarter, but to modern America.

I think he'd find himself right at home.

Lime's "greed is good" ethos would, in today's political climate make him a solid moderate — halfway between the "greed is only mostly good" Democrats and the "greediness is next to godliness" Republicans. His famous quip about the merits of the Swiss would be right at home in the pages of The Weekly Standard. There is, however, at least one job that would suit Harry Lime even better than punditry.

I believe that, had Harry Lime existed in our time, he would have quickly ascended the ranks of the health insurance industry. Whether looking down from a ferris wheel at the street or from a corner office at a graph, the calculations are the same: how many of those little dots are worth more money dead than alive?

I think I'd rather have the cuckoo clock.