{"footnote":"\u003Cp\u003E  You could argue that Vivendi is the first of the conglomerates to self-deconstruct \u0026ndash; but that company\u0026rsquo;s transformation from being the super-safe, super-dull utilities business Compagnie G\u0026eacute;n\u0026eacute;rale  des Eaux to the all-rapping, all-boogying, all-fucked-up media conglomerate Vivendi was so recent, so goofy and so clearly doomed to fail that it probably doesn\u0026rsquo;t count. This is how Woolf describes  Jean-Marie Messier, the man who created this paradigmatic disaster, shortly after he moved to New York and shortly before he was sacked:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E  \u0026lsquo;There was, languorously moving up Madison Avenue, a small man, with a coat cast cape-like over his shoulders and the most pleased-with-himself expression I have ever seen on an adult \u0026hellip; He occupied  a wide swathe of the sidewalk, with a strut to the left and then a strut to the right, nodding and smiling, or rather bestowing blessings, on passers-by, who gave him a wide and incredulous berth.  He seemed to see himself as some combination of Pope and maestro \u0026ndash; his idea, I suppose, of an American mogul \u0026hellip; I do not think he would have considered spontaneous applause to be out of order.\u0026rsquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\n","audio":[],"video":[]}