The Man Who Time (Almost) Forgot. On July 2. 6, at Mc. Masters' insistence, he and Ponzi went to visit District Attorney Joseph C. Pelletier, U. S. Attorney Daniel J. Gallagher and Massachusetts Attorney General J. Weston Allen. Mc. Masterstold Ponzi these interviews would increase public confidence in his business, but secretly Mc.

"Bel Ami" adds to the aura of mystery that has enveloped Robert Pattinson since the "Twilight" (2008) films. That mystery involves why this actor, whose default mode.

Masters wanted to put himself and the Post "in the clear," as he later wrote. Understandably, Ponzi was reluctant, but, incredibly, he said he would go. Pelletier agreed with Mc. Masters that something unusual was going on, and he told Ponzi to close his offices until a public accountant had audited his books.

Pelletier offered Ponzi an additional day's grace before opening his books, but Mc. Masters insisted that Ponzi close his offices that day.) They marched into Gallagher's office, then on to Allen's office, where, for three hours, they asked question after question. Mc. Masters wrote that Ponzi put on a good show. When he was cornered, he used the old technique that such a question could not be answered as it would disclose his financial secrets to the big bankers of Wall Street and Threadneedle Street and the Paris Bourse [then the financial centers of England and France]," wrote Mc. Masters. "Once, Attorney General Allen said to him, ‘Mr. Ponzi, if you can do these things that you claim, you will be the greatest Italian whoever came to America.' To this, Ponzi smiled and said, ‘Don't forget Columbus, Mr. Watch The White Ribbon 4Shared.

Allen!' " According to Mc. Masters, once Ponzi's offices closed, a few nervous investors demanded their money back, which Ponzi quickly refunded, but most of his clients still had confidence in him.

Mc. Masters wanted to confirm his suspicions, so while the books were with the accountant, he talked to investors outside of Ponzi's office for two days, observing their ticket stubs, which showed how much Ponzi owed them. That he was hopelessly insolvent had become a fixation in my mind," he later wrote. It was time to act. IT ALL COMES CRASHING DOWN Mc. Masters approached Richard Grozier, the Post's assistant editor and publisher, about running an exposé on Ponzi.

Grozier balked because he was afraid Ponzi would sue him for libel. However, Mc. Masters got a promise from Nathan Tufts, the district attorney of where Grozier lived, that the publisher would be immune from lawsuits if the article proved untrue. So, Mc. Masters wrote the article with the spectacular headline, "Declares Ponzi Is Now Hopelessly Insolvent." Grozier paid him $6,0. That Monday morning of Aug.

Ponzi opened his Boston office … the line was more than a half- mile long." Mc. Masters wrote of terrified investors in tears, some even fainting. But Ponzi paid off these investors for more than a week. He sued the Post for $5 million, and he made speeches railing against the paper.

Even the attorney general told Mc. Masters on the day the article appeared that he had made a mistake in running such a scathing story before any official reports. However, Mc. Masters persevered. He responded with another Post article on Aug. Pelletier his conversations with Mc.

Accountants, jailed for fraud, sparked start of Sir Ngatata Love's downfall. Accounts of the actual event suggest the movie's depiction isn't far from the truth—and the funds Miller ran did in fact take catastrophic losses because of the. · While it sounds like a step down for Pallenberg, there are thoughts that she could temper her instinct no more than a black widow spider could dissuade. Accidental Beach is already so popular a location it comes up on Google Maps, even though it is unofficial and temporary.During the two days of last weekend, hundreds.

Masters and Ponzi. Mc. Masters then asked the attorney general to request that investors mail letters saying how much Ponzi owed them. The "overwhelming" response helped prove his exposé — there were simply too many investors owed too much and not enough money to pay them.

A week later, another Post article reported that Ponzi had been in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta for violating immigration laws, and he also had been convicted of theft in Montreal. The final nail in the coffin was the post office's official report that "Ponzi had never bought a dollar's worth in postal coupons abroad or cashed in a dime's worth in the United States," wrote Mc. Masters. Ponzi was convicted of mail fraud in 1. U. S. mail to plead with investors to reinvest their money), and he served five years in jail.

After his release, he still wasn't through with his schemes. He had to stand trial on state larceny charges, but while out on bail, he ran a scheme in Florida selling expensive real estate that turned out to be swampland. He was arrested and convicted of that crime, but then he tried to flee the country. Ponzi was caught yet again and served seven years in prison. After that, the U. S. had had enough and deported him to Italy in 1. There he scammed the Italian treasury and then fled to South America.

He died a pauper in a charity ward in Brazil in 1. LIFE OF A FUTURE FRAUD FIGHTER  In an interview with Fraud Magazine, Mc. Masters' granddaughter, Faith Dickerson, Ph. D., a psychologist who conducts research on schizophrenia, said, "I remember visiting my grandfather and my grandmother as a very young child in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in their walk- up apartment. He was elderly, but an imposing gentleman." Dickerson accepted the Sentinel Award for Mc.

Masters at the annual conference. She recalled that he always sat in the dining room of his small apartment, banging away on his typewriter, still producing work, including a column for the local newspaper, Cambridge Chronicle. He completely had his faculties.

He was stern and commanding, but very engaging and intellectualized. I don't ever remember him not wearing a suit and also a top hat when he went outside," she says. Though he was not one to roll around on the carpet with his only grandchild, he wrote her poems and Valentines. Mc. Masters was extremely protective of his wife, Lillian, a musician and artist, whom he married in 1. She appeared to be vulnerable and delicate, taking naps and whisking out hankies to flutter, but she lived to be 1.

William Henry Mc. Masters was born June 9, 1. Franklin, Mass., on the outer perimeter of the Boston area. His father died in an industrial accident at the sawmill plant in which he worked nine months before Mc. Masters was born. His mother, Jane, ran a rooming house and later married a Swedish- American carpenter. Mc. Masters worked a variety of jobs as a boy; he drove cows, picked berries, chopped wood and even watered circus animals.

Despite his impoverished background, he was intelligent and quick- witted. He attended high school at Dean Academy in Franklin, and then, at the age of 1. He returned to high school and graduated, went straight to law school (he skipped college; back then, one didn't need a college degree to go to law school), then he left school permanently, without his degree, to volunteer in the U. S. Army Signal Corps during the Spanish- American War. After the war, Mc. Masters became a reporter for various Massachusetts newspapers.

He eventually became a publicist, which is how his life intersected with Ponzi's. Dickerson knew little of Mc. Masters' role in the Ponzi story because her family didn't talk much about it when she was growing up. Ponzi was not such a household name back then. To Dickerson, Mc. Masters had done a lot of other things that were more recent and more interesting.

He worked on the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, and he corresponded with political leaders, including Speaker John William Mc. Cormack of the U. S. House of Representatives.

She knew Mc. Masters had been involved in political campaigns, but it wasn't until after he died in 1. Boston Public Library that she became aware of the extent of his role in the exposé. A closer look at Mc. Masters' personality reveals that his Ponzi exposé was inevitable. He took very principled positions. He maintained them and fought for them. He was not easily swayed by criticism.

He was determined, resolute," Dickerson said. Mc. Masters worked on the publicity campaign for women's suffrage in Massachusetts. And in the 1. 93. Social Security. POST- PONZI DAYSAfter Ponzi, Mc.

Masters enjoyed working as a publicist for such famous politicians as Boston mayor James M. Curley and John F. Kennedy's grandfather, Honey Fitz, in his run for mayor of Boston. He had worked on Calvin Coolidge's gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts in 1.

Mc. Masters taught journalism at Mount Ida Community College from 1.

The Hitler Meme - The New York Times. When “Downfall” first appeared in German and Austrian theaters, critics charged that it humanized Hitler beyond recognition and sapped the historical horror by turning Hitler and his henchmen into soap- operatic archetypes, transforming their undoing into an ordinary human tragedy. In fact, the lesson of the parodies seems to be that “Downfall” was a closeted Hitler comedy. Having seen the spoofs before seeing the movie, I find it virtually impossible now to watch the film with a straight face. Ganz, the Swiss actor, takes his performance seriously. But something in the character name “Adolf Hitler” also seems to have liberated Ganz to play flat- out melodrama.

His goofy, trembling, hopeless rage — in which is wedged a vituperative aria aimed at the traitors he perceives everywhere — recalls nothing so much as Jeremy Piven’s raving meltdowns as the jerk agent Ari on the HBO comedy “Entourage.”While Americans might prefer the spoof “Downfall” videos that have American themes, the ones with foreign subjects have somewhat more bite. Last month, a blogger scripted a loyalist to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the Malaysian prime minister, in the Hitler role. The loyalist is told that Badawi has turned to martial law and suppression of the press, and he freaks out at the thought that Badawi has gone too far. Like all the “Downfall” parodies, this one is filled with regional jargon, but you don’t have to know much about Malaysian party politics to imagine the exasperation of an adviser whose champ keeps making missteps. Doesn’t he know the rakyat are sick of his shenanigans?” read the subtitles, as Ganz raves. He thinks the I. S.

A. will wipe out his problem? Perhaps all that sleep has put too much drool in his brain!” And later, “The whole world will laugh at that idiotic chromedome!”Interestingly, many of the “Downfall” parodies choose not to have Ganz- as- Hitler directly ventriloquize another politician or figure of derision. Instead, as with the Malaysian parody, the spoofs often make the new speaker a disappointed supporter of a public figure. This move may be an attempt to sidestep the moral issues that should dog any satirist who draws a Hitler mustache on anyone but Hitler himself.

Or it’s possible that by not making the central character in the parodies Hitler or anyone like him, the parodists free up their protagonist to be (in good conscience) as funny, raw and sympathetic as he comes across in Ganz’s performance. For those of us who grew up in America with the word “Hitler” having a meaning as fixed as that of a black hole and the epithet “Hitler” being used only by sloppy teenagers and overheated ideologues, this slippery appropriation of Hitler’s image for satirical purposes can be hard to take.

In a video called “Barack Obama Downfall Satire,” Hitler is just Hitler (in the program notes), but he’s also a foe of Obama and ultimately someone like Dreyfus in the original “Pink Panther” comedies — a lone debunker who loses his mind trying to bring down a nitwit. The new subtitles are also presumably not written by an American, as the Hitler in this parody dismisses (initially) the participants in an Obama rally as “a gathering for a few student mingers in Che Guevara T- shirts.” Mingers?

In any case, like nearly every one of the overwritten Hitlers, this one builds up a rhetorical head of steam. He’s still wearing his Senate diapers!” Hitler shouts. Hillary Clinton should have been breast- feeding him!” One henchman robotically volunteers that, no, Obama will bring peace and prosperity. That’s where I paused. I know that the enemy of Obama in this parody is no less than Hitler himself.

But when Hitler gets all the good lines — like Milton’s Satan — it seems fair to ask, Is this video for Obama or against him? Since the advent of online video, people have made remixes and mashups by bolting together spare digital parts and soldering on freshly forged ones. In 2. 00. 6, the soundtrack, shutter speed and graphic scheme of the “Brokeback Mountain” trailer, for example, were superimposed on old film from “Back to the Future” to create a video that suggested a gay love story between the characters Marty and Doc.

Taken together, the anthology of “Brokeback” spoofs made a larger point about American mythmaking and Hollywood clichés. It turns out you could play make- out music, show slow- mo clips of any two male actors interacting, throw up suggestive title cards (“a truth they couldn’t deny”) and — presto — any American blockbuster could be shown to chronicle love between two men. But what’s the larger point of the “Downfall” remixes?

Hillary’s Downfall,” from May, has Ganz in his Hitler garb speak for Hillary Clinton. Desperately denying that Obama will be the Democratic nominee, she says: “These little state primaries are not important. The superdelegates will secure my victory.”That’s when Ganz takes off his glasses, his left hand shaking. In the best parodies — and “Hillary’s Downfall” is a good one — Ganz embodies the role assigned him by the parodist by the time his glasses come off.

This is the moment in the original film after Hitler has been informed that he cannot win; as he eases up on denial, he’s coming down on fury. In “Hillary’s Downfall,” you can’t believe how quickly the haircut and costume recede and the Hitler factor fades, eclipsed by Ganz’s tough old fork- tongued grandpa performance. Hitler becomes not the author of the Holocaust but a salty dog who, though all is lost, doesn’t stop piercing pretense and speaking in slangy, heartfelt language, expressing the most deeply felt needs of the human id. We may have repressed that speak- for- the- people Hitler, the one he decided to be in “Mein Kampf”; but in the form of these videos, he has returned. Isn’t that the outcome that Adolf Hitler, the historical figure, sought? Didn’t he see himself as the brute voice of the everyman unconscious?

How grim — how perplexing, how unsettling — that after more than 6. Hitler to make sense of him, we may have arrived at a version of Hitler that takes him exactly at his word. Post a Comment at The Medium __________Points of Entry. THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDATIONSDOWNFALL OF THE UPLOADS: The “Downfall” production company — constantin- film. You. Tube. Pursue a link to one, and you’re likely to learn, “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Constantin Film Produktion Gmb. H.” Copyright claims are serious business, but if you happen to do some creative searching on You. Tube itself, you might stumble onto some of the versions that have made their way back to the site.

GANZ MESHUGENEH: Forget Al Pacino in “Scarface” or Jeremy Piven on “Entourage.” Bruno Ganz tears it up in “Downfall.” If you watch it as a fiction film and stop worrying that it pretends to comment on history, “Downfall” is memorable camp. The DVD is cheap on Amazon. SPOOF THE SPOOFS: It had to happen: a meta- take on the Hitler parodies. In the video “Hitler Is a Meme,” Hitler learns that he’s an Internet laughingstock. As in, he’s the new “Star Wars” kid or Sarah Palin. He doesn’t take it well.

To a henchman: “I can’t believe I ever friended you!”) Watch at the invaluable Break. This superb parodist, a Web developer in Philadelphia, can be found at sean- o. Continue reading the main story.