The Enemy of the People

I was flipping through the Wall Street Journal the other day*, and came across a full page ad from Morgan Stanley proudly introducing their new Managing Directors. I skimmed through the list of names, and came across one Emmanuel Goldstein. This was truly shocking.

As you certainly know, Emmanuel Goldstein was the leader of the Brotherhood, and therefore the number one enemy of the people, in George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. My first thought was, "Who would name their kid after that literary character, such that anyone he met would immediately be suspicious?" Let's face it, although he's sort of an anti-hero in the novel, he's not a person you want to be associated with unless you like visiting places like... Cuba, for instance. But not in a vacation cigar-smoking way, if you catch my drift.

I found it odd that there might be people with that name when a year or two ago I learned of the hacker Eric Gordon Corley, who is rather anti-government in his opinion. He goes by the name Emmanuel Goldstein. He's the kind of guy who the government would keep close tabs on anyway, since he is known to rant against "Big Brother", but the fact that he chose that name as his pen name is only asking for trouble.

So here's this other Emmanuel Goldstein, working for Morgan Stanley, who almost certainly was given that name by his parents. The novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published in 1949. So unless this guy is at least 59 years old (which would be old for a mid-level position like Managing Director), his parents either never read the book, named him that anyway, or named him that because of the book. Although I can't find any info on how well the book sold at the time of its debut, there were also two movie versions: a BBC version televised in 1954, and a Hollywood version in 1956. The chance that his parents hadn't been aware of the enemy of the people must be very slim. Yet that is his name anyway. Or, at least the name he goes by.

I guess it's like naming your kid "Guy Fawkes", only the name has a literary meaning, rather than historical one. Whatever the story behind this Emmanuel Goldstein fellow, I would bet a substantial amount that the U.S. government keeps tabs on him. One need only take advantage of the Freedom of Information Act, to get ahold of his files, for whatever it's worth. But I'm not going to request them...


*I know, two blog posts in a row about stuff appearing in the Wall Street Journal. It's a big part of my day now. Oh, how things change...