Matthew Lesko: Withdrawal and Withdraws

by March 19th, 2011 - Culture » Film and TV »

I received an email the other day, a marketing pitch well above the depths of most spam, reaching out to websites to help promote a “The Gospel According to Mathew Lesko” an 18-minute documentary about Matthew Lesko, the question-mark-clad huckster who’s been selling you the secrets of government get-rich-quick grants for years and years.

I’m playing along with the email a little, but I don’t think the review will necessarily satisfy what they’d ideally hope for. The documentary seems to dress the subject up well enough in the style of serious material, but its really little more if not worse than a documentary regarding the Aflac Duck or the GEICO Gekko – I’m a bigger fan of cartoons. Framed by a fart-horn soundtrack to remind us of the the wackiness we’ve all come to expect, the rest of content seems toned down, talking instead of yelling, this style creating the illusion of content, but still feeling like an infomercial.

I don’t really have any strong feelings about the man. Obviously, I question the necessity of the many government grants on display, the circle-jerk logic of taking money away from everyone so that everyone can do everything, sold by a salesman selling get- rich-quick tips who, himself, can only make money by selling them.

However, I’ve only much lesser fish to fry, choosing to toss around the digital ink only because of an encounter with Matthew Lesko from the early oughts that the email and film brought to mind.

One day while smoking a cigarette, waiting to cross the street in New York City, I noticed a man walking from the other end of the block, trudging with his head down like anyone else after a long grueling day of work, wearing a multicolored suit of question marks. Before he got to where I was standing, he turned to the building near me and with only the every-day, zombie enthusiasm common of us all, started using an sidewalk ATM, a funny depressing site that seems to speak volumes on several skeptical socioeconomic and manic/depressive subjects I can’t quite pin down.

In a similar vein, Bob Dylan really knew what he was about as…not only the President of the United States, but also Matthew Lesko sometimes must have to stand naked.

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