Its skyline erupting from the desert in just two decades, Dubai is a cautionary tale about what money canÂ’t buy: a culture of its own. After gorging on the Viagra of easy credit, the emirate has the worldÂ’s tallest building, the worldÂ’s most expensive racetrack, and a financial crisis to match. From the Western mercenaries and Asian drones who maintain the gaudy show to 100-odd families who are impervious to any economic reality, A. A. Gill discovers that no one truly belongs in Dubai, where the legacy of oil has made everything worthless.
| Something has gotten into the water at the New Republic and Vanity Fair. This long piece discovers that in Dubai, there's no there there. Shocking, and something we've known for a while, but it's always good to watch a progressive person slam face-first into reality. The author rips into the empty, vapid, European apparatchiks who make the country work, the rude, arrogant sons of the powerful Dubai citizens who have jobs but never work, and an empty culture 'cursed with money'. Who knew? |
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