Financial press takeover

I’m constantly looking around for evidence that geeks and Xers are starting to inherit the mantles of societal power -- if Xer geek Peter Jackson’s new King Kong wins this year’s Best Picture Oscar, as the speculation has it, then that will, perhaps, truly be such a sign, for only in a world in which geeks are ascendant could a giant-ape movie actually be hailed by the mainstream as the best movie of the year.

But here’s another sign: Geeks have obviously taken over stuffy, stodgy Forbes magazine, for how else could such a deliciously funny, deliciously nerdy thing like The Forbes Fictional 15 ever have been published there?

To qualify for the Fictional 15, we insisted that members be both fictional (in the sense that we excluded mythological and folkloric figures) and characters (meaning they are part of a narrative story or series of stories). Great wealth was required to be one of the primary attributes of the characters on this list--in other words, we looked for characters that were known, within their universes, for being rich.

The members of the list? Oh, people like Monty Burns, Lucius Malfoy, Bruce Wayne, Willy Wonka, Cruella De Vil... Who let the geeks into the offices of the financial press?