Relying in part on citing reporting in the JTA, The New Yorker offers a 13-page profile of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the third richest man in America. The piece explores Adelson’s staunch right-wing Zionism, his friendship with Tom Delay and, of course, the 74-year-old multibillionaire’s own bravado.
From the story:
“In my sixty-three years in business, in over fifty different businesses, I’ve broken the mold and changed the status quo,” Adelson said one evening in late March to about three hundred dinner guests, gathered in a lavish ballroom at the Venetian in Las Vegas to see him and his wife presented with an award for corporate citizenship by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. (The singer Wayne Newton was also honored.) Adelson, whose countenance often suggests that he is spoiling for a fight, takes pride in being an outsider, who has suffered rejection and ridicule but has avenged every slight, many times over. Vindication is sweet, if never quite sufficient. As he recently commented during a conference call with stock analysts, “They always derided, they always demonized our convention strategy, and look who’s laughing last.”
