Darth Vader: Why I left

Goldman Sachs executive Gordon Smith has dropped a bombshell in a New York Times Op-Ed article, detailing how he left the company because it’s become a ruthless, dishonest profit machine. “It makes me ill how callously people still talk about ripping off clients.” OK, not a surprise maybe, but calling them out like that could shake the world’s most powerful investment bank.

It’s also set off the Parody Machine. From The Daily Mash, here’s “Why I am leaving the Empire, by Darth Vader.” Lord Vader takes the exact wording of the original kiss-off and substitutes … well, here’s a sample:

“Today is my last day at the Empire. After almost 12 years, first as a summer intern, then in the Death Star and now in London, I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its massive, genocidal space machines. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it. … throttling people with your mind continues to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making people dead.”

Back to the New York Times piece: former Goldman exec Gordon Smith also writes, “I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘muppets,’ sometimes over internal e-mail.” They also talked about “ripping eyeballs out.” Why would you rip the eyeballs out of a muppet? They’re mostly eyeballs.