All three
Mark Twain referred to the self aggrandized as nickel plated angels. They look like silver, shining in the sun, but they are a cheap alloy of lesser base metals, made to appear to be of great value.
Polished coprolite they are. They shine in the noon day sun. Fossilized feces they are, hard, having lost all taste and smell, dried to stone, good to fill museums or sell as curios.
Cage the lot of them as sideshow freaks. They are odd and extravagant. Their flatterized beauty is thin, like gruel. Beneath is terrible corruption, rotten to the core of their worthless bones. They are a whited sepulchre, fit only for death and decay.
Why give homage to the rare whores of great wealth? They have lost their common humanity. Their lives are encapsulated. They are a brief flash that blinds us for a moment.
We wonder what or how or where their intrusion began and where did it go when natural light followed their nova.
If they left a morsel we can be thankful. More often we are made poorer for their having passed our way.
-Lou
My reaction as well. All to often a false either/or proposition is offered, when “all of the above” is the best answer.
All three and more.