The problem with empire-building is that it comes down to parasites looking for established entities to subjugate. Everything is both a fixer-upper and move-in ready at the same time. It is easy to think you’re more than the emperor: you’re a deity with the Midas touch because of your innate greatness and cunning.

Except nothing could be further from the truth. Often, a robber baron can memorize enough rules and they build an empire so long as they don’t veer to an industry they don’t get. Rupert Murdoch pretty much stuck to media properties and could keep things going.

And then there are the Ellisons who ventured into a vanity purchase they know nothing about.

Their foray into buying Paramount exposes how they aren’t as savvy as their press releases would have the world believe.

Their logic in acquiring Paramount is comical and proves billionaires aren’t smart so much as lucky.

So long as they don’t buy their own hype.

But they swallowed it whole.

Their business model seems to hinge on cringe: hitching their ride on a lame duck elderly president, and buying a legacy film and television studio whose primary audience is 65 years old.

Anyone who buys a newspaper property is throwing good money away, but that’s a little more obvious; however, the same can be said of movie studios: they are not the future, and unless the plan is asset-squeezing, this is going to be a very expensive public humiliation.

And it has been a knee-slapping comedy watching it.

Trying to make CBS News into Fox News is ridiculous: that is an elderly, niche audience and advertisers don’t go for it for the exception of Big Pharma.

So, in essence, the Ellisons took a vehicle that appeals to 65 year-olds, and then changed it to appeal to 75 year-olds.

Well played!

But worst of all, seeing that they’ve entered the demented realm of Loserville, they decided to double down and have been throwing epic caveman tantrums in wanting to also buy Warner Bros. Discovery to snatch it away from Netflix.

Yes, this didn’t work the first time, so let’s do it again!

The bid for WBD is a panic move. A rival that attracted the attention of a hipper buyer with real entertainment credentials and a growing audience base is not good news.

Lacking foresight, self-awareness, and then stepping in every cow flap in the field is not the path to victory.

It’s the path to showing rivals and enemies how little you actually know and the tricks you used to slither to the top.