"Who is John Galt?"

Molly Worthen dissects the platitudinous Randian catchphrase, and explains why you're likely to see it on tote bags for a long time to come:

[Ayn] Rand’s critics have called her a bad novelist and a mediocre philosopher—a “fifth-rate Nietzsche of the mini-malls,” as one writer put it in these pages. But mediocre philosophy sells: It makes the half-literate consumer feel smart. (See for example the success of Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all time.) Rand was a success even in her lifetime and has never really gone out of style, her paperbacks a fixture in the back pockets of angst-ridden teenage boys everywhere. 

A devoted fan of Rand lent me his copy of Atlas Shrugged around a year ago. When I asked a maths teacher what he thought of her work, his only criticism was that it 'needs editing', or something to that effect. In any case, I only made it through about one hundred pages of the damn thing before it was left to collect dust on my desk, only to be returned shortly after because, well, we try to be polite about borrowing things.

I confess some agreement with Rand on a couple of issues, but her overall philosophy does strike me as a little redundant. Does selfishness really need its own apologist? Does it deserve one?