Tuesday, April 12, 2005

The Upper East Side Can't Keep It Real

Oh, what a truly offensive pile of bullshit this is. Even after taking a week to calm down (I even made my special spring 'Slaw, and had it with some grilled asparagus), this still makes me want to vomit with rage.

New York magazine has just informed us all how truly lucky we are that so many of our nation's extremely wealthy have chosen to nest in New York and make this city so great by dint of their mere presence (and pocketbooks).

While the piece has been rightly gored by more talented pike-wielders than Cole Slaw Blog can employ at the moment, one thing stands out:

The article is larded throughout with the kind of bootstrap-pulling hokum one expects from a freshman staffer at the Michigan Review. In modern-day Manhattan, crumbs falling out of billionaire billfolds support busboys and sommeliers and waiters and livery drivers and construction workers and secretaries and well, life is just swell.

Except for the people trying to keep it real on the Upper East. The "workaday rich," as author Daniel Gross calls them, are the only aggrieved party to be spotted in the piece. Which shouldn't surprise, considering the source.

In the world of New York magazine, the super-rich make things easy for everyone, while the merely rich shoulder the load.

Maybe this is the White Man's Burden for a New American Century?

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