"Even overpriced lobster salad can’t seem to make people out here feel better.... The Hamptons is basically in group therapy about the mayoral race."

Said Robert Zimmerman — some political fund-raiser, not the Robert Zimmerman.

Quoted in "From How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor? The Hamptons is basically in group therapy about the mayoral race." 

Holly Peterson, a Park Avenue and Southampton based novelist who, as she put it, owes her career to being able to skewer the “selfishness” of high society types, said she can barely find anyone on the East End who is over 40, works in finance and is “pro-Mamdani.”

That's reminiscent of Pauline Kael's immortal remark: "I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him." 

"Not so long ago, members of high society were fixated on trying to low-key their way out of the perils of income inequality."

"Minimalism and quiet luxury were in vogue. But in the wake of President Trump’s second election, it’s the luxe life at full volume. He gilded the White House, turning it into a rococo Liberace lair. Swaggy and braggy have replaced stealth wealth. Flaunting it is in. For women, that means sequins, diamonds, tight silhouettes and big hair....  And now there are the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials.... Ms. Sánchez brings to mind another unlikely Vogue subject: Ivana Trump. Ms. Wintour gave her a cover in 1990, shortly before her divorce from Mr. Trump, after worrying, as I reported in a biography of Ms. Wintour, that she was 'too tacky.'... As much as those with more understated taste might turn up their noses at the crassness of the Bezos-Sánchez wedding’s display, tacky is very clearly carrying the day. Maybe hating on tacky oligarchs is itself just elitist...."

Writes Amy Odell, in "The Bezos-Sánchez Wedding and the Triumph of Tacky" (NYT).

"The problem with even a 'TINY' tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept..."

"... in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, 'Read my lips,' the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I'm OK if they do!!!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

"Several billion? That's peanuts for these guys."

Reporter: Do you intend to continue selling crypto products that benefit yourself while President?

Trump: I don’t know if it benefited. Where is it today?

Reporter: You made several billion dollars

Trump: That’s peanuts for these guys pic.twitter.com/eimGxhAZeA

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 21, 2025

ADDED: I asked Grok, "How is a politician's selling of meme coin different from selling tangible items like branded hats and coffee mugs?" and then "How is it the same?"

"Aside from joking about his wealth, Mr. Biden has openly stewed over one of Mr. Trump’s flashier — and apparently effective — stunts as president."

"During [a recent] speech at Brookings, Mr. Biden said he had been 'stupid' not to sign his name to Covid stimulus checks that were distributed to Americans early in his term. Mr. Trump emblazoned his signature on checks distributed after a relief bill was passed in the spring of 2020.... Mr. Biden has also not voiced much public regret for deciding to call his economic plan 'Bidenomics,' though he has privately groused to allies about his dislike of the name. And while his administration has acknowledged mistakes during the chaotic and deadly troop pullout in Afghanistan in 2021, Mr. Biden does not regret pushing forward with the withdrawal."

From an article by Katie Rogers that, I think, is trying to be kind to Biden: "A Reflective Biden Harbors Some Regrets as His Term Winds Down/President Biden will seek solace and 'relief' during a visit with Pope Francis next month, according to people familiar with his plans. His public comments have offered a glimpse into what is on his mind" (NYT)

"Even when Musk decided to waste a chunk of his fortune on buying Twitter, so that he could restore accounts belonging to right-wing dissemblers such as Donald Trump and Alex Jones..."

"Tesla-lovers managed to feel pretty good about themselves. Since then, however, Musk has gone full MAGA. Among the highlights: he has endorsed the antisemitic 'Great Replacement' conspiracy theory, wondered why no one tries to assassinate the Democratic nominee for president, and pledged to give Trump’s campaign $45 million a month....This past weekend, Musk showed up at a Trump rally and reiterated his belief that the country and its Constitution could not continue to exist if Trump weren’t reelected. Among my friends who drive Teslas, Musk’s name comes up a lot in conversation, like an embarrassing skin condition you wish you could ignore. Some manage ably to compartmentalize. A neighbor I see at the dog park rails against Trump voters but raves about his self-driving Model S.... Other Tesla drivers feel stigmatized and vacillate about selling their cars. One friend affixed a magnet to her Tesla that says: 'I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.'"

Writes Matt Bai, in "The left’s Elon Musk dilemma/Nothing I can think of has plunged liberal friends of mine into a kind of moral anguish quite like Tesla" (WaPo).

Oh, the struggles of Matt Bai's Tesla-driving friends! I wonder what other "moral anguish" problems roil their privileged lives.

But I had to laugh at the notion that Musk "waste[d] a chunk of his fortune on buying Twitter." Musk spent $44 billion. His net worth is $264 billion. What else could he have bought that could have provided him with anything like the satisfaction and power he gets from X? Waste?!

"'One of the things that’s really interesting with Hume’s Treatise is that he introduces the term "sympathy" to explain why we have esteem for the rich and the powerful'..."

"... says Neil Charles Saccamano, associate professor of English at Cornell University. 'Hume talks about how the notion of property enters into why we esteem them – that they own things like houses and gardens.' The beauty of those objects, Saccamano says, is designed to produce pleasure in the owner of the object. 'And we others, who do not own this property, and are not rich and powerful, and who are of a lower class, we simply "sympathise" with the pleasure we anticipate that the owner of the property will receive from the objects,' he says. So, when we watch Meryl Streep and Steve Martin making late-night chocolate croissants at her bakery in It’s Complicated, the sense of pleasure and anticipation we take from the scene is as much about 'sympathising' with the luxuriousness of it all: the softly lit kitchen, the pastry against the cool marble counter, the exquisite indulgence of owning a bakery at all, let alone breaking in after hours for a little erotically charged patisserie-making.... 'And in [Hume]’s analysis, part of the pleasure of the owner is knowing that others envy them – or sympathise with their pleasure,' says Saccamano...."

From "Lights, camera, comfy furnishings: why the ‘beige chic’ of Nancy Meyers is having a revival/In her hit romcoms, the director’s sets were as popular as the films. Now trending on social media more than a decade after her last movie, her coveted look is back" (The Guardian).

"I have harbored a strong dislike of summer activity dating back to a series of failed attempts at camp during childhood...."

"Maine takes up a lot of my mental space, probably because I don’t go there. People in Maine have undiscovered hamlets where everyone has been coming for ages and they barbecue amiably with authentic locals at night. Others belong to Old Families with a private island off the coast tucked into the family tree, a place where only family have been allowed to go for hundreds of years. On this island they have sailboats and clambakes and croquet and break out periodically into song. These kinds of summers are plainly out of reach. The 1 percent of the 1 percent don’t need to plan summer because they have it built in. They have a place on the Vineyard or in the Hamptons. They belong to a club where everyone speaks golf and there’s a long waiting list even for those who can afford it. Summer is when the maw of income inequality gapes wide open and only people who summer are allowed in.... I marvel at people with second homes when I can barely stay on top of my one, and summer traffic stresses me out. And what did I miss, really?..."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "It’s Too Late for Summer Now" (NYT).

Why I read something this blurry.

I'd just watched "What a Way to Go" — the Criterion Channel is featuring Shirley MacLaine movies — and checking Rotten Tomatoes, I saw that Joan Didion wrote a review in the May 1964 issue of Vogue. I could subscribe to Vogue just to read that paragraph, but I found that by calming down and believing in myself, I could read it. It's not much different from reading without one's reading glasses. It's an apt and pithy review. "What a Way to Go" was a big movie in its day, so it deserves the bad reviews it got, but 60 years later, it's fun to look at the stars and the costumes and the sets. The Hollywood that produced it no longer exists. Nothing to get mad at now. Here's a sentence from the contemporaneous NYT review by Bosley Crowther:

Inspired by a Gwen Davis story, which has not swum into my ken, so I cannot tell you how fairly or fouly it has been used, the team of musical-comedy writers is making kookie jokes about a girl whose sad fate it is to marry a succession of burgeoning millionaires.

The "girl" hates money, loves Henry David Thoreau, and only wants to live the simple life, but the movie seems to have been made on the theory that the way to make good art is by spending as much money as possible.

"Mr. Trump ended the first day of public trading $4.6 billion richer on paper...."

I'm reading "Trump’s Social Media Company Opens New Avenue for Conflicts of Interest/Ethics experts say Trump Media, now a publicly traded company, would present a new way for foreign actors or others to influence Donald J. Trump, if he is elected president" (NYT).

Isn't it funny how his haters got him kicked off Twitter and — only because of that — he made his own website and 3 years later, it makes him $4.6 billion?

Anyway, this new Times article, by Sharon LaFraniere — "an investigative reporter currently focusing on Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential campaign" (I love the plural) — casts shade on Trump's insanely good fortune. 

"Trump social media stock skyrockets in first day of trading."

NBC News reports.

ADDED: From the NYT article on the subject: "Before the merger, shares of the shell company... had long behaved as something of a proxy for investor sentiment about Mr. Trump.... By most traditional measures, Trump Media’s valuation is inordinately high. The company took in just $3.3 million in revenue during the first nine months of last year, all from advertising on Truth Social, and recorded a loss of $49 million."

So... overvaluation seems to be a theme with Trump. Here the market is doing the valuation. It's not Trump's valuation his own property and the DA's alternative valuation— the subject of the New York lawsuit.

Any hope of characterizing the buying of the stock, bidding up the price, as an illegal campaign contribution? It's handing billions of dollars to Trump.

"No matter how much one disapproves of Mr. Trump, or wishes that his presidential ambitions fail, every defendant deserves due process, including recourse to appeal...."

"Seeking appeal should not be effectively impossible, or expensive to the point of imposing vast and irreparable harm, particularly when a defendant has a colorable argument before appellate judges, as Mr. Trump appears to have...."

That's the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

"Precisely how much cash Trump has is not known. He claimed to have '400-plus' million dollars during an April deposition..."

"... in the fraud case. In an August financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics, he listed hundreds of bank and investment accounts with a total value of between $252 million and $924 million.... Trump has to keep some cash on hand to operate his properties, such as his golf courses and hotels, as maintenance or investment needs require, according to banking experts. Freeing up hundreds of millions of dollars more would almost certainly require Trump to borrow against or sell some of his real estate.... A surety company might accept Trump’s properties as collateral, but that carries its own risks. Experts in issuing bonds may not be equipped to do their own investigations into Trump’s property values, and they may not know what his assets are really worth...."

From "Clock is ticking for Trump to post bonds worth half a billion dollars/Experts say a cash crunch in coming weeks could thrust the former president’s business into greater uncertainty than it has seen in decades" (WaPo).

"they may not know what his assets are really worth" — Ironically, that is what the case itself was about. 

I wonder if Trump's claim that he has "400-plus" million dollars influenced the judge to come up with $355 million penalty (plus interest) as the penalty in the case.

"Donald J. Trump might one day have to pay E. Jean Carroll the $83.3 million she was awarded, but that day is not today...."

"Mr. Trump can pay the $83.3 million to the court, which will hold the money while the appeal is pending. This is what he did last year when a jury ordered him to pay Ms. Carroll $5.5 million in a related case. Or, Mr. Trump can try to secure a bond.... It would... require Mr. Trump to find a financial institution willing to lend him a large sum of money at a time when he is in significant legal jeopardy.... He has enough cash to cover the verdict in various accounts, a person close to him said. In recent years, Mr. Trump has unloaded several assets, including his Washington hotel, which sold for $375 million.... The New York attorney general is seeking a $370 million penalty from the former president and his family business as part of a civil fraud trial that wrapped up this month...."

The NYT reports.

Meanwhile: "Rudy Giuliani targets Donald Trump for ‘unpaid legal fees’ in new bankruptcy filing/Mr Giuliani filed for bankruptcy last month after he was ordered to pay $148m to Georgia election workers he defamed" (Independent). The filing lists a "possible claim for unpaid legal fees against Donald J Trump" in an amount that is "undetermined."

"It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions... to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses."

Said Theodore Roosevelt, quoted in "Theodore Rex" by Edmund Morris (commission earned). 

Context:

"He told me that his whole philosophy was to make sure that nobody ever noticed you. Don’t stand out, don’t do anything, or anybody will be able to criticize you."

Said Alison Holt, the sister of Geoffrey Holt, the subject of "He lived a quiet life — then donated $3.8 million to his small N.H. town" (WaPo).

[Geoffrey] Holt worked as a social studies and driver’s education teacher and in a grain mill before retiring and moving to the trailer park, where [he worked] as a handyman and groundskeeper.... Holt was shy and took to others slowly.... Holt collected die-cast cars and model trains and spoke excitedly about automobile history. In his mobile home and a nearby shed, he... was content to spend most of his time at home tinkering with model cars.... He dressed plainly in clothes he rarely replaced. He owned an old car but never used it, opting instead to ride his mower to a nearby Walmart if he needed to shop....

He had no children, and the sister told him she didn't need the money, so he left it to the town, where people barely knew him. Why did he have so much money? It seems that's what happens if you're frugal, invest what you don't spend, and live to be 82.

"Donald Trump... is $300 million shy of the cutoff for The Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people..."

"... the annual measurement that Trump has obsessed over for decades, relentlessly lying to reporters to try to vault himself higher on the list. His net worth is down more than $600 million from a year ago. The biggest reason: Truth Social, his social-media business.... Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million. Also in trouble: his office buildings, which are down by an estimated $170 million. The majority of that decline comes from 555 California Street, a 1.8 million square-foot complex in the heart of San Francisco, where Trump holds a 30% stake.... The problem is not the property’s performance to date... but... its outlook for the future.... The neighborhood around the building is also struggling.... There is a bright spot in Trump’s portfolio. As fewer people spend time in the office, more are goofing off on the golf course...."

From "Donald Trump Drops Off The Forbes 400 For Second Time In 3 Years" (Forbes).

Here's the Forbes 400. Nice illustration at the top of the page.

How does Forbes know so much? Trump's on trial — a trial that needs to go on for months — over what he's worth.

"Until recently, Bryan Johnson was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to infuse one litre of his teenage son’s youthful plasma into his own ageing blood stream every month."

"'I’ve never paid more attention to what he’s eating … because that was going into my body,' the 46-year-old American tech entrepreneur says.... He also pumped his own plasma into his 70-year-old father’s body to help improve his declining physical and cognitive health: 'It was one of the most meaningful moments in his entire life. And it was the same for me.'... But Johnson had just begun using an algorithm to prevent biological ageing, which sifts through all research on longevity to create the best treatment plan and he was using his own body as a petri dish for it. Doctors have told Johnson he has the heart of a 37-year-old and the lungs of an 18-year-old...."

From "The Immortals: meet the billionaires forking out for eternal life" (The Guardian).

"It seems Ice Cube has become quite the conservative media darling lately, sitting down with not just Carlson, but Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan as well."

"He’s joining a long list of rappers – Kanye West, Da Baby, Kodak Black, Lil Pump – who have all put themselves in dangerous proximity to conservative politicians even as rightwing populism threatens to destroy their communities.... So what do these rappers have in common with rightwingers who wouldn’t otherwise touch them with a 10ft pole? Shared values. In discussions about money, gender identity, public health and a variety of social issues, rappers and rightwingers have a lot more in common than you’d immediately think. Many people from both groups share hypermasculinity, conservative Christian values, and a distrust of social institutions (justified or not); and on this common ground sits a messy and dangerous alliance full of people who ordinarily would hate each other, but have come together to make vulnerable people their enemy...."

Writes Tayo Bero in "Why are Black rappers aligning themselves with the right? Ice Cube has joined a long list of rappers who have cuddled up with conservative pundits and politicians" (The Guardian).

"Doug Burgum is offering $20 to people donating $1 to his campaign. Is that legal?"

Asks NPR.

The campaign's offer is good for the first 50,000 donors — and is an unconventional bid to meet the fundraising thresholds required to be onstage for next month's Republican primary debate.... To participate in the debate, candidates must have at least 40,000 donors. They also have to bring in donations from 200 or more donors in at least 20 states.