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Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Marjorie Williams

Charity Cases

Posted Monday, July 13, 1998, at 9:33 AM ET

Dear Tim,

I like this morning's New York Times story about the unassuming Brooklyn couple who left an estate worth three-quarters of a billion dollars. The paper had the wit to construct the story as a yarn, whose main point of interest is that Donald and Mildred Othmer just happened to have so much money because way back in the early sixties they invested $25,000 with their old family friend Warren Buffett.

But I'm bothered by my increasing sense that the Times has soaked up the money-madness of the city it describes. I'm not objecting to the paper's voluminous basic business coverage, and I don't just mean that it's part of our culture-wide tendency to lionize business leaders. I have this nagging, anecdotal impression that it's unconsciously fallen in love with the good times. The average reader it speaks to seems, increasingly, to be someone who has a strong opinion about which Hampton is best. A prime example of its money passion was its Sunday Magazine's recent special issue on money, in which the one article about a couple who put their money in a simple savings account and never bought on credit presented them as an exhibit fit for a museum of Quaint Attitudes. And even when I read the issue I had the feeling it was only the culmination of a paper-wide attitude. Am I off-base?

One of the things I liked about the Othmers, by the way, was that they gave most of their money to what the Times calls "modest institutions of little renown"--things like the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the University of Nebraska and Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, whose endowment will suddenly quintuple. The world has enough near-billionaires who are anxious to give their money to Harvard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Or, for that matter, to self-aggrandizement. The Washington Post says that Ralph Lauren will announce today that he is donating $13 million to the Smithsonian toward the restoration of the Star Spangled Banner, the 34-by-30 flag that flew at Fort McHenry and supposedly inspired the National Anthem. The flag, says Lauren, "was an inspiration to Francis Scott Key, it's been an inspiration for me, and I want it to be an inspiration for future generations." Yuck. I mean, I know the money has to come from somewhere, but are we safe in assuming that there won't be a little polo player woven in among the stars?

I know the World Cup leaves you cold, but check out at least the tone of the stories about France's victory yesterday in the final. The celebrations of the French have this rather touching quality--"Zut, alors! We are also good at ze manly pursuits!"

Finally, an important cultural note: Ann Landers has her first Viagra letter this morning. As in, "I was never crazy about sex, even in my younger days....I've made it clear that the minute he walks into this house with those pills, I am walking out." Landers has quite a racket going, in constantly airing the complaints of older women who don't like having sex with their husbands--while also subtly presenting them as pathetic losers. (If a woman loves her man, Landers writes in this case, "and wants him to enjoy the ultimate in marital bliss, she will be happy that there is now a drug that can help him recapture the sexual energy of his younger years.") It's enough to make me feel sympathy for "Nameless in Philadelphia."

Enthusiastically,

Marjorie

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576
from: Marjorie Williams

Charity Cases

Posted Monday, July 13, 1998, at 9:33 AM ET
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Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Marjorie Williams is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
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