I Was Featured In A New York Magazine Article About The Ultra-Rich
The writer of the article, Lane Brown, did great work talking to me and other “ultra-rich” people. I spent over three hours with him and his excellent fact checker Rachel Stone. 1
Most of Lane’s interviewees took shelter under the protection of anonymity. Only two people went on record: me and billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank judge.
The article and my contributions to it touch on many of the themes I’ve written about. A few excerpts.
Entitlement
[Roberts] thought of Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby — “careless people who break things and let other people clean up the mess. They’re the literary paradigm of [wealthy people turning into monsters].”
“There’s a lot of infidelity among wealthy people because the men just feel entitled to a newer model of their first wife. And they don’t think about how it might affect their children.”
Powerful men confused about the meaning of legacy
“Why did [Howard Lutnick] visit Epstein’s island? Probably because he thought it would make him look powerful,” Roberts said. “I think it was impulsive. A lot of wealthy people don’t really think about what legacy means. They think it means having a building named after you. They don’t think about the more important part: Are you remembered as a good person?”
The entire article, thoughtful and thorough, is well worth reading.
New York Magazine Article 3/13/26: What Does Extreme Wealth Do to Your Brain
The NYMag article recalled to mind the essay below, originally published in August of 2024, which seems like forever ago.
Shorter than the original because I had more time to edit it. 2
Beautiful Women And The Indecency Of Powerful Men
August 2024
Last Saturday, I was at a cocktail party in the Hamptons, a gathering without the extravagance and Gilded Age showmanship people may associate with the phrase “Hamptons cocktail party.”
Dress was casual. No celebrities in sight. There was, however, a violinist and flautist who at my request played a perfect rendition of the theme from Game of Thrones.
The backyard setting was beautiful in its simplicity of tall green hedges on either side connecting the house’s back porch to a back wall of subtly colorful wildflowers. A human-sized, square-shaped outdoor room.
When we got home from the party, my wife Debbie told me that a married man of long acquaintance had complimented her a number of times on how “good” she looked. It was flirtation.
My wife was alone when this happened. I doubt the man would have taken those liberties if either I or the man’s wife had been nearby.
At the time of that party I was living in two different worlds
It happens to me with some books, the sense that I’m living inside two worlds at the same time. The world of the book I’m reading affects my mood, my language, my perceptions.
This happened to me with The Custom Of The Country, Edith Wharton’s brilliant creation of a world set in an earlier Gilded Age circa 1910. It’s a world of dwindling old money society superseded and nearly effaced by the triumph of new and gaudy money. 3
I was reading Custom at the time of the party and so I thought about the flirtation of the man with Debbie through that earlier, Gilded Age lens.
If there still exists a world of old money with its exacting standards of behavior and disdain for commerce, I’m either not aware of it or have been excluded from its precincts. Good and bad taste, good and bad manners can be found all over.
In fact, it seems that vast wealth and power are contrary to taste and good behavior. Divorce and affairs among the wealthiest of billionaires seem endemic. Just as they upgrade their gigantic playthings–––yachts with heliports, private islands and vast estates that a James Bond villain would be proud of–––they upgrade their wives for younger, more attractive versions.
The spectacularly beautiful Undine Spragg
Young Undine4 is the heroine of Wharton’s Custom of the Country. She is poor by New York society standards but uses her superior physical beauty to capture men who can deliver what she craves.
She wants to be the center of attention in front of the right people in the right places, wearing the best dresses and the most precious jewels. All of it with the goal of displaying her beauty to painful effect so that men adore, admire, and dream of her and women envy her.
She has no concept of money except as necessary to pay for the travel, accommodations, clothes, and jewelry in service of the display to which she feels entitled.
Men want Undine for her beauty, and the novel is the story of Undine using men and men trying to use her. Sex is implicit (remember, Wharton published Custom in 1913), but Undine is not motivated by sex.
Instead, sex for her is a complement to her beauty, to be used only when she deems it appropriate. No man forces himself on Undine. She remains in control.
I find myself rooting for Undine because she’s consistent and honest about what she wants. Plus she’s tough.
Her experiences with old money New York and aristocratic Paris teach her “shades of conduct, turns of speech, tricks of attitude” about which the new Wall Street money is ignorant.
So as Undine observes the behavior of her current Wall Street man, who can buy her everything she wants, she finds herself “jarred” and “irritated” by:
“…his loudness and redness, his misplaced joviality, his familiarity with the servants, his alternating swagger and ceremony with her friends…”
I have pity for Undine when she learns that her social ambitions can never be fully satisfied.
Imagining Undine In 2024
Where would Undine Spragg be today? Perhaps a model, an influencer, an actress.
Married to a wealthy man? Not necessarily if she earned enough on her own to satisfy her material ambitions. That possibility is progress.
But there’s another scenario that troubles me.
A young teenage beauty such as Undine might fall prey to the worst of the wealthy and powerful, those who lack a code, who lack scruples, and who too often lack consequences for behavior that in Wharton’s (idealized) world would have condemned a man to exile from decent society.
I think of Bill Clinton who as president was a sexual predator, having shtupped5 young intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office and then lied about it both under oath and to the country. Clinton has never apologized. 6
Apparently, if you possess enough political juice and are a charming enough scoundrel, you get a free pass. You’re invited everywhere; you’re lauded everywhere. That’s not right.
Clinton spoke at this week’s Democratic Convention. One of the Convention’s themes was to defend the reproductive rights of women; its main theme was to defeat the outrageous misogynist and abuser of women Donald Trump.
I thought Clinton’s appearance was off-brand and tone deaf. It’s long past time for the Democratic party to cut him loose. 7
What is disgraceful
Maybe I’m living in a dream world. Maybe my indignation is a form of self-righteousness.
But I have a wife, a daughter and daughter-in-law, five nieces, sisters-in-law, many female cousins, and soon I hope, a granddaughter. [Note: now I have two!]
Through them, my protective instinct for all women is always top of mind. So it makes me furious to think that men abuse women and get away with it.
Of course any male abuser is a disgrace. But I’ll go further. Anyone who gives social sanction or pays homage to a known male abuser is complicit in that disgrace.
Finally, I hope it’s clear that whether behavior is or is not legally punished should not be the arbiter of what is disgraceful.
Question for the comments: How have your views on the wealthy changed since August 2024 and why?
Ultra High Net Worth is usually defined as having at least $30 million of net financial assets.
Blaise Pascal is the originator of the quote about more time, shorter writing:
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
"I have made this [letter] longer than usual only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter".
Thanks to a. natasha joukovsky for citing Custom OF The Country as her favorite Wharton, which led me to read it and adopt it as my favorite as well.
Here’s how Wharton describes Undine near the beginning of the book.
“Undine Spragg…swept round…with one of the quick turns that revealed her youthful flexibility. She was always doubling and twisting on herself, and every movement she made seemed to start at the nape of her neck, just below the lifted roll of reddish-gold hair, and flow without a break through her whole slim length to the tips of her fingers and the points of her slender restless feet.”
Sydney Sweeney is set to star as Undine in a forthcoming movie adaptation. She’s certainly beautiful but does not fit Wharton’s description.
Shtupped is Yiddish for having sex with. Not a word you’re likely to encounter in an Edith Wharton novel.
Clinton’s sexual abuse was not confined to Monica Lewinsky. (And there is no question that it was abusive for a 49 year-old president of the United States to take advantage of a 22 year-old intern.)
See this 2017 article in the Atlantic that takes a fresh look at how Clinton’s pattern of behavior was rationalized by Gloria Steinem, among others, because it was politically expedient to do so.
Concluding quote from the article:
“If Weinstein and Mark Halperin and Louis C. K. and all the rest can be held accountable, so can our former president and so can his party, which so many Americans so desperately need to rise again.”
I recently published an essay featuring my appearance at a Clinton event in 1998 called
Blinded By The Light
"There’s a resilience you probably only get from confronting scarcity and defeating it." Too true.
I commend you for your willingness to discuss the moral consequences of the sad, entitlement-driven, hedonistic behavior that has become so common among your peers. But, David, you go a step further by signing your name to your words. That’s the exact kind of courage we need. Thank you for championing the dignity and grace of the women in your life—especially your granddaughters who need this now as they form the foundation of their strong and healthy lives.