… whose fall has pulled on the heartstrings of all New Yorkers. Recall this 2022 NYT paragraph:
He got rid of two jets and placed his 280-foot superyacht on the market for $106 million. Princeton University, to which Mr. Perelman had pledged $65 million to go toward construction of a new residential college, announced in 2021 that the building would no longer be named in his honor when he failed to meet the original payment schedule.
Things have only gotten worse since then. A fire at one of his homes so damaged five of his paintings that he has made a claim for their full value with his insurer. The insurer notes that there isn’t any damage.
Perelman in his reply points out that they have lost their “oomph” and he wants $410 million.
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Ah, the good old days.
In 2012, a volunteer firefighter who responded to a call from the Creeks, the investor Ron Perelman’s 58-acre estate in East Hampton, discovered that Perelman had constructed or renovated many buildings without permits, including a 5,800-square-foot habitable barn, a 4,200-square-foot carriage house, and a small synagogue. Attorney Leonard Ackerman, who represented Perelman and has been involved in many big Hamptons land-use cases, likes to say that he practices “forgiveness law.” For Perelman, forgiveness at the Creeks meant ripping six bedrooms out of the carriage house, tearing down part of a cabana, and revegetating 70,000 square feet of illegally cleared wetlands.
… here. The fancier the neighborhood, the scummier your neighbors. How many times must I tell you this?
You’re finally able to afford a 60 million dollar mansion in LA’s fanciest neighborhood of them all – Holmby Hills. But you forgot Fran Lebowitz’s famous reminder: “No one earns $100 million. You steal $100 million.”
Example: Your next door neighbor used his position as Armenia’s minister of finance to take as much money out of the country as he could through bribes; and now you get to watch the feds gather on his driveway and go through all of his possessions.
I mean, if you wanted to watch the police remove your neighbor’s furniture right there in front of his house, you could have saved money and moved to South Carolina.
But maybe you don’t care that more than a few of your neighbors are domestic and international criminals. You’re probably one yourself.
No, not languages. You’re a smart kid from Nowheresville who got into Harvard. You’re totally able to learn languages.
What you need to learn is languidity. Someone needs to demonstrate to you how to be swish, posh, and highborn, even though you went to public school in Akron. You will not get taken on at Cravath Swain if you can’t learn languid.
Languid is Algernon in Earnest; languid is George in Who’s Afraid; languid is Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, and Lady Utterwood in Heartbreak.
Languid in the real world is Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, and Lady Emily Lennox. All of these are your models. Or, you know.
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As pointed out by a number of defenders of legacy admissions, the overarching value in your going to Harvard among America’s aristocrats is that by watching them at close daily quarters you can learn how to throw off Akron and assume Cambridge (either England or America). You can learn to absorb upper class attributes, primary among them a steady unflappable sangfroid.
You come from the jumpy world that supplies COPS footage. You are going to need to scrub all of that and calm way the hell down.
A fellowship year in England will further refine your languidity and is highly recommended.
All of this does indeed constitute one of the few reasonable defenses of legacy admits you’ll encounter: Without a critical mass of uppers at the Ivies, America’s middles will have a harder time getting to the top.
But how lovely the karma, dear readers!
Thanks for the memory
Of Oversight and Rush
Of telling Fluke to hush
And women who were raped
Could simply pull the lever “FLUSH”
How lovely it was
So thanks for the memory
Of donor Foster Freiss
His aspirin gibe: so nice!
And now today it’s just as gay
With bounty hunters’ price.
How lovely it is
Already even Fox is cutting away from you; and now there’s a new mouth in town and she’s gunning for your job!
Mehridith Venverloh isn’t a name that easily rolls off the tongue, but UD would counsel you to learn it, because no one’s gonna cut away from what Mehridith has to say. She writes a tweet that’s hard to beat, and I’m guessing she’s already caught the attention of the boss.
So read and learn.
Enraged at Trump’s defeat, Mehridith began her series of tweets very classily – by quoting Christian intellectual and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.” Bonhoeffer was referring to Hitler, who had him killed for his anti-Nazi actions and words.
Mehridith is of course referring to America’s reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, Kamala Harris, about whom she goes on to say:
Yes! All she needs to be qualified is a black pussy! No brain needed!!
How proud Bonhoeffer would be of you, Mehridith, for refusing to be silent in the face of evil.
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And how disappointed he would be to see that you have, a few hours after your statement of conscience, blamed your tweet on your meds. Tsk.
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And wait a minute. What meds would be so dangerous in their side effects as to have prompted a woman like Mehridith Venverloh to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
… threatens to sue The Lincoln Project.
With Rudolph Giuliani busy “reach[ing] into his legal briefs and whip[ping] out his subpoenas,” Trumps in search of a real tough-guy attorney have returned to the source — Mr. FUCK YOU HOW DARE YOU I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE YOU FUCKING SHIT — Marc Kasowitz to defend their honor. Marc’s late-night threatening demented rant to a stranger who dared to question his ways made all the papers back in 2017; since then, he has maintained his gentle humble disposition.
He brags to friends he makes anywhere from $10 million to $30 million per year. He owns an apartment in a white-glove building on Park Avenue and a mansion in Westchester County. He travels by private jet and, when in New York, is driven around in a black Cadillac SUV. He owns at least two horses, according to a lawsuit Kasowitz once filed against his daughter’s equestrian stable.
From the start, [his firm,] Kasowitz Benson had a hard-drinking culture that its leaders epitomized.
“It’s like a time warp,” said one former employee, citing the firm’s “macho, scotch-drinking, fist-fighting” ethos. Multiple former attorneys said they saw Kasowitz under the influence at the office, an accusation Kasowitz denies.
He’s currently being sued by several ex-colleagues – it looks as though he stiffed them cuz his firm is losing money.
So if, like Ivanka and Jared, you want your honor restored, it’s hard to think of a more honorable guy than our old buddy Marc. Marc follows goodness and mercy all the days of his life, and his righteous indignation on behalf of innocents trampled by the bad boys at The Lincoln Project just sounds so right.
But it might be an uphill legal battle. Recall Lara Trump’s explanation that an angry mob at a Trump rally screaming LOCK HER UP LOCK HER UP about recently imperiled Gretchen Whitmer was simply part of a “fun, light, atmosphere.” Did Jared say No it wasn’t. It was obviously a threatening thing to do, and I hereby disavow it?
Of course he didn’t, because as Lara points out it was clearly all in fun! How could the advertisement in question, which doesn’t even promise to put Jared and his wife in prison, aim to create anything other than a fun, light, atmosphere?
… flyover a week or so ago. Would have made a terrific additional visual in this.
America eats shit in some obvious ways (see the post below this one), but is also an amazing place. When idjits on the school board in Palmer Alaska banned some of the twentieth century’s greatest novels (details here), people there rose up and blew them a big ol’ collective raspberry.
Ever since an Alaska school board voted to remove five books from elective high school classes, the titles of the works have come alive throughout the community. One city council member reads excerpts from her favorite book on Facebook every night. An attorney began a movement to reward students who read them. Hundreds have joined a Facebook group to voice their opposition to the removal. And a local bookstore owner says donations have been pouring in since the vote from community members who want her shop to give teenagers those books for free. “There’s been a huge response from the community,” says Mary Ann Cockle, owner of Fireside Books in Palmer. “The outpouring of support and concern about banning and censorship has been quite a surprise — but in a good way.”
Nice one.
Her Representative, Jamie Raskin, calls Giuliani’s two Ukrainian … uh… associates… “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”
UD‘s figuring most pols are going to go with Mutt and Jeff or Tom and Jerry or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The 8th District does Shakespeare.
Transcript of Rudy Giuliani’s remarks to his soon to be third ex-wife.
No, wait. That was him on Fox today.