Poor Little Rich Girl

You really have to feel pity for the sufferings of the ultra-rich. Take the sad case of George David, C.E.O. of United Technologies, and his estranged wife, Countess Marie Douglas-David. The countess is unhappy with her divorce settlement and has opened up the case, with much dirt being shoveled up, to get a better settlement. And how can you not feel sorry for the poor dear who can't possibly exist on a mere $53,000 per week, including a clothes allowance of $4500 weekly and $1000 for make-up? It's enough to make a girl lose sleep at night...

It's the old Marie Antoinetter syndrome: let them eat cake, her response to the public outcries for more bread and food prior to the French Revolution. It is never easy to contemplate the heights (or, more accurately, depths) of pure selfishness and calloused indifference achieved by the ultra-rich as they assess their needs and expected rewards. One begins to understand the old adage, noblesse oblige, a kind of surrealistic syllogism---I am rich and privileged; I have special needs; therefore, I deserve more.

They obviously don't listen to the news or read the papers and aren't aware of the economic crisis most of us are enduring as they nestle in their luxurious egocentric cocoons. Don't you often wish someone could turn a fire hose on that little cocoon and shock them into reality? Scott Fitzgerald summed it up nicely in his great novel. The Great Gatsby, when he stated, "The very rich are very different from you and me." Here, in the Davis case, another bit of living proof.