SELF-MADE: THE DENIAL OF A VANDERBILT

It’s been universally praised. Yet from my perspective in his new book Anderson Cooper gets a few things rather wrong. “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty” was written with New York Times writer and historian Katherine Howe.

Anderson Cooper with his son Wyatt, whom he says he will not leave a fortune?

Mr. Cooper and I are both gay progressives with interests in history and politics. But is it privilege and a life lived surrounded by beautiful people enjoying the best of everything that causes him to see things so differently from me?

1924: Gloria Vanderbilt with her mother, also Gloria Vanderbilt, aka Mrs. Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt

Long the vacation spot of America’s upper class Newport, Rhode Island is Vanderbilt country. I have a Facebook page, Newport Lost and Found. Here some spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating posh people, especially if they lived grandly and are dead. Cooper hits the nail on the head talking about how sports, film and music stars have replaced the ordinary rich in the public’s esteem. Glimpsed on the red carpet of the Met Ball, it’s Beyoncé and JayZ, not Amanda Burden or the most recent Robert Goelet that everyday Americans envy and admire most.

But for want of a hefty trust fund was Anderson Cooper’s youth so disadvantaged? Can we pity him as we might pity underserved kids-of-color raised in the hood, who contemplate few prospects for success, and often jail, or death by twenty?

Cooper insists, “The ideology of New York City was, is, and probably always will be profit.” But however much that might be true, his family, the Vanderbilts, has proved with their houses, clothes, collections, cars, the museums they established, and with their style, that there is much more involved. However urgent pursuit of profit may have been, it was tempered by a greater pursuit, a quest for beauty and excellence!

Some examples of the assured Vanderbilt style

Following his father’s unexpected death, Cooper says he realized, that for all her precious possessions or her eponymous jeans brand, “my mom had no plan”. “I’d been told that, beyond preparatory school and Yale, there’d be no extra help. That was when I resolved to survive!”

1976: Gloria Vanderbilt with her two youngest sons, Anderson Cooper and Carter Vanderbilt Cooper

Claiming a more neutral identity was a part of his strategy. Rejecting his high society heritage, Cooper sought to avoid the kind of dismissive criticism leveled at him by a tourist I once conducted around Newport. “Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt?” she puzzled “I thought he made it on his own.”

Rejecting the Vanderbilts and other Exaggerations

Somehow, promoting his book to expectant pundits, Cooper has had lots more to say that’s of greater interest than much of what his book reveals. “I grew up not really knowing anything about them,” he told Ellen DeGeneres of his mother’s illustrious family. “And my mom, frankly, actually didn’t know much about them either, because she had a very tortured background with them growing up…”

1925: Gloria Vanderbilt as an infant at the Breakers, photographed the day her father died

It’s perhaps due to this lack of family familiarity that Cooper sometimes seems content to repeat sensational stories and exaggerations to make a point. With oversimplification he asserts: “One guy made all the money, [Commodore Vanderbilt],…he died in 1877, the richest man in America, with $100-M. One out of every twenty dollars in circulation was his. He had more money than the U. S. Treasury. And subsequent generations, just spent the money. They had big houses, and yachts…” he adds, concluding, as if he didn’t “live large” too. “I’m glad I’m not a Vanderbilt!”

His “just”, his self-denouncement reminds me of how I once denied being queer and disdained being Black. Discounting heredity, Cooper contradicts what any African American knows. Be they a White President or “White Trash”, be they a Native American princess or a Black field hand, by way of knowledge and cunning, servility or valor, genius or villainy, one inherits a good deal more from one’s antecedents than just money.

Probated wills reveal the vast sums in question. Property tax assessments and account books provide additional evidence of how much of the Vanderbilt fortune was wantonly squandered, as Cooper contends. Near the beginning, reading that one Vanderbilt room was “paneled in platinum,” as opposed to decorated with wall paintings against a background of platinum leaf, one knows what to expect. Because no matter how lavish or costly the place is, there’s no room in the world that is “paneled in platinum”!

This is the sedate space Anderson Cooper and historian Katherine Howe describe as, “paneled in platinum”!

Designed by French architect Richard H. A. Bowes van der Boyen the morning room of the Breakers was executed in Paris by Jules Allard et ses Fils. Disassembled, it was shipped to America in pieces. Decorative paneled of the muses and arabesque were painted on platinum leaf to articulate the ornate decor

One 1890’s Vanderbilt house in Newport, The Breakers, built by his great-grandparents, when steelworkers earned $10.00 weekly, is said to have cost $7-M. Of course in 1897 it was only evaluated by the tax collector as worth $983,000. Still it must follow, that another family palace, Marble House, assessed then at just $800,000 and offered for sale. for $1-M, is reputed to have cost $11-M!

The Breakers, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt for family holidays at Newport for Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Constructed between 1893–1895, the palatial villa replaced an earlier structuer which burned

Finished in 1892, Marble House, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt with his great collaborative patron, Alva Erskine Vanderbilt, latterly, Mrs. Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont. Following her groundbreaking divorce and remarriage, Mrs. Belmont was turned down offering it to Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago, for $1-M

Living Large Today!

Like earlier Vanderbilts, Anderson Cooper has three stupendous houses of his own. In the country there’s a $5-M, ten-thousand square-foot Tudor revival manor at Litchfield, Connecticut. Built on 160 acres in 1908, it was designed by Philadelphia architect Wilson Eyre, who founded House & Garden magazine. In town the converted Greenwich Village firehouse Cooper calls home may lack the ballroom his Aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Fifth Avenue place had when his mom lived there, but with a private gymnasium, it’s still pretty uncommon. So is a get-away by the sea in the Brazilian rainforest. By way of “simplicity” operatic in contradiction, it’s reminiscent of Marie Antoinette’s “farm” at Versailles. None of Cooper’s abodes is as grandiose as his great-grandparents’ opulent “summer cottage”, conceived as a setting to equal the court of Napoleon III, The Breakers. But in modern terms, appealing to modern tastes, they are astonishing.

Anderson Cooper’s Tudor revival manor at Litchfield, Connecticut

The converted Greenwich Village firehouse Anderson Cooper calls home

Today, gyms are more popular than ballrooms.

Although Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s house 871 Fifth Avenue, at 68th Street was demolished soon after she died in 1942, the French Rocco boiserie from her ballroom can still be purchased

Anderson Cooper’s Casa Cooper, an evocation of Marie Antoinette’s la Hameau de la Reine by the sea in the Brazilian rainforest

Marie Antoinette’s la Hameau de la Reine

Earning in excess of $16-M yearly now, Anderson Cooper is possessed of an estimated fortune comparable to the one that made his great-grandfather’s father, William Henry Vanderbilt, when he died in 1885, the richest man in America. He had doubled the $100-M his father Commodore Vanderbilt left. Has Cooper made it all on his own? Sure! But did dazzlingly boyish good looks and his mother’s fashion connections, which enabled him to earn a good living modeling as a teen, or the education and further connections gained at Dalton and Yale count for nothing?

Anderson Cooper. Before big biceps and silver hair, there was plenty of boyish charm

Cooper best understands the rules which govern his world and era. The arcane confusion of primogenitor and a host of other symbolic trappings imitating rituals of dynastic aristocracy, offend him. Multiple names and the repetition of “family names”, down the generations, to him suggest snobbery. He detests all the things that defined the elite to his parents, things that also seem to trouble the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Like many Royal Highnesses and other young men of fashion, when not working, Cooper avoids wearing a tie. A century ago, every man attending a celebratory dinner, or a performance of the Philharmonic, the opera or a Broadway opening night wore formal evening dress. Today, only musicians and waiters do. Whether in the tabloids or in books about their stately or stylish homes, British nobles or celebrities, with their children and pets, are most often photographed casually. Hatless, glove-less, sometimes barefooted, they smile from the opulent rooms created by their grand ancestors, or their grand decorator. Like Anderson Cooper, in an epoch when it’s cool to be woke, their message to the world is, “We are just like you…” But they are not. And neither is he.

More than Mere Big Spenders?

For all their exploitative plunder, Cooper is mistaken to regard the colossal riches of the Vanderbilts as theirs alone. With all that was gained through their enterprise they helped to launch the wealth of a nation as their railroads and steam ships linked products and markets worldwide. With the fruits of their ingenuity, they built houses in New York comparable to those owned by royalty and the nobility of London and Paris. Of course, by perpetuating an opulent way of life doomed to disappear, the Vanderbilts, just as all the people they copied, miscalculated. With changes in the international economy and political upheavals, not only Vanderbilt houses were torn down. Nor was it Vanderbilts alone who suffered enormous reverses. Proudly some upheld an architectural heritage which might easily instead to have been monetized. Several Vanderbilt heirs forfeited greater riches and ease for lives which are still quite comfortable.

Yet it wasn’t always easy to hold true, to follow the example of those who set out to produce dynastic seats, capable of lasting centuries. Hoping aesthetically to equal anything abroad with all the generosity of the Medici, Vanderbilt patronage elevated national tastes. They also made the careers of numerous creative Americans: Richard Morris Hunt, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John Lafarge, Augustus Saint Gaudens, McKim, Mead & White, Karl Bitter, John O. Jackson, Candice Wheeler, Ogden Codman — -all benefited from Vanderbit ambition. So did African American artists like Justin Sandridge, Bert Williams and Aida Overton Walker.

Vanderbilts: Monarchs among Us

Despite having grand houses, Mrs. Frederick Vanderbilt maintained a rather sedate social life. Some found it unpardonable that she had been previously married and divorced.

This left Cornelius and Willie K. Vanderbilt, the two eldest sons of William Henry Vanderbilt, to aspire to social primacy, based on being the richest among their peers. Cornelius wife, Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt, nee Gwynne, felt securely superior to all. Her husband was the senior, wealthier Vanderbilt, the “head of the family”. Furthermore, Alice Vanderbilt felt her own her family’s Colonial Newport ancestors lent her Vanderbilt branch additional prestige and luster.

Alva Erskine Vanderbilt, nee Smith, her sister-in-law, was not so willing to concede dominion to Alice. Raised in France she’d gained impeccable taste. Consequentially, even if smaller, her houses and their contents were exceptional, some said smarter than the domiciles of the Cornelius Vanderbilts’. It was Alva Vanderbilt who, by out-maneuvering Mrs. Astor, first gained the family admittance to society.

Perennially, lavish parties and elegant surroundings are the currency by which social prominence is judged. In Behind the Hedgerow, G. Wayne Miller’s authoritative series for the Providence Journal and the documentary that followed it, the fine points of social one-up-man-ship are eloquently explained by Eileen Slocum. “Money,” she asserts, “is so important because the houses in Newport and New York are so costly to maintain. And entertaining beautifully is expected and expensive, too. If one didn’t entertain nicely, after a while, people would no longer come…”

She loved her late husband passionately. But she loved her children more and unconditionally

Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt met while teaching Sunday school. Their’s was a great romance. Two of their six children had love stories to equal their parents’. Unfortunately one, in a less melodramatic way, ended as sadly as Romeo’s and Juliet’s.

When her husband died in 1899, Alice Vanderbilt stoped being concerned with punishing her eldest living son, Cornelius Vanderbilt, III. From then on, she only wanted to help him. He had suffered greatly by ignoring his father’s insistence that he not marry Grace Wilson. Some went so far as to suggest that this disobedience led to his father’s stroke and subsequent demise. He was disinherited, with only the income from a modest trust and $500,000.00. That was a far cry from the $50-M or so that he’d expected to receive. Cornelius thought he’d reached an understanding with his brother Alfred, to share half, once the big bucks were passed on to him as the next eldest son. When Alfred only handed over $7-M more, “Neily” never spoke to him again.

Circa 1898: Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, III

Moreover, from then on, though usurped, he did all he could to assert what he deemed his “rightful” position as the head of the family. Like the royal consort of a ruling monarch, to Cornelius, III, his wife, his Queen, was the rightful “ruler” of Newport and New York. So it was that whatever it took, spending every cent available to him, Cornelius, lll strived to make sure that his wife was the best dressed and bejeweled woman in society.

Some of Grace Vanderbilt’s unsurpassed finery

She did him proud by providing America’s most distinguished dinner table and ballroom. In turn, with amazing ingenuity he obtained for her splendid houses. That the Vanderbilts were above mere fashion was suggestive of their extraordinary eminence. By refurbishing out-of-date dwellings, they made their old fashioned exteriors seem deliberate. Inside, in the same way, antiques and artworks imported from Europe gave evidence of Vanderbilt discernment and the presumed longevity of their linage alike.

640 Fifth Avenue, proving that the Cornelius Vanderbilts inhabited one of the city’s finest houses

As they were starting out Alice Vanderbilt was happy to lend her son and his wife the Breakers to host soirees. She admired how, by giving the best parties with the most novel entertainers and notable guests, they rapidly assumed the highest pinnacle of success that she had once aspired to. But in time her son began to chaff under all the burdensome ennui induced by a ridged social routine. Luckily, by then, his mother died. And, so did his and Grace’s once endless love. For it, he had defied his father. It had also prompted him show the world, to seek and gain, the glittering prize of leading society, for his wife and for the Vanderbilts. Like his ardor, it was a prize that turned to dust.

The atrium of 640 Fifth Avenue. Completed for William Henry Vanderbilt in 1882 this grandiose brownstone house was designed by Henry Snook with Charles B. Atwood and decorated by Herter Brothers. After Mrs. William Henry Vanderbilt’s death, her youngest child, George Washington Vanderbilt undertook a remodeling job. Designed by Hunt & Hunt, sons of the late Richard Morris Hunt, this project with its double staircase, was carried out between 1902–1905. Additional work soon commenced once 640 was leased to collector Henry Clay Frick. Obtained by Cornelius Vanderbilt, III, between 1915–1916, it was transformed according to plans by Horace Trumbauer. These featured considerable amounts of eighteenth century French boiserie, or paneling, of unmatched beauty. These elements, forming the backdrop for Grace Vanderbilt’s frenetic entertaining, made number 640 one of the city’s most exceptional houses. Sadly then, in 1947, it was destroyed

Longer Lasting than Love

Noble Egyptian pyramids, imposing Czarist palaces and sumptuous Bavarian castles, all once denounced as profligate waste with their builders defamed as “mad”, have turned out, after all, to have been pretty wise investments. And so have the Vanderbilts’ retreats at Newport, in Vermont, on Long Island, on the Hudson and in North Carolina. The Breakers, Biltmore, Marble House, Shelbourne Farms, Eagles Nest considered ungainly, bombastic and the antithesis of modernistic refinement, these are our Blenheim Palace, our Waddesdon Manor, our Château de Ferrières or Neuschwanstein.

Biltmore versus Waddesdon Manor

Biltmore, at the left, versus Neuschwanstein

Alva Vanderbilt’s 660 Fifth Avenue versus Alice Vanderbilts larger no. 1 West Fifty-Seventh Street. In 1882 number 660 Fifth was Hunt’s first urban entry for his competitive Vanderbilt clients. While not the architect of record at no. 1 West Fifty-Seventh Street, also completed in 1882 with plans provided by George B. Post & Sons, in 1893, when five houses were demolished to double the building’s size, Hunt did assist the Post firm’s office as a consultant.

After Cornelius Vanderbilts death, his widow found her city house so costly to maintain, that on years when she opened it for the winter, she traveled abroad during the summer. Conversely, when the Breakers was opened for the season, her city house was closed and Mrs. Vanderbilt traveled on the continent.

With property taxes alone finally reaching $130,000.00 annually, in 1926 the house was sold. It realized $7-M and was demolished. Alice Vanderbilt move on to the former George Gould house

Empire style seat-furniture from the Cornelius Vanderbilt, II’s house now at the White House

It was not just Vanderbilt collections which were dispersed

Nor only Vanderbilt houses that were razed to the ground

Errors

When they single out Gilded Age New York as a unique example of newly-made money joining with elites for mutual gain, have Anderson Cooper and Catherine Howe forgotten Marriage A-la-Mode? It’s a series of six paintings by William Hogarth from 1743–1745. The pointed narrative shows disastrous consequences occurring once cash and class are bartered. Way back then, fortuitous alliances were brokered between heiress daughters of Whig merchants and sons of the well-born who had become insolvent. Indeed, “honors”, such as knighthoods and titles, were exchanged for cash in the past, as well.

Circa 1744: Pedigree versus lots of money

Was Alva Vanderbilt’s ball actually held. during Lent, an unpardonable affront that would have signaled social suicide, or, as the date indicates, on Easter Monday?

Cooper writes of the Astors, “The Astor Place subway station mosaics today feature silhouettes of beavers in homage to the family’s roots.” Such misstated minutiae, when multiplied, are almost as annoying as consequential errors. The bas-relief tiles, manufactured by the Grueby Faience Company, do depict beavers at work and there are only mosaic borders and no silhouettes at the Astor Place station.

Grueby tiles depicting beavers at the New York City Astor Place subway station

Similarly, Cooper and Howe are misled and misleading when referencing Carolus-Duran’s portrait of Mrs. William Astor, painted in 1890. “She is dressed in the height of fashion for the moment, with finely wrought lace netting over a black satin bodice and ballooning sleeves…” they contend. Only the gown worn by the 59-year old queen of Newport and New York society was in fact “fancy dress”, a costume for a party. It was created by the English-born French couturier Charles Frederick Worth. The French painter, like his most famous pupil, John Singer Sargent, would have appreciated depicting Astor masquerading in regal 17th-century finery, in a portrait tradition of late 18th-century artists like Gainsborough and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.

1890: Carolus-Duran’s portrait of Mrs. William Blackhouse Astor

Omissions

Even though he agreed with Ellen DeGeneres’ characterization of the Vanderbilt family as “chock full of gays”, surprisingly Anderson Cooper’s book hasn’t got a lot that’s new to relate on this topic. Was Anderson Cooper’s Great Uncle George Washington Vanderbilt gay? Based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence Larry Kramer concluded he was.

1890: George Washington Vanderbilt by John Singer Sargent

1898–1902: George Washington Vanderbilt by James McNeil Whistler

The youngest of William Henry Vanderbilt’s children, George Vanderbilt was devoted to his long-widowed mother. He lived at home unmarried until after she died. The baby, as opposed to his three older brothers, he only inherited around $10-M. Yet to house his collections in style he remodeled the family home, his parents old-fashioned house on Fifth Avenue. As a country place, he built Biltmore in the mountains at Asheville, North Carolina. Boasting. 200+ rooms, it’s still America’s largest private residence.

Biltmore was designed by Richard Morris Hunt with more than a hundred rooms. Constructed between 1889–1905 it was never fully completed

A Francophile, an art collector, a bibliophile who amassed 20,000 books, George Vanderbilt enjoyed the company of an intimate circle of men.

George Washington Vanderbilt’s library of ten-thousand+ books at Biltmore

But at 36~years old he married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser Mindful of posterity they had a daughter. Just 51, Vanderbilt died of appendicitis.

Cooper touches on his mother’s mother’s same-sex affairs. He speaks as well of those of his great-aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, noting the irony of an allegation of lesbianism being successfully charged by Mrs. Whitney, to have his grandmother declared an unfit mother.

Circa 1914: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Adroitly compartmentalizing her many love affairs with men and women, Mrs. Whitney simultaneously maintained a public life as a society hostess, mother and philanthropist. She was also accomplished as a sculptress

1925: Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and baby Gloria. FIghting in court for custody of Gloria Vanderbilt, her aunt Mrs. Whitney, accused Anderson Cooper’s grandmother of being “unfit”, on acount of Lesbian affairs

Cooper exposes Harold Stirling “Mike” Vanderbilt as having cheated to defend the America’s Cup yacht race in 1934. But nothing is made of his great-uncle not getting married until after he was past fifty. His earlier, nearly twenty-year engagement to champion athlete Eleonora Sears, a lesbian, is not even mentioned.

1905: William S. Moore and Harold Stirling, “Mike” Vanderbilt

Circa 1915 and Circa 1928: Harold Stirling “Mike” Vanderbilt and his fiancée, Eleonora, “Elo”, Sears. Both were avid sports enthusiast. Miss Sears thought nothing of walking from New York for a dance in Boston

Furthermore, Cooper seems most reticent as to the sexual identity and histories of his immediate family. His mother’s colorful romances, his stepfathers’, his brothers’, even his own, are glaringly absent.

Gloria Vanderbilt: Mommie Dearest or ET?

As to his mom, he’s not quite as forthcoming as he he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” There he said, how, since he was ten, he’s “looked on his mom as like an ET-like alien, whose spaceship has crashed to earth…” He viewed her, as needing his protection from the modern world.”

Gloria Vanderbilt in 1926, 1940 and 1954

Cooper confesses how much he misses her still. Calling his late mother his “North Star” in the midst of a life marred by the successive loss of family members. In his book, a touching devotion is spelled out in a series of telling bon mots.

Anderson Cooper expresses particular indignation over Truman Capote, his mom’s once beloved gay confidante. The level of his ire must be. indicative of how betrayed. Gloria Vanderbilt felt, how hurt she must have been. Being “exposed” in the excerpt from the great writer’s novel of New York high life, Answered Prayers, his mother was outraged. And so, still, half a century later, is her knight errant son.

1960, above and 1955 below: Gloria Vanderbilt, Truman Capote and Pearl Bailey

To many readers Capote’s quip might seem fairly tame. Lunching with a friend, Gloria Vanderbilt fails to recognize her once beautiful, prematurely aged, notoriously abusive first husband. This episode is meant to illustrate something of Mrs. Cooper’s self-absorption.

1941: Only 17 Gloria Vanderbilt. Contracted her first of four weddings. Her ruched veil was by Black designer Milderid Blount. She married bad boy Pat DiCicco

Notwithstanding tenderly portraying the pathos and magic-making of his mother, Anderson Cooper’s book knowingly shows this side of her as well. Explaining on the Late Show, his mother’s expert manipulation, he gave as an example her insistence that he fund the redecoration of her apartment one month, and its re-redecoration a month after that. Cooper also spoke of her determination, at eighty-five, to carry his child, as a surrogate! Endearingly calling Gloria Vanderbilt “nuts”, Cooper perhaps explained her complexity best stating, “When asked how, during interviews I just stay stone-faced and listen as people say batshit crazy things, I respond, it’s because Gloria Vanderbilt is my mom…”

Sharing Other People’s Secrets: Truman Capote Versus Anderson Cooper?

If it was so very wrong of her close friend to reveal the intimate secrets, the foibles and fragility of Gloria Vanderbilt and her coterie, how is it ok for Anderson Cooper to do what he does? He’s so dexterous. Using his own loss and pain, or. moment of rejoicing, he draws out Stephen Colbert and others about their triumphs or tragedies. Through this highly skilled power of suggestion, on TV no less, readily his subjects spill their guts with little recognition that they are being massaged. Yes, he’s good at his craft. And yet sometimes one winces.

But he makes one smile, too. For Anderson Cooper is beloved. Empathy for the world’s suffering, and his effective chastisement of President Donald Trump have endeared him to multitudes.

The real deal, Anderson Cooper, keeping it real with Trump

If Trump is thoroughly a fraud, “a poor man’s idea of a rich man,” Cooper is conceded to be the real deal. He exudes our contemporary conception of cool, of “class” and so has emerged as the quintessential Vanderbilt.

Anderson Cooper, the ultimate Vanderbilt, with Rock Hudson, the ultimate star

Vanderbilts are Human Too

Gloria Vanderbilt and I had a mutual friend in incomparable song-stylist Bobby Short. At the start of her intense love affair with Gordon Parks, Short served the pair as a most effective, if ironic, “beard”. Once, addressing the ways of the elite, out of patience, Bobby said, exasperated, “Michael, the rich are just like everyone else. They are concerned about their children and their lovers, or gaining weight, just like you or I might be. They don’t go around miserable, just because they can’t find a fourth for bridge!”

1979: Bobby Short and Gloria Vanderbilt

2001: Gloria Vanderbilt and Gordon Parks

Having worked for and gotten to know some of those we were discussing, I wondered if Bobby was right? I decided he was not. For, like Anderson Cooper, he forgot just how much the rich are like us. Vanderbilts, even when badly behaved, or indeed then, perhaps, most of all, are human too. Certainly, as true tragedy swirls all around them, they might show undue concern for utter trivialities. But, sometimes, that’s true of most other Americans, many other people, as well.

Ultimately, if you’ve been fortunate enough to read Anderson Cooper’s book, or to have seen the great new documentary film, The Truman Capote Tapes, you know now, both reiterate the same cautionary tale: Hey, these people we are telling you about, they sure look beautiful, don’t they? They have wonderful clothes and fabulous jewels. They have splendid fancy houses, the fastest cars. They eat the best food and are cosseted by the hottest lovers. But, stop! Stop praying to be like them. To be like them will not make you happy.