Dining With the Koch Brothers

Maybe I'm delusional, but after reading so much about the anger over poverty and repression in much of the world, I was feeling especially lucky to have lived my life here. A quick calculation showed me to be a thousand times wealthier than billions of human beings on earth, not without a shadow of guilt about my good fortune.

Then the Times pulls through with something from the soft sections, the society sections and women's sections of past generations. In this case, it's "Dining & Wine" and a review of the Ai Fiori Restaurant. It's in a hotel, and it's so elegant that the you'll find the forks turned down on the thick tablecloth when you first sit down.

As the words roll on, the reader learns, "For those with a taste for offal and seafood, there is a soft-poached egg served with crisp sweetbreads, braised lobster knuckles, more of that black truffle and some tarragon."

And a warning. The headline is not to be taken literally. I have no idea where the billionaire Koch (pronounced "Coke", maybe so you don't think they're Jewish) brothers eat, but it might very well be in places like this where the bargain meal is $80 sans tip and wine.

For a social critic, stories like this are shootin' fish in a barrel.

But I have to wonder. At first, I thought the headline writer was being ironic (in the strict sense of the word), until I saw that the reviewer invoked the New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton and his funny depictions of joyless rich people.

Money Should Be Fun

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