Tom Wolfe Leads Off for Portfolio

Tom Wolfe looks at the New Masters of the Universe:

While fathers all over America tend to become overzealous, even violent, these days in trying to turn their children into little sports superstars, in Greenwich a father who is one of these people will try to take control of every element in a game: his child’s teammates, their coach, the opposing team’s coach, its players, and most definitely the referees. In a famous instance, one of these people came to watch his teenage daughter play in an ice hockey game against a team from neighboring Port Chester, New York, a town known in Greenwich as the place where one’s plumbers, electricians, computer swamis, roofers, glaziers, air-conditioning mechanics, wall-to-wall-carpet humpers, and household servants live. The man began bellowing so loudly, nobody at the rink could shut out the sound. He upbraided the referees for their poor eyesight and worse judgment. He told his daughter’s coach how to play her and all her teammates and kept him abreast of his mistakes in strategy. He scolded the Port Chester coach and the players for their incessant cheating and malicious roughness. Finally a Port Chester player, a big girl, an Amazon on ice, skated to the stands, charged up the stairs on her skates, and accosted the Mouth, putting her gloved fist six inches from his face and saying, “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m gonna come back and beat the shit outta you!” He shut up. The tales are endless: the hedge fund founder desperate to get his son into one of Greenwich’s socially swell private schools who clips a six-figure check to the first page of the application, witlessly forcing the school to reject both his son and his check or lose all credibility—

Posted by on April 16th, 2007 at 9:45 am


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