even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

Gonna write a stern email and get to the bottom of this for u

signed, roger greenberg.

SIdebar on insane landlords in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO -- A software engineer and his real estate agent wife who terrorized their tenants in a twisted attempt to force them to move are back after fleeing to Italy, and each has accepted a four-year prison sentence and two strikes rather than face trial, Dist. Atty. George Gascon announced Wednesday.

Nicknamed the "landlords from hell," Kip and Nicole Macy employed tactics "so outlandish and brazen" in attempting to clear their building of renters that "it sounds like the plot of a horror movie," Gascon said.

They each pleaded guilty to two felony counts of residential burglary, one felony count of stalking and one felony count of attempted grand theft. In custody on $2-million bail apiece, they are scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 22.

Kip Macy’s attorney, Lisa DewBerry, said the couple could have faced a maximum of 16 years in prison if tried on all charges.

Gascon, she said, "knew he could not prove everything so he settled for one quarter of the time that he charged."

Her client, she said is "really a good guy" but was at such a disadvantage due to San Francisco laws protective of tenants that "he felt he was backed into a corner."

In 2005 Kip, 38, and Nicole, 37, set in motion an "insane," nearly two-year campaign against their tenants that "destroyed his career" and derailed their lives, Gascon said.
Flanked by the assistant D.A. who worked the case, Northern California’s top U.S. marshal and the special agent for the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service who helped apprehend the couple in Milan, Gascon described bizarre acts that he said rivaled those of the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote.

After a failed effort to evict the first tenant, Scott Morrow, the couple on two occasions sawed holes in his floor. Gascon recounted the tenant’s shock as he and a friend saw a saw blade emerge through the floorboards, then grabbed a hammer and smashed it.

I am pretty sure I've seen that in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

jesus christ

It's the funhouse mirror version of

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/57/Pacific_Heights_DVD_Cover.jpg/220px-Pacific_Heights_DVD_Cover.jpg

I like how the lawyer tries to blame those oppressive tenant codes for forcing these people to dump ammonia on their tenants belongings.

I assume this story exists because said person is the son of someone famous:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/nyregion/a-high-school-president-is-elected-and-disqualified.html

and, he says, had three girls ask him to prom this year.

he SAYS

We should have a poll for least impressive accomplishment:

writes for a Huffington Post blog
is a highly ranked debater
had three girls ask him to Stuyvesant prom this year (he says)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-cahn/john-galt-speaking_b_2131743.html

(his brother, but)

i... i didn't know where else to put this

http://m.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/07/america-with-love-aa-gill-excerpt

What about Mark Twain, or jazz, or Abstract Expressionism?

reading that huffpo article i keep thinking about the California College Conservative Union Caucus of party down

"highly ranked master debator"

LOL!

I assume this story exists because said person is the son of someone famous:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/nyregion/a-high-school-president-is-elected-and-disqualified.html

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, June 23, 2013 3:41 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is he actually? I don't associate Stuyvesant with celebrity kids -- it always struck me more as the place for the cream of the strivers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/magazine/jimmy-wales-is-not-an-internet-billionaire.html?hpw

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/fashion/in-the-hamptons-mind-your-manners-or-else.html

I like how that article makes it seem like the "Hamptons" are a real place

it's not? i've seen it on tv i think

they're actually in long island

long island is a terminal moraine. It's the earth deposited by a receding glacier.

I don't know if this is really the right thread, but I just had a revelation -- the whole reason rich private schools are often referred to as "day schools" (e.g. Georgetown Day in DC) is that rich people commonly send or sent their kids to boarding schools, so the "day" modifier signifies "not a boarding school" while simultaneously assuring you "still for the upper crust."

esp like it when they're in the country

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Day_School_movement

Yeah. I find it kind of fascinating how subtly that one word operates, simultaneously saying "Not X" and "The fact that we even need to specify not X means it's not for the proles." Schools for the middle class aren't called day schools because there's no other kind.

I don't know if this is really the right thread, but I just had a revelation -- the whole reason rich private schools are often referred to as "day schools" (e.g. Georgetown Day in DC) is that rich people commonly send or sent their kids to boarding schools, so the "day" modifier signifies "not a boarding school" while simultaneously assuring you "still for the upper crust."

yea there's like a million country day schools in wealthy areas of massachusetts, i totally had that revelation recently

I like to think of juvie as boarding school for the rest of us

i'm like, why the fuck are they calling all these ritzy private schools "day schools"? oh, right

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/magazine/the-opt-out-generation-wants-back-in.html?ref=magazine&target=comments&pagewanted=all

She worked her way through Ohio State and, eager to pay off her college loans, got a job selling copiers. She eventually landed in a competitive training program at Oracle, the technology company, where she rose quickly through the ranks, ending up in the top 5 percent of the sales force. She also met the man who would become her husband, Mark Eisel — an up-and-comer in management. They worked hard and became well off. At her peak, O’Donnel was earning $500,000 a year.

But after her first two children were born, O’Donnel’s travel for work became more difficult. She gave up a quarter of her earnings in exchange for working three days a week, but felt marginalized, her best accounts given to others, meetings often scheduled on her days out of the office. “I felt like a second-class citizen,” she said.

Even with the reduced schedule, the stresses of life in a two-career household put an overwhelming strain on her marriage. There were ugly fights with her husband about laundry and over who would step in when the nanny was out sick.

Sheilah O’Donnel tells herself that her new home, a townhouse in a development in Chevy Chase, Md., just a stone’s throw from a Safeway, isn’t really all that bad. Sure, it’s near a gas station. And the front window, with its cheerily upholstered cushions, overlooks a dreary parking lot. And yes, it’s kind of small — “an apartment,” O’Donnel, who is 44, sometimes says bitterly, when she’s reminded of her former life with her ex-husband in their custom-built, six-bedroom home. But then again, it’s perfectly maintained and impeccably furnished, and most important, it’s rented with her own money, from the first real job she has had in almost a decade.

It’s a midlevel sales job, a big step down from the senior position she held before she had children and quit work. When she was first hired, in May 2011, her salary was just a fifth of what she earned at her peak.

(i.e. 1/5 of $500,000)

I liked this summation of that article:

@jesshopp: the NYT story about women opting out of the workforce is more of a trend piece about asshole husbands. http://t.co/mdke1ZjIIP

We are talking about a woman who felt "like a second-class citizen" making $375,000 for 3 days work.

tbf "asshole husbands" is more of a historical reality than a trend

Serious Q, do you include this guy in "asshole husband"?

And Ted had kind of had it. Here he was, he said while coming and going from the kitchen where he was making French toast for the Mattox’s youngest child, earning the household income, helping drive the kids around, pitching in on laundry, housekeeping and cooking, while Kuae, in his eyes, was blithely giving her time away — free — to a volunteer organization. He’s a numbers guy, he said. From his perspective, the numbers pertaining to what he called her at-home “journey of self-discovery” just didn’t add up to be a very good deal for him or any husband whose nonearning wife still expects to split household drudgery 50-50.

Ted’s expectations were formed by his own mother, a stay-at-home mom in an age in which the identity had no such title, whose “whole goal her entire life,” he said, “was to make sure her boys had a clean house, clean clothes and were well fed.” Given this, it seemed natural to him that Kuae, as a self-proclaimed stay-at-home mother, might want to try putting some more time into their home. Into things like “the shuttling of kids, the picking up the house, the laundry, the shopping.” Even, he ventured further, “balancing checkbooks, cleaning, setting up the home Wi-Fi, fixing an appliance or whatever.” A hoot of laughter from Kuae greeted the end of this task list.

He continued: “Being the kind of person I am, Type A, wound, always going after something, I wonder what I could have done, having 12 years to sort of think about what I want to do. I sometimes think, Wow, I could have been an astronaut in 12 years, or I could have been something different that I’d really enjoy and that I never was afforded the financial opportunity or the time or the resources to enjoy. Maybe call it jealousy. Maybe envy. What could I have been in 12 years of self-discovery? I’ll go out on a limb and say: ‘I’d like to try it. It looks pretty good to me.’ ”

tbf everyone in the article sounds basically horrible, dunno if the husbands qualify as particularly assholish

Ted sounds like an asshole to me, yes. If not only for airing his fam's laundry to the nyt.

well isn't that what everyone interviewed for the article is doing?

Yeah and they all seem like assholes!

There's definitely something a little douchey about the way he speaks about his own wife to a newspaper, at least the tone he takes

And the "Where's my 12-year sabbatical to find myself" whine.

Not a fan of the whole "my marriage was an investment and I expect x return" spiel

husband basically convinced her to quit job, then when she didn't like just being a stay-at-home mom he got mad. he's obv the bad guy here.

I'm with LL on this one. Does anyone (male, female, martian monogender) really expect to roll back into the same level of job after ten years out of the game? That's not sexism, that's you being dumb.

And tbh if I were working full time and spouse was not, damn right I expect him to do more shit around the house than I!

And then he bitched about it to the newspaper!! Total asshole.

man, where do they dig these folks up?