The Raven

Saturday, September 21, 2002

Candid Camera

When the ironically named Madelyne Gorman Toogood started laying into her 4-year-old daughter in a parking lot, she figured nobody would notice. Captured on video, she looks over her shoulder, as if to ensure that no witnesses are on hand, then she leans into the car and starts pummeling the child. The coverage over at ABC news and also at CNN both featured the department store video clip (viewable provided you subscribe to their video feeds), which raises the question of whether it is ethical to provide a streaming movie of a mother abusing her daughter.

An interesting note was added by the coverage over at FOX news, which reveals the following:

Toogood grew up as part of a group of Texas-based Irish Travellers, itinerant laborers who often make their living with home-improvement and business-repair work, such as paving, painting and roofing.

The Irish Travellers are basically gypsies, grifters who work cities like the old-time carnies who were wont to fleece the yokels and scram before daybreak. Driving a distinctive sort of carry-all van, they'll offer to pave your driveway and you'll be thrilled with their workmanship—until the first good rain. The link above to Traveller's Rest notes that not all Travellers are thieves and to those who are hard-working honest people, no offense is intended here.

Mishakawa Indiana authorities (where the event occurred) said, "she did have a history of retail store fraud," which is in keeping with the Traveller lifestyle; the beating she gives her daughter is administered after a failed attempt to scam the department store outside which the event occured. In their extremely insular culture, Traveller women are generally married off within a clan at very early ages, often as young as 11 or 12. One wonders what kind of pathology Toogood may have acquired as a result of her abnormal upbringing, and what future awaits her young daughter.

7:22:06 PM

To Your Wealth

People ask me where I get my ideas. (Actually, they don't, but it makes a nice lead-in.) The morning ritual usually goes something like this: Wake up, get coffee, and beat wings over the broadband Web scanning headlines, AP wires, and metro news. Sooner or later, various trends begin to emerge and a direction will suggest itself. This morning, for instance, the pattern is one of "haves" and "have-nots."

Robert Wade, a professor of political economy at the London School of Economics writes about inequalities in the global distribution of income. While a fairly un-sexy topic at first glance, the picture he presents has a very dark underside.

New evidence suggests that global inequality is worsening rapidly. There are good reasons to worry about that trend, quite apart from what it implies about the extent of world poverty.

The causes of economic disparity among our world's countries has long been a subject of dispute, but Wade lays out several plausible reasons in his article, among which is evidence that as prices rise, the poorer countries of the world have less access to the products of the west, and this produces a vicious cycle with only one outcome: The poor must migrate to escape their impoverished lives. This will create—it is creating—severe pressure on developed countries to absorb the tide of desparate immigrants. Like global warming, this is a long-range problem with diffuse effects that threaten to cause a global crisis. The key statistic to bear in mind is that that Americans in the bottom 10% of our society are better off than two-thirds of the world's population.

Unreal Estate

Keeping in mind how poverty is a crushing burden for so many in the world, it's nice to see the rich suffer a bit in return. MSNBC reports on a terrible problem facing the wealthy: A glut of "Megamansions." During the high-flying days of the late '90s, seems like developers just couldn't build enough superpriced homes, properties that "start at eight figures." But now, faced with an economic downturn, some owners of these palatial estates are finding it hard to unload their little piece of the American Dream.

"I may have to own the house for a while," acknowledges owner Virginia Payson, who just cut her price by $15 million. But, "someone will come along."

Poor Virginia was hoping for $50 million, but now she's willing to let her lil' cottage go for a paltry $35 million—a steal. Some of these owners are a little embarrassed at their conspicuous opulence, and "It's pretty hard to hide an enormous sprawling mansion," says architectural critic and author Thomas Fisher. Let's see some of these places and maybe we can do a little bottom feeding since it's a buyer's market.

Here's Eothen (for this much cash, you get a name for your house), in Montauk, N.Y.:

Filmaker Paul Morrissey bought this property in the 1970's for $220,000, but he's asking $50 million. "The site and views are spectacular: It's high on a bluff at the tip of Long Island and is surrounded by more than 100 acres of protected land."

Then there's La Belle Vie, in LA's tony Bel-Air district:

In addition to the main house, with its nine bedrooms, 21 baths, three kitchens and a wine cellar with room for 4,000 bottles, there's a guesthouse, a pool, a spa with cabana and a tennis court.

How about Montsorrel, in Palm Beach? For only $75 million you get a home built by Georgia O'Keefe's sister.

The current owner, Nelson Peltz, "keeps a full-time staff to groom the palms, rake the 609 feet of sandy beach, and keep the home's 14 bedrooms and 13 baths sparkling when potential buyers drop by." Upkeep could be a problem: Peltz spends "more than $1 million a year, including property taxes, just to keep it going."

I'm still trying to figure out La Belle Vie's 9 bedrooms and 21 baths.

The Struggling Underclass

If you aren't shopping for one of those high-priced uberhomes, chances are you may be working for a living. Employees at Ralph Lauren's Polo boutiques have it pretty rough. According a lawsuit filed on behalf of the aforementioned clerks, the schmucks who stroll up and ask if you need some help with that there blazer are being "forced to spend up to a third of their annual income on Ralph Lauren fashions" if they want to keep their jobs. One employee, for example, who's been with Ralph Lauren since 1997, figures she's had to spend between $8,000 and $10,000 to keep her wardrobe store legal. Seeing as how a Polo dress shirt can easily go over $50, you figure these salespeople are in quite a bind. But actually, it's not that bad, since the company offers an attractive in-house plan to help these workers buy the apparel:

Polo offers its sales associates a wage advancement program, whereby employees can purchase Polo clothing with salary advances to be repaid over six months. The company also offers a small employee discount, Kitchin said.

Betcha it's a real small discount. But remember, in some Nike factory somewhere people are slaving away for a dollar a day, and in that sense, being forced to buy Ralph Lauren outfits isn't that much of a hardship. In a somewhat related story, the LA Times says that retailers who invested heavily in the "Gypsy Look" for women are all set to lose their collective peasant blouses, as it were. Turns out this fashion trend didn't last as long as they thought it would (thank goodness) and since the look involves lots of add-ons and accessories and whatnot to get that Romany vagabond verve, the overstock at these stores is considerable.

The style emerged in early 2001, steadily gained steam and peaked this spring. By then, peasant-style blouses were selling at discount stores for $18 and at pricey department stores for $68.

Peasant women around the world are trying to get here to work as hotel maids and our professional class spends big bucks to look like the aforesaid peasant women. See? It all ties together.

12:06:23 PM