Time Inc.'s PayMeNow program offers its freelancers the option of taking a discount to be paid in a timely fashion, as opposed to waiting like a sucker for all of the money the company owes them. Our tipster told us that the company's baseline timelag for payments is roughly a month, but it offers a graduated discounted payment plan starting at 25 days for .5% off up to 3 days for 4% off (another Time Inc. freelancer says it actually usually takes 60 or so days to get paid if you don't grease the wheels, which sounds more likely to us).

But Time Inc.'s plan is positively generous compared to NBC Universal's. An iVillage freelancer sent us this contract, which provides two options: NBCU will sit on your invoice for 75 days and pay you what they owe, or pay you in 15 days for a 2.5% discount. "It's just outrageous," the tipster wrote. "Since the internet pays so little for most articles in any case, it's like, do I get my $150 for an article now or when I've forgotten that I even wrote it?"

Some commenters have pointed out that these discount schemes are common for invoicing in the business world. Which makes sense if you're a supplier who's willing to take a hit to get paid faster for a shipment of widgets. But it's a little bit different when you're talking about people's salaries. Here's the NBCU contract. UPDATE: Nielsen Media, which owns the Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, and a bunch of other trades (and is selling them to Lachlan Murdoch), runs a similar scam. According to this BNet story, it's 75 days for full payment or 15 days for a 3% discount, and a tipster confirms that they shop it to their freelancers.

[Photo via Flickr by Brent Moore.]

You probably know Christina Ambers' feet from such ads as "Rescue Me," "Maybelline," and "Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear." She is only considered the hottest foot model around these days, that's all. And her hands aren't too shabby either!

Anyhow she married the doorman at her building on E. 74 St., and now she's alleging in a $10 million lawsuit that the co-op board is trying to evict her because they simply can't stand the sight of the doorman, a poor, rubbing all up on the precious rich sexxxy feet of Ambers, a non-poor. Other residents in her building say the couple had a tumultuous relationship, made noise, and had the cops called to their apartment. The Post, predictably, ignores that angle in favor of class war without mercy, leading its story with "Stick to taking out the recyclables, Angel."

The most interesting part of this story, of course, is not actual facts. It's the question of whether the New York Post can stir up a decent amount of class-based outrage amongst its readers on behalf of a couple that is one-half Latino man from the Bronx. If Ambers had married, say, a poor but proud firefighter from Bay Ridge, this would be an easy layup. But can the Post's faux-populism overcome its real racism? We shall see.

There's always the sexxxy feet pics to fall back on!
[Pic: Christina Ambers' Flickr]

When you wake up in the morning and see a story about how Wall Street is all set to pay its employees $140 billion this year, which is more than ever before, the first thing you do is run check the calendar to make sure that the year you think it is is the year it actually is, because that story could lead one to believe that it is, in fact, a different year than you had suspected. The second thing you do is mentally review whether you took any drugs last night, and if so, how many and what type, and what sorts of hallucinations they could produce, in terms of visualizations of newspaper headlines. The third thing you do is look around your $56.5 million apartment, slap yourself, and say "Goddamn it's good to work on Wall Street!" The fourth thing you do is let yourself out quietly, because you don't actually own that apartment, and your presence there probably has something to do with all the drugs, but you're not sure what.

None of which is meant to obscure the fact that we're finally getting our national priorities back in order. We're keeping regular working-class people in their jobs, but we're finally cutting their outsized pay down to size—more pay cuts than there have been since the Great Depression. And for those workers who pay we can't cut, by law? We're lowering the god damn minimum wage. Take that, fiscal profligacy.

Real Americans appreciate this Thrift Encouragement Initiative, from the private sector. Getting our vast system of class-based income stratification back in order won't be accomplished by lazy government bureaucrats with fancy Harvard degrees; it'll be accomplished by hardworking small businesspersons like Wall Street CEOs taking their fair share. Even you can play a part. Stab your fellow American to prevent them from buying football tickets before you. It'll make you feel better. It'll stimulate the health care and corrections industries. And it'll send a strong signal to Wall Street: We, the lower classes, are "Keeping our eyes on the ball," so to speak. Carry on!
[Pic via]

The New York Post reports (although this story's at least a couple years old) that the rich muckety-mucks living in Jamaica Estates—a neighborhood that, despite being located in Queens, is home to affluent people—have some handkerchief-fluttering things to say about these kids from St. Johns living in their hood:

"We're talking about loud behavior, disruptive behavior . . . students exposing themselves, having sex on the street, all kinds of things you don't want your children exposed to," said Romaine Johnson, 62.

Haha, "exposed." Other neighbors are reportedly "petrified" and "talking about what's going to happen every Friday and Saturday night," which is understandable what with all the street-fucking going on outside. Queens is not so bad after all!

Also home to the Fightin' New York Mets!

It looks to us like the most simplistic left-wing cant that Moore could muster to explain the bailouts: The banks bought Congress, and Congress gave the banks billions of dollars, and some nice gun-toting people in the midwest got laid off.

We've been excited to see the movie, which opens on October 2, but there's something about it that looks depressing: A Michael Moore movie tends to put a cap on whatever outrage he's addressing. Roger & Me meant that by the time you're seeing this movie, Flint, Mich., is fucked. Bowling for Columbine: A bunch of kids are already dead because we already lost the battle on guns. Fahrenheit 9/11: A look back at how we got screwed into the Iraq war. Sicko is an exception in a way, but only because it came out too soon. His collection of health care nightmares showed how "death panels" already exist in America (they're called "insurance claims adjusters") wcame out during the Bush years and not when, you know, health care reform might be on the top of the political agenda.

Now with Capitalism: A Love Story, we can look back in anger at another horrible thing that has already been done to us, and listen to a real-American-looking type say, "There's gotta be some kind of rebellion between the people who have nothing and the people who've got it all." Good luck with that.

It probably has the benefit of being true. But when is Michael Moore going to drop the fat-guy-in-the-lobby routine? Or the fat-guy-yelling-at-a-corporate-office-through-a-bullhorn routine, for that matter?

Also: How do you finance films without banks? Just wondering.

The New York state government took $140 million of the Obama stimulus money, and, along with $35 million from Soros, decided to give it to poor kids. But only poor kids! Sure, they are going to immediately go spend that money on school supplies, because poor families are not traditionally known for saving and investing effectively, and that will "stimulate" the economy and help poor kids, but we all know that giving money to poor kids is pointless and irresponsible.

That is why Drudge highlighted this miserable story of mothers in the Bronx taking the free money to buy uniforms for their kids, this morning. Presumably we're meant to skip to this bit at the end:

Paterson's Republican critics blasted the giveaway, saying he should spend the money to reduce property taxes.

"It is a plan that is ripe for fraud and abuse," said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos. "This is a totally irresponsible use of federal stimulus money."

Yes, right, lowering property taxes is definitely what should've been done with this $140 million of cash, because that is how stimulus spending works. Actually Paterson should've just given it directly to landlords, probably.

[Photo: Getty]

It turns out that men have been hardest-hit by job losses in the last year, largely because they dominate the sectors where layoffs have been most widespread. So as the total number of available jobs has gone down, the share of remaining jobs held by women has increased:

[F]or the first time in American history women are coming close to representing the majority of the national work force. It would of course be a bittersweet milestone, given that it comes primarily as a result of men's layoffs.

Of course, women are still only getting 80 cents on the dollar, so it all evens out somehow. The Times has coined a word—"mancession"—to denote the dynamic. It's kind of like a manwich, but instead of robust, smoky beef flavor, it's chock full of depression, unemployment, an unshakable feeling of shame, and sisterhood.

Oh hell, we'll say it's good: A full $1.5 billion of that profit is going to AIG's primary owner, the federal government. So we can afford Cash for Clunkers after all! It's like Uncle Sam found a sawbuck in an old (red-white-and-blue) coat pocket.

But it won't last—AIG says business is still suffering from "weak economic conditions and the lingering effect of negative A.I.G. events earlier in the year." The "negative AIG events," you will recall, culminated in an orgy of outrage and threats of violence against the company after it redirected taxpayer dollars to the executives who engineered the financial collapse in the form of bonuses. So if AIG's apparent turnaround ends up being temporary, remember—it's your fault.

Reports the New York Times:

Though it has been known for months that billions of dollars were spent on bonuses last year, it was unclear whether that money was spread widely or concentrated among a few workers.

The report suggests that those roughly 5,000 people - a small subset of the industry - accounted for more than $5 billion in bonuses. At Goldman, just 200 people collectively were paid nearly $1 billion in total, and at Morgan Stanley, $577 million was shared by 101 people.

All told, the bonus pools at the nine banks that received bailout money was $32.6 billion, while those banks lost $81 billion.

Big Banks Paid Billions in Bonuses Amid Wall St. Crisis [New York Times]

Beer too: Sales of Heineken and other mid-market beers are down while the kind of beer you used to drink before wearing the empty cardboard 12-pack container around as a mask is flying off the shelf.

From the Times:

Growers are behind on sales of grapes, which are fetching much lower prices than last year. Sales are sluggish for wines retailing at $15 a bottle and higher. Meanwhile, distributors, restaurants and retail shops are reluctant to buy more wine, preferring to sell through what they already have.

[snip]

"People are drinking out of their cellars, the big distributors are throwing their weight around, and you add these things up, and from the winery perspective, the cash flow is brutal," said Steve Matthiason, a vineyard consultant who also grows grapes and makes small quantities of wine. "Everybody figures this is kind of a temporary thing, that when restaurants burn through their inventory they're going to have to start buying again, and distributors, too. But everybody is wondering when the levee is going to break, and you have harvest coming up."

"Drinking out of their cellars" is exactly what we like to imagine laid-off bankers are doing when they're not busy fending off $2 million-a-year offers from Citibank. But we digress. The beer industry is also seeing a flight to quantity, the Wall Street Journal reports—astonishingly, people can't even afford to buy Budweiser anymore:

Heineken sales sank 18% from the previous year in grocery, convenience and drug stores during the two-week period ended July 5, followed by Budweiser at 14%. Corona Extra sales dropped 11%, while Miller Lite declined 9% and Bud Light fell 7%. Coors Light sales held up better, falling less than 1% from a year ago.

Meanwhile, sales of "subpremium" beers including Busch, Natural Light and Keystone posted "substantial gains", according to Ad Age, which didn't provide the specifics.

Subprime borrowers drink subpremium beer. Of course, the rich will always be with us, so when it's not busy writing about how the wretched poors are mopping up the floor with rags at bartime and squeezing foul remnants into their mouths for a few moments of relief, it's writing about rich people drinking from ostentatiously oversized bottles of precious wine:

Frank DeSalvo's dinner guests have come to expect a bit of spectacle when their host serves wine. The process sometimes involves a wooden cradle, holding an exquisitely blown glass vessel containing the equivalent of 24 bottles of wine, being lifted by several men onto the table.

After dinner, they go out and light bums on fire for kicks.

From a tipster "inside at da Nast":

So now we have incentives to be good assistants because there is an assistant of the month prize of $500. I'm going to be the model assistant, lol. A couple of those and mama can buy herself a chanel bag or some loubs!

In return for not losing your shit one day and throwing an Aeron chair at Anna Wintour's be-bobbed 'do, you could be the proud recipient of a fat check. Or, you could unite against your bourgeois oppressors!

Yea, we know. $500.

It's more evidence, in case you needed it, that the federal bailout was little more than a collossal plunder, and all we're doing now is shifting tax-payer money around from failure to failure in service to the goal of keeping executives employed so they can still afford to stay at places like the St. Regis.

Here's how it works: You get a job, in order to make money. The federal government takes up to a third of that money in income tax. But don't worry, it's for your own good! Even though you are making money, AIG is not, so the federal government gives $85 billion of the money it took from you to AIG, which then spends $440,000 of it at the St. Regis on $210 spa treatments and $1,600-a-night rooms. AIG also gives $2.3 billion of that to CItigroup, because it owed them insurance payments on bad bets Citi had made. Oh, but we totally forgot to mention—even though Citi is getting paid all that money from AIG, it still wasn't making any money, so the federal government took another $45 billion of that money it took from your paycheck and gave it to Citigroup.

And then, even though the St. Regis is getting all that money from AIG for their retreats, business isn't so good, in part because of the public uproar over AIG paying all that taxpayer money for its retreats. Which means its owner can't make good on the $70 million owes to... Citigroup! So Citigroup takes over the St. Regis.

But! The St. Regis is a money pit, because of all the aforementioned outrage and on account of the fact that nobody has any money or jobs, and that the executive class-types who still do have jobs are too scared by all that outrage to book any retreats there. So Citigroup is actually losing money on the St. Regis. From the Los Angeles Times:

Becoming the owner of the resort will be expensive for Citigroup, which now will not only have to pay interest on the $230-million first mortgage, but also cover St. Regis' operating losses.

And Citigroup losing money is a bad thing, because, even though they made $4.3 billion last quarter, they're still in really bad shape, and probably won't make much money any time soon. Or so they say. But they do make enough money to offer executives $2 million per year. But just forget about that for now.

Because if Citigroup doesn't get better—and by "better," we don't really know what we mean since they made that $4.3 billion last quarter, but whatever—then the federal government might have to take more of that money from your paycheck and give it to them. Or even if it doesn't get more bailout money, it's still bad because the federal government owns about $27 billion worth of Citigroup. And the more money Citigroup makes, the more money it pays to the federal government, and the faster the federal government returns that money to you—just kidding about that last part.

To recap: The federal government owns a big piece of the obscenely expensive hotel that AIG executives spent hundreds of thousands of your dollars on after you bailed them out, and it's losing fucking money on it. The most important lesson to be learned here is this: If you soak a bandana in urine and wrap it around your face, it will mitigate the effects of tear gas. It's gross, but it works.

Illustration by the inimitable Steven Dressler

Both companies are still pleading poverty, and the New York Times notes that absent one-time gains—in BofA's case, the sale of shares in a Chinese bank, and in Citigroup's a joint venture with Smith Barney—both banks "would have lost billions."

They also would have lost billions if they hadn't taken somewhere northward of a combined $438 billion in taxpayer funds via TARP. The federal government has bailed out these banks with billions in taxpayer dollars while the number of Americans on food stamps skyrockets and we thrash about trying to find a way to pay for universal health care, and the banks are still saying they are in dire straits but are some how able to squeak out record profits but just this once.

So who's getting that money? Well, the federal government is getting some of it, because it owns a good chunk of both banks. Also getting it will be Bryan Weadock, the bond salesman that Bank of America recently hired at $6 million a year. Citigroup recently tried to lure one executive with a $2 million offer, according to the Wall Street Journal. And come December, both banks will almost certainly pay out billions in bonuses.

As we noted yesterday, this is nothing short of harvesting the money of poor and middle-class Americans so that banking executives can maintain the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. We should have nationalized the fuckers.

The long-term weaknesses facing both firms are related to their consumer credit divisions—default rates on credit cards are rising because people are too poor to pay their bills, and both banks are heavily exposed. So the guy who's calling you and hassling you to pay your bills works for a company that is profiting handsomely off the money the federal government forcibly removes from your paycheck. When you stop paying those bills because you can't afford them, and your credit is destroyed, burdening you with limited access to credit and higher interest rates for the next seven years, that company, which is paying some bond salesman $6 million a year, will use that failure as an excuse to ask the federal government for more money from your paycheck, if your lucky enough to get one. Even if you can afford to pay your credit card bill, Citigroup and Bank of American are both aggressively raising interest rates and cutting back on credit limits, tightening your budget. Why? Because they're not making enough fucking money.

The fact that our taxes will be going up to pay for all this crap makes us kind of want to agree with the New York Post, which is an awful, awful feeling.

JPM put up a $2.7 billion profit in Q2. The New York Times attributes this to "stellar trading and investment banking results." The WSJ attributes it to "stellar investment banking results." So to what do we attribute it, financial professionals the world over are wondering?

Look, we'll level with you: we, ourselves, are not technically Wall Street financial professionals. We are not "qualified," in a strictly credential-centric sense, to interpret and analyze the finer points of investment banking strategy, or even to be trusted not to mysteriously lose our own money, last seen in the pocket of our jeans as we sat down on the G train.

What we do know how to do is to make broad, sweeping sociological pronouncements with a grain of truth. And we will tell you this right now: This will not end well. Not just for America, but for Wall Street itself. Hey bankers, you thought the original recession was bad? Wait until the false economic revival peaks, and then shatters. Wall Street's own sense of relief at a return to the go-go times will result in more rich guy assholedom than ever before. Sure, they'll cover it up for a while; but the bottle service and strippers and Greenwich mansions and conspicuous consumption and outrageous pay rates will return stunningly fast. But this time, people won't just hate you out of envy; they will hate with a revolutionary zeal, knowing that public money bailed out your shitty ass banks from the fiasco that you started in the first place, and now, as soon as profits return, you banking assholes are back to being the same assholes you were before.

And then the false economic revival will stop, and recede, and you'll all be left on the empty beach, pants down, blow gone, hookers left, gas tanks empty, Rolex waterlogged, mansion foreclosed, without a friend in the world. And then the class rage really starts. If you guys know what's good for you, you'll invest in charity and guns while you have the chance.
[Pic: Getty]

1. Trying—and failing—to forgive.

Julie Behar lost $2.6 million; her children lost their trust fund; her mom lost millions as well. But now she's started saving again, concentrating on her children's futures, and hoping for the best. She knows that holding anger in her heart is no way to live. How about it, Julie—do you think you can forgive this man? "I'M NOT accepting Bernard Madoff's apology." Ah. I see. Okay.

2. Trying—and failing—to move on.

Let's just focus on what we need to do now, okay? The past is the past. There are so many things to do now. Phyllis Molchatsky lost $2 million and may lose her house, but she's moving on by...losing her faith in the government, the SEC, the American Way, and god. "I think part of me died that day I learned of the fraud, along with so many hopes and dreams for the future." Oh. Well. That's depressing as fuck.

3. RAGE!

This rage is Biblical:

"I told the judge that when Bernard Madoff leaves prison, which means after his death, that he will then go down to the depths of hell where he'll join those other people who are in the mouths of Satan," Burt Ross, the former mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., who lost $5 million with Mr. Madoff, told the crowded press corps outside the courthouse.

You people will die of stress before Madoff does.
[Read em all! And weep.]

For this, Anderson will earn $500,000 a year for two years, Business Insider hears. He also needs to be an "ambassador," for MySpace, which sounds very much like a non-job:

As a part of the deal, [MySpace CEO] Owen [Van Natta] and new News Corp digital media boss Jon Miller asked Tom to stop coming to the office..."He'll have little decision or involvement with the product," says a source.

Of course, Anderson will continue to be everyone's default MySpace friend and will presumably continue to show up for all kinds of exciting parties. He's just not getting tens of millions of dollars for it anymore, having been demoted to six figures, and won't be mucking with MySpace's "strategy" of being a zombie social network. An economy like this requires certain sacrifices.

Age: Next month Peter turns 42.

Source of wealth: Oil business started by his grandfather, J. Paul Getty, and sold to Texaco by his father, the composer Gordon Getty, who is worth around $2.5 billion.

Occupation: Outside of blogging for SFGate, has described himself as a playwright, advertising copywriter and actor. Was in a rock band; started one now-defunct record company and talked about starting another, though that effort apparently fizzled. Upon the debut of one opera he wrote, in 1985, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "If you or I had written this, it wouldn't have gone beyond the living room."

Also authored an anonymous music blog, available here.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Wife Jacqui, defacto Coppola: Jacqui de La Fontaine was pregnant with Francis Ford Coppola's granddaughter when her boyfriend Gian-Carlo "Gio" Coppola was killed in a boating accident. Francis looked after the widow and daughter Gian-Carla ("Gia"), later walking Jacqui down the aisle during her 2000 wedding to Getty.

Jacqui has worked as a stylist at Harper's Bazaar, and as a costume stylist for music videos (Bob Dylan, Beastie Boys, Faith Hill) and movies. This background no doubt influenced her Bazaar photo shoot; in the attached picture she's on the left with Gia in the middle.

Best friends with British opposition leader: According to a 2005 Mail on Sunday story, Peter was close with David Cameron in Heatherdown, a British prep school. A former instructor said Peter Getty was "one of Cameron's best friends at school." The story added: "During the summer of 1977, Getty's family invited Cameron and four other boys at the school to fly to America on Concorde for a threeweek holiday including seven days at the Getty family mansion in Pacific Heights in San Francisco." How fun!

'Nexus of hipster Hollywood:' A 2004 Bazaar profile called Jacqui the "nexus of hipster Hollywood" and said the couple's nondescript home at the top of the Hollywood Hills, along with a Malibu home rented each summer, form a "crash pad" for their celebrity and artist friends to mix "in a freestyle, nonconventional form." The couple also throw a popular Halloween party.

Celebrity pals: The couple's friends include:

• "Close pal" Demi Moore, who met Jacqui in a Kentucky antiques store in 1988.
• Ashton Kutcher.
• Jason Schwartzman, who probably knows the couple since he's Francis Ford Coppola's nephew, partied with the couple right after their marriage and attended his 40th birthday party five years later.
  
• Actress Heather Graham also attended Peter's 40th birthday party.
• The various Coppolas, obviously.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.His rock band: Virgin-Whore Complex, whose 1996 release "Stay Away from My Mother" was in the mold of English new-wave band XTC. Spin magazine did the release party. The band reportedly refused to perform live concerts. None of this shielded the group from criticism; the music zine Octulus wrote, "The male lead singer's nasal delivery begins to sound like a bad imitation of a sleepy Fred Schneider."

Ironic lyrics included:

Son, I know you're scared
But we think it's time you knew
How much poverty and crime it takes
To finance one of you

Playing dress-up: Getty's clothes have betrayed the same superficial alienation from his privilege as his controversial SFGate posting. He assumed the character Spats Ransom in his band; other makeovers have seen him costumed as Willie Wonka (courtesy a gift from Jacqui) and an 18th-Century sea captain (from the Bazaar photo at top). Around town in San Francisco, he takes pride in an aggressively casual appearance, judging from the society columns.

The Coppola music hook-up: Jacqui's Hollywood connections have not only helped attract a circle of celebrity friends but also aided Peter's business: His now-defunct record label Emporer Norton Records released the soundtracks for two popular movies directed by Coppola's daughter Sofia, Lost in Translation and the Virgin Suicides.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.May have literally slept with Gavin Newsom: The Getty family is a longtime benefactor of Gavin Newsom, the hard-drinking, womanizing, hair-gel loving mayor of San Francisco and potential Democratic nominee for governor. Newsom's father, Judge William Newsom, was financial consigliere to Peter's father Gordon. So it was probably inevitable that his interests would intersect with those of Peter.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The Getty scion has been a partner in one or more of Newsom's business ventures, which include wine, restaurants and resorts. He rented his one-bedroom, $2.5 million apartment (left, via SocketSite) to the mayor after his divorce from Kimberly Guilfoyle. And things got even cozier at the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Peter shared a hotel room with Newsom, his brother Billy — and just two beds.

Exes: Met Jacqui when he was dating Lauren Hutton, 24 years his senior.

San Francisco home: This, bought (obviously) with help from mom.

The rich guy bloggers are Peter and Billy Getty, famous in San Fran as heirs to the Getty oil fortune. Maybe they're good guys and they try to be self-deprecating but they have clearly stepped much, much deeper in the violent waters of class rage than they are prepared for. None of this works, guys. Starting with your bio:

Peter Getty

Since graduating from college in 1988, Peter Getty has flirted occasionally with real work, but finding it wearisome, has returned full time to his first love, watching television.

Not to be confused with serious responsibilities are Mr. Getty's infrequent forays into music and writing, nor is the obscure music blog he has kept pseudonymously for the past several years.

Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up with your idle life. Do you see the irrational, unfocused nature of class rage, the force with which you are now in contention? It cannot be reasoned with. It's doubtful this bit of democratic public outreach will work out for you two in a positive fashion. Your blog is called "What the Butler Didn't See," which, shut the fuck up with that, as a title. You just put up your first post yesterday. It purports to answer the question purportedly on the minds of many purported people: "What's it like to be rich?" A sample of your work:

By the way: there are slews of people richer than we are, just in this neighborhood. We're more famous for being rich than we really are rich. But we have enough to belong to the leisure class, meaning we get to spend very little of our time doing anything we don't feel like, and we have means to sample, if not to gorge on, pleasures that most people, sad to say, won't likely ever share in — things like yacht trips and safaris, ludicrously expensive wine, and private jet travel.

This section is a caveat, meant to display both humility and no-frills honesty about your relative privilege. But men, you have forgotten: class rage. Your section serves to produce anger rather than identification. You continue:

Not to sound patronizing, but if you watch the Giants on TV — well, ideally HDTV — you partake equally in the most satisfying indulgence we know. We share a private box at Pac Bell or whatever the hell they're calling it these days, and it's actually kind of a hassle, to tell the truth. You can easily make far better hot dogs at home than they give you in the luxury boxes.

Again: your self-awareness of your uncomfortable position serves only to make you seem weaker to the angry, underprivileged hordes. Had you had somewhat more perfect self-awareness, you would not have agreed to write this blog, for the dying San Francisco Chronicle. As it is, your reader is unable to fight the urge to shout, "Well I'll come sit in your fucking luxury box while you microwave hot dogs at my studio apartment, then, motherfucker!"

A shame. A sad sad blogging shame.
[Peter & Billy Getty's Rich Guy Blog. Many more entries to come, we hope!]