> On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, christian a. gregory wrote:
>
> > of course it's not *just* a melodrama cooked up by cretins though it is
> > certainly that too. perhaps, cretins with money and influence--say old-money
> > bourgeois cretins.
>
> Nah. these cretins are new money. this whole affair is way too tacky for
> old money.
>
> frances
Nothing is too tacky for old *or* new money. Henry James, *The American*, is based on the assumption that "old" money ("old") family in France held many things as being too tacky and would commit murder rather than ally themselves with new money. Late in life he declared that the premises of the plot were mistaken: the "old" family would have swallowed new money without a tremor. David Rockefeller during the days when nightclubs still existed would would tuck money in the stockings of "cigarette girls." Not too tacky at all.
Carrol