So Ivana Trump is dead. Huh. Seventy-three seems a young age to have your heart just give out, but then, we don’t know much about the first Mrs. T, no matter how much of her life she “shared” with the rest of us. I use quotes because, to me, sharing implies a certain desire or gratitude on the part of the person being shared with: “Want half my sandwich?” “Sure.” And I don’t recall asking to learn anything about Ivana, even though she and her loathsome ex-husband were seemingly in my grill for most of the ’80s.

I recommend the Personal Life section of her Wikipedia page:

Trump married four times. Her first marriage, to Alfred Winklmayr, was for the goal of securing Austrian nationality, according to a biographer. She was married to Donald Trump from 1977 to 1992, and had three children with him: Donald Jr. in 1977, Ivanka in 1981, and Eric in 1984.

Trump married Italian entrepreneur and international businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli in November 1995. They divorced in 1997. That same year, she filed a $15 million breach of contract suit against Mazzucchelli for violating the confidentiality clause in their prenuptial agreement, while Mazzucchelli sued Ivana and Donald Trump in a British court for libel. The suit was later settled under undisclosed terms.

In the summer of 1997, she began dating Italian aristocrat Count Roffredo Gaetani dell’Aquila d’Aragona Lovatelli. The relationship continued until his death in 2005.

Trump dated Italian actor and model Rossano Rubicondi for six years before they married on April 12, 2008. The marriage to Rubicondi, 36, was the fourth for Ivana, then 59. The couple’s $3 million wedding for 400 guests was hosted by ex-husband Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago with daughter Ivanka as her maid of honor. The wedding was officiated by Donald’s sister Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Although Ivana and Rubicondi divorced less than a year later, their on-again, off-again relationship continued until 2019, when Ivana announced they had once again “called it quits”. Rubicondi died on October 29, 2021, at the age of 49.

Trump had ten grandchildren. In the late 2010s, she reportedly split her time between New York City, Miami, and Saint-Tropez. She stated she was fluent in German, French, Czech, and Russian. She became a naturalized United States citizen in 1988.

So many shudder-y lines in that, but my favorite passage is the entirety of paragraph four, and my head can’t help but imagine that ghastly wedding, of an Italian “actor and model” marrying a woman more than 20 years his senior, as the guests of her ex-husband, with her monstrous children in attendance, all officiated by her former sister-in-law. Then the topper: “Although Ivana and Rubicondi divorced less than a year later…”

Rubicondi died young, at 49 (melanoma). I went a-Googling for news about him, and was vastly unsurprised to read this:

When Rossano Rubicondi married Ivana Trump at Mar-A-Lago — the luxury Palm Beach club and resort owned by her second spouse, Donald Trump — in 2008, the Italian left made it clear he viewed himself as a champion-grade husband.

“Rossano trotted down the big spiral staircase and onto the outside terrace, where around 400 guests” — and a 12-foot-tall wedding cake — “were in attendance. He was fist pumping to the ‘Rocky’ theme,” R. Couri Hay, the press agent who was a guest, told The Post. “Usually the bride enters from there and gets all the attention. But Rossano was such a proud peacock that he couldn’t help himself. Some of guests were appalled.”

Another priceless line: “Some of the guests were appalled.” Really? I’d have thought the entire company would be up and applauding. The appalled ones must have ended up in the Trump administration.

I’m sure people will say nice things about her, because that’s what we do when people die, but let me add some shadow here: What Ivana Trump was, was a woman who fucked her way out of a Soviet satellite, found her equally mercenary match in the man she had three children with – somehow this is another instance where “sharing” doesn’t quite fit – got dumped/dumped him depending on who you talk to, then found a fondness for Italians. They must have found her quite the rare bird, with that brassy bouffant and a face that suffered from repeat plastic surgeries. She was never the “top model” her second husband claimed she was, although she had some fine features to pass on to her daughter, mainly the height and long legs and Slavic cheekbones (improved with implants, yes, obviously). And I guess we can appreciate what she is reported to have said when her old man packed his mistress along on one of the family vacations to Vail or some other ski venue out west: Confronting Marla Maples on the slopes, she said something like, “Are you Moola?” Which is funny.

She divided her time between New York, St. Tropez and Miami, all rich-people slums. A silly woman who lived a silly life and replicated her silly DNA three times.

No one ever said life was fair.

This will be it for me, then. Let’s keep the Trumps in our thoughts and prayers, and if we’re lucky and pray hard enough, maybe the next obit we read will be you-know-who’s.

Since so much of the news has been terrible of late, I feel like I have to point out some definite glimmers of light, both in Michigan:

Two ballot initiatives advancing progressive causes — reproductive freedom and voting rights — have turned in signatures far, far, farrrrr in excess of those needed to get on the November ballot. Both are constitutional amendments, which means if they pass, they’ll be difficult to roll back in the future. Michigan has these direct-democracy features baked into its constitution, which was last revised in 1963, so some very New Frontier details. Sometimes good ideas get in there, sometimes bad ones (term limits, ahem). But it’s the system we’ve been given, and some people are working it.

Anyway, the reproductive-freedom initiative would give women the right to make that choice at any point in their pregnancy, so of course the pushback has already started: This will allow 12-year-olds to undergo hysterectomies! Women will have abortions in the eighth month! And so on. But they turned in a record number of signatures: 753,000, well over the 425,000 required.

Promote the Vote, the other one, came in with something like 663,000, and would make voting easier, more convenient, and — this is the big one — provide for nine days of early in-person voting, which we don’t currently have. (On the other hand, I believe some of the union contracts make Election Day a holiday, in the interest of participatory democracy. That might go in the next negotiation, huh?)

That both of these breezed across the finish line with such a margin — all petition drives over-deliver, because all the signatures have to be verified, and inevitably some are tossed — suggests all is not lost.

And today was another J6 hearing, ai-yi-yi. This is getting so ridiculous, this giant pile of evidence, something more better come of it than a bunch of embarrassment. Meanwhile, dozens of Republicans are running for office on the STOLEN ELECTION. It’s revolting. Maybe November will sort a few things out; I certainly hope so.

Another perfect day today, and I smashed it — up early, worked out, walked the dog, showered, worked, cleaned the goddamn coffeemaker. Remembered to have something for dinner, prepped it in plenty of time, drank lots of water. It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can yield.

Now let’s see what Wednesday brings. You never know.

Yikes, now that was a weekend. Perfect weather both days, just in time for miserable weather arriving during the week, when we’ll be scraping the bottom of the 90s. Why do I live here, I will ask myself on days like that. The answer:

Blue water, blue skies. That’s why.

That was Saturday. On Sunday, bike ride to John’s Carpet House for some of the blues jam that happens there every Sunday, in season. It’s grown — considerably — since the last time I was there. It’s much more of a place to show out, but still friendly, and that’s what counts. I had a late lunch of two tacos from a place that was selling them for $2 each. The guy asked me what I wanted on them. I asked what he had. Cheese, sour cream, taco sauce, jalapeños or something he called “Kranch.”

“It’s so good on tacos, you won’t believe it,” he said.

OK, then — cheese and Kranch. Which turned out to be ketchup and ranch dressing, but he was right — it wasn’t half-bad, at least when you’re hungry, and I was. Plus two Modelos.

It was necessary to be outside this weekend to shake off the stench of current events. Which leads to some bloggage:

A profile of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that will definitely polish her brand as a possible presidential contender down the road. Washington Post, but the link is a “gift” link, so I’m hoping you all can see it. Anyway:

Whitmer is a woman, but she is also an attractive woman, and her use of executive power, when wielded broadly, seems to deeply trigger her male antagonists. The Republican leader of the state Senate, Mike Shirkey, bragged on a hot mic that he had “spanked her hard on budget, spanked her hard on appointments,” and also contemplated “inviting her to a fistfight on the Capitol lawn.” Another Republican lawmaker, Sen. Ed McBroom, complained that Whitmer had been “neutering” him and his colleagues, the cause of the legislature’s “emasculation.”

At the start of the pandemic, Whitmer urged the federal government to supply more equipment to Michigan. On live television from the White House press briefing room, Trump dismissed her as “the woman from Michigan.” She was in national headlines. Democrats called it a political gift. Joe Biden thought about making her vice president, inviting her to Delaware to talk about the job in secret.

But that’s also when the threats started. Hundreds that don’t make it into the media, she said. And then there were the armed protests. And then there was the hit list with her name on it, belonging to a man who shot and killed a former Wisconsin judge. And then there was the kidnapping plot, a saga that began in the fall of 2020 and stretched on into a trial this year. Four men were charged, their plans and fantasies spelled out in public court filings: hogtying the governor, laying the governor out on a table, shooting the governor in the skull, shooting the governor in her doorway. She tried not to follow the trial coverage, but the headlines always passed by on Twitter and in push alerts. How could she not look? “Like, for weeks that this trial was going … every day,” she said. “So even if I wasn’t reading those articles, I couldn’t get away from them.”

I’m glad she’s talking about it, because most of the state media do not. Whitmer is nakedly ambitious, but this is so obvious.

Here’s more WashPost content, and another gift link, actor John Turturro talking about his grandmother’s illegal abortion:

My mother, Katherine, the fourth of six children, was born in Brooklyn to immigrants from Sicily. Her mother, Rosa, took care of the family and worked as a seamstress from home; her father, Giovanni, earned his living as a shoemaker. They struggled as many poor families did, then and now, to feed and clothe their children. Then Rosa became pregnant with child number seven.

She was 40. She had a baby, a 4-year-old, a 6-year-old, a 7-year-old, an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old. I imagine the method of birth control was rudimentary. Rosa’s older sister Margarita was distraught that Rosa would have another mouth to feed. Margarita persuaded her sister not to bear another child.

She was given a “special drink” by her sister. It didn’t go well:

My grandmother became feverish — most likely from an infection that turned into septic shock that evening — on fire from the poison, burning inside. Pennyroyal, I know now, can be toxic to the liver. My mom watched her mother stand up on her bed, pulling at her hair and asking God, “Why?”

Rosa Inzerillo was taken to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn on April 18, 1927. She died on April 25 at about 7 a.m.

I’m glad he wrote about this, because we know this is who most often gets an abortion — a woman who already is a mother and is struggling with the ones she has. The column goes on to describe what happens to a poor woman with six children who dies in 1927. It blew up her family, in every way imaginable. I won’t spoil it — just read.

And on a lighter note, ha ha, a NYT magazine story on why the future of opera may be unfolding in? Yes, Detroit. Another gift link. My friends who have seen the productions Yuval Sharon has done so far have raved about them. We’ll have to see one next season, if we can get seats after this.

With that, I believe I’ve got some recovering to do from all this sun. Funny how it knocks you flat, ain’a? But I’m thinking some pizza will be good medicine.

Let the week begin.

I was going to write something last night, but I had a date with three former colleagues at a steakhouse about an hour away, and I opted to do that instead. Never turn down a chance to have a two-hour meat house date with fun people. I listened to “Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus” on the way home, very loud, and decided I don’t care how many people OK-boomer me, that record is great and I will not apologize for loving it.

It’s the Summer of Nance, I’ve decided. All healthy eating, self-improvement, open windows, warm breezes, old music and weeknights out in Howell, Michigan.

First, a housekeeping note: I don’t know what was going on with the page not loading on your iPhones, etc. I try not to bother J.C. with every little thing, but the other day I noticed the spam filter on my NN.c email has seemingly dissolved. Every day I have to kill a couple dozen penis-enlargement emails, and no matter how many times I mark them as junk/spam, it doesn’t seem to learn. This, J.C. suggests, is a server problem, at least in part, so who knows, maybe they’re going through some things at Dreamhost.

Anyway, J.C. is going away on Sunday for two weeks in the Galapagos Islands, so we must all keep our fingers crossed that nothing goes awry in his absence.

Another housekeeping note, but really just self-promotion: I had a chance to write the “I Wish I’d Been There” column for Echoes magazine, published by the Ohio History connection, and it was published in recent days. The e-reader is a little awkward, but just drag the slider to page 46 and there it is: A moment of Ohio history I wish I’d have observed directly, when Elvis Costello and Bonnie Bramlett got into a fistfight at the Holiday Inn in downtown Columbus. To the credit of Bill Eichenberger, who asked me to do it, I must say that column has a nice, playful spirit. I read one about 10-cent beer night at Cleveland Stadium to get a feel for the voice, then noticed the byline: Erik Harden, son of my old Dispatch colleague Mike. Small world.

Note to Dorothy: When I went into the clips from the separate Costello and Stephen Stills shows from that night, the byline on the review of the Costello show? Mark Ellis. Jeff Borden wrote about Stills. I always thought concert reviews were a waste of time, unless it was for a show that was going multiple nights, but then, newspapers used to have space to burn. They needed to fill those pages somehow.

I had trouble falling asleep last night — too much food — and saw the news about Shinzo Abe’s assassination on Twitter. I will always remember him as the guy who rolled his eyes at Donald Trump’s asshole handshake move. Of course, Ivanka is all torn up:

Saddened by the death of Former PM Shinzo Abe, a truly historic figure & leader of lasting consequence. Abe’s advice, wisdom & warmth had a profound impact on me during my government service. My heart is with his family & the Japanese people as the world mourns his passing. pic.twitter.com/UAEAXHRIGY

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump)

She of course chose a photo that included Herself. “My government service,” lol.

And now I have to prep for the day, so adieu, which is also a good first word in Wordle. See you after the weekend.

Happy Independence Day. On this day, the first in nearly a half-century in which women no longer have bodily autonomy, six people are dead and 16 24 (as of now) are hospitalized after yet another mass shooting. I’m sure you’ve heard of it by now; it was in Highland Park, Ill., at the most American event possible, a July 4 parade. Children are separated from their parents. The shooter is still at large.

God bless America.

Maybe you’ve seen one of the video clips, of people running as a klezmer band plays on a flatbed. Highland Park is a very Jewish suburb, so that adds another angle to consider. I predict that within a week, once again nothing will be done except some lip-flapping about mental health, and soon we’ll see the grateful tweets about being able to “defend your family” with all the weaponry money can buy.

This isn’t freedom. It’s the opposite of freedom.

Exact moments as shots are heard as a mass shooting unfolds in Highland Park during a 4th of July parade celebration. #highlandpark #masshooting

— CHICAGO CRITTER (@ChicagoCritter) July 4, 2022

Not celebrating anything today. It’s another 90-degree scorcher. I got my morning swim out of the way when it was still bearable, bought groceries, and am now finishing a Mick Herron novel in my air-conditioned house, which I nearly killed myself cleaning yesterday. Our bathroom(s) project is done, but as usual, the silt-like dust that went through the house lives on. Not feeling particularly celebratory right now, anyway. But that’s the thing about the Fourth of July — no one demands that you show up for a parade, wave a flag, or whatever. You’re free to shelter from extreme heat with a technology that will further degrade the environment, whoopee. Beats sheltering from mass shooters, I guess.

I did have a good time at my reunion. The MAGA who ended my last one on a sour note wasn’t there, and I found some fun people to hang with, including the class president, who I barely exchanged a word with when we were in school together. The downside of a class of 750, I guess. There were more than 100 people there, and it was beastly hot in the courtyard of the restaurant we had reserved, even in the shade. Fortunately, the bar was air-conditioned, and open. A few more names have been added to the In Memoriam page. I looked it over while I was there (it was projected on a wall). Tried to remember who went when – car crashes first, then AIDS, then the early-reaping cancers, heart disease, etc. I mentioned this to one classmate I had zero memory of back then, and couldn’t even remember his name written somewhere on a class list. He said if you make it to 65, you’re probably good for another 15-20 years, then introduced himself as a public-health specialist. Figure he’d know.

Drove home Saturday afternoon, and listened to radio shows and podcasts about the Dobbs decision. On “This American Life,” an enthusiastic anti-abortion activist answered a question about what you’d say to a woman who absolutely, positively does not want in any way to be pregnant something like this: Tough shit, life is difficult, deal. Wow, what a gal.

OK, then. This photo is making the rounds, and seems like a good one to close with. See you later this week. America the beautiful:

A Lake County police officer walks through chairs and bikes left behind on the Central Avenue parade route sidewalk near the scene of the Highland Park mass shooting.

‘It was chaotic,’ reports of 6 dead, 2 dozen others shot during Fourth of July parade
https://t.co/kWBnLbO2nS
https://t.co/AgfvWCBJI4

— Brian Cassella (@briancassella)July 4, 2022

Friends, I’m headed out for a couple-three days. High school-reunion thing, visit-family thing, go-to-someplace-even-hotter-than-Detroit thing. What a week. What a bunch of weeks. Our bathroom project(s) are almost done, and I’m leaving Alan with the final days, but travel is important for the soul, even if you’re only going to Ohio.

But I’m talking today to you Hoosiers, and former Hoosiers, and anyone else who might be interested.

A friend of mine is running for Congress in my old district in Indiana. As an independent. Yep, following the Evan McMullin strategy. The odds are against him, and pretty steep ones at that, but this is America and he gets to try. So, meet Nathan Gotsch, who is trying. If you’re so inclined, there’s a fundraising link, and today is an important fundraising deadline. But if you want to give after, that’s fine too.

I’ve known Nathan for a few years. He’s a nice kid (although no longer a kid). And he’s running against one of the biggest embarrassments in Congress, someone who makes Mark Souder (who held the seat when I lived there) look like Winston Churchill. Read his pitch – Why should I care about your friend running for Congress? ha ha – consider a donation.

And have a great weekend.

I expect we’re all going to want to talk about today’s J6 hearing in comments, so I’ll keep this brief.

You know what detail pierced me the most? The one that rang truest, for better or worse? When Cassidy Hutchinson saw the valet going to clean up after the president’s temper tantrum, she grabbed a towel to help. She was aide to the White House chief of staff, but when she saw a mess she did what every woman — or almost every woman, at least the ones with mothers like mine — automatically does: She moved to clean it up. Because women are raised to clean up after themselves, and everybody else. I know there are exceptions, but I never check out of a hotel room without making sure no one left a wet towel on the bed, that all the dirty towels are in a pile for easy pickup, and any trash is in the wastebasket, etc. And I leave a tenner for the maid.

I’m also 1,000 percent convinced that this pig we allowed into the White House has been violent with every woman unfortunate enough to get close to him, including his own daughter. The story Ivana told about him raping her because he was mad his stupid hair-fixing surgery went wrong? I always took that with a grain of salt, because she’s as vile and stupid as he is, but not any more. A man who throws plates against the wall like an infant is capable of much worse violence. As we’re so often told, rape is violence, not sex, and it makes perfect sense that’s how he’d express himself.

A man in his 70s, physically attacking his own security detail. Imagine that.

I know it’s fashionable to beat up on Maggie Haberman, without whom we wouldn’t know a fraction of much of what we know about Trump, but indulge me here:

And:

At least some of the help is turning on their old bosses. Hi, Melania:

pic.twitter.com/PQXLSsv6IJ

— Stephanie Grisham (@OMGrisham) June 28, 2022

Again, not that Stephanie Grisham is anyone to admire. I’m struck, over and over again, how low the bar has fallen that we elevate a woman who went to work for Mark Meadows as a heroine, but a heroine she is.

The world makes no sense to me anymore. Let’s talk about it.

Well.

I was going to take a quick few minutes to update the blog on Friday morning, and then, well, you know what happened. I decided to wait through the weekend, just to see how it went. A few things are coming clear:

** Ginni Thomas was the draft leaker, maybe even without her husband’s knowledge (although probably not). Getting the opinion out weeks earlier pushed Kavanaugh into the majority. As someone said on Twitter, we’ll know it was her when no one else is publicly named (or the name leaks, ha ha) and punished for it.

** Speaking of Boof Kavanaugh, how amusing that his opinion had that air of brushing off his hands and walking away, having left abortion “to the states.” :::imagine another bitter chuckle here::: Not for nothing are the Republicans talking about national anti-abortion legislation. Already.

** Meanwhile, we know who the real victim is. Yes, Rudy Giuliani.

Photo editing mine. But you gotta love New York City, where a guy picking up a few essentials at the ShopRite can get a chance to lay hands on one of the biggest assholes on the planet (at the moment, anyway):

The ex-mayor told ABC the slap felt like “somebody shot me,” and, “Luckily, I”m a 78-year-old who is in pretty good shape.

“If I wasn’t, I would have hit the ground and probably cracked my skull.”

The former federal prosecutor told The Post he felt it was his duty to call the cops — likening the decision to his tough-on-crime policies as mayor.

“I say to myself, ‘You know something? I gotta get this guy arrested,’ ” he said. “I talk about ‘broken windows’ theory all the time. You can’t let the little things go.

Jesus, what a douchebag.

I was listening to some NPR egghead today when my inner feminist rose up and growled. It was the eighteenth mention of “pregnant person” that did it. Look, I know this is the new term of art, that trans men might need abortions someday too, but goddamnit: THIS IS ABOUT WOMEN. Uterus-havers, who may have sex with sperm producers, whether by choice or force, and get pregnant when they don’t want to be. Women, in other words. Sorry, I’m just not in the mood for language policing right now. We’re here arguing about incrementalism, and Republicans incrementaled a constitutional right right out from under us.

Fuck all this shit. Yeah, I’m still pissed. And will be, for a while.

I see the comments on Tuesday’s hearings are starting to come in on the previous post, so here’s a new one:

OMG these fucking hearings.

For me, the record scratch was when the former chair of the state GOP said this, of the Michigan fake electors:

“He told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the Capitol and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote per law in the Michigan chambers, and I told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate.”

The He here was a lawyer working with the Trump team. Under state law, they have to cast their votes in the Capitol building itself, and that was their plan. I am happy with the headline I wrote for this brief I banged out about it: Sedition Sleepover: Michigan Fake Electors Considered ‘Hiding In The Capitol Overnight’ To Get Inside

One of these clowns was 81 years old. It would have served this crew right to have him get chest pains in the middle of it all. As it was, they didn’t sleep over and instead walked as a group to the Capitol and asked to be admitted. The state trooper at the door told them they weren’t on the list, and to get lost.

The Freep dug up its old video of that priceless moment. I don’t think I’ve heard the word “constitution” spoken so much in my life.

Later this week I take my training for the next election. I asked to be moved to the absentee counting boards, which I predict will be less action-packed than in 2020, but you never know. We’ll see what they tell us in training.

Beyond Laura Cox’s mic drop on the sleepover, I think the most excruciating part was listening to Trump harangue Raffensberger about Georgia. The depth of this man’s willful ignorance is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, he has so many enablers, reality doesn’t penetrate his thick skull.

I owe thanks to whoever posted the story about Marvella Bayh the other day, which I finally got around to reading yesterday. Marvella was the wife of the late former senator Birch Bayh, a Hoosier Democrat and maybe the very last Hoosier Democrat (although his son, Evan, served as governor and senator himself, but voted like a Republican). Bayh Senior was instrumental in passing Title IX and two count ’em two constitutional amendments. Imagine that: A U.S. Senate that actually passes laws and gets shit done. The mind boggles.

I think Title IX would be a non-starter in today’s climate. I really do.

OK, midweek blog update done. I should talk about the Texas police cowards, but I don’t have the spirit for it right now. You guys, feel free.

I think it was during the first year of the pandemic, all of us spending too much time on our phones and devices, that Fathers Day came along and Kate said, not entirely seriously but maybe not, that she felt bad about her gift, which was something like a home-cooked dinner and time together.

Why, I asked. He’s delighted to spend time with you, and the dinner was lovely.

“Some girl on Instagram wrote a song about her father, recorded it and put it to a slide show of pictures and videos of them together as she was growing up,” she said.

Ladies and gentlemen: Social media.

This morning I had the weekend shift for Deadline Detroit, and I aggregated (summarized, basically) a story based on the Instagram posting of a swimsuit model who became engaged to the Lions’ quarterback. I was struck by how…Instagrammy the whole weekend seemed to be; he popped the question on vacation in Cabo, and arranged to have all her friends flown in (PJ, natch), and they partied and celebrated and took 10 million photos and videos and it all came together in a very photogenic fashion.

I guess because I have worked with photographers my whole career, I always imagine what’s behind the fourth wall. I can understand wanting to memorialize a significant moment, but knowing the way photographers can bark orders, I can’t understand inviting one to a fairly intimate moment. Like this, say:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Christen Harper (@christenharper)

Honestly, I see this sort of thing everywhere, life not lived so much as lived for some fantasy audience, who will see, admire and envy you on social media. I also know, for public people, that social media is in some sense inescapable, but I hate to see people who can’t afford aspiring to what is, frankly, an unattainable life for nearly all of them.

And of course, the kings of tech not only brought this plague upon us, but now they’re ruining other things, too. Our newspaper carrier gave us a copy of the Wall Street Journal on Friday by mistake. We used to subscribe, years ago, and I remembered the Friday features section as a somewhat amusing catalog of rich people problems, and indulgences. Sometime before 9/11, there was a story on people who book name-brand entertainers for private parties, for example. I always looked for the YOLO quote, which was something like, “Yeah, it cost $100,000 to book Tom Jones, but mom and dad only have a 40th anniversary once.”

Anyway, for some reason the Friday features section was called Mansion, yes really, and the lead story was about the ruination of Malibu. People think Malibu is exclusively rich people, and it is, but it wasn’t always. Seriously:

About three decades ago, Beverly Hills native Andy Stern moved to the nearby beach city of Malibu to raise his young family. He quickly came to know all his neighbors, he said, recalling block parties with children pouring onto the streets to play together.

Now Mr. Stern—a two-time Malibu mayor and Coldwell Banker Realty real-estate agent—said he barely sees his neighbors in the Broad Beach area, because they are rarely there. The families that once lived in the neighborhood have largely been replaced by celebrities and billionaires, such as the Chicago-born real-estate billionaire Sam Zell, Miami Heat President Pat Riley and Torstein Hagen, the Norwegian billionaire founder of Viking Cruises, property records show. Mr. Stern said many of his neighbors own two, three or even four other homes, visiting Malibu only periodically while their houses there sit empty for much of the year.

This was the problem people talked about when I wrote about subsidized housing in Aspen, back in the day, for Bridge.

If it weren’t for the housing program, there wouldn’t be a single bartender, teacher, ski instructor or even doctor who would afford to live there. What’s more, the town would be empty all but a few weeks a year — maybe even two weeks, since that’s when the rich people who own houses there come in for skiing, around the holidays. And now Malibu is the same way? You don’t say. They don’t live there because they live everywhere, and can’t possibly live in a hotel when they’re somewhere. Rich people ruin everything.

Not to bring you down in the waning hours of Fathers Day. It really was a nice weekend, even though I spent a fair amount of it cleaning up construction dust. But there was also strawberries, bike rides, a boxing class and a haircut. A good haircut, too. No pictures, though — I have terrible Helmet Head at the moment.

Let’s go into the week and enjoy it best we can.