Woman Ascending a Marble Staircase

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/11/magazine/woman-ascending-a-marble-staircase.html

This article from a 1998 NY Times Magazine section says it all about the world of David and Julia Koch, mostly Julia. Considering the scrutiny this family has been under recently, it might be timely to bone up on a little background. Be warned: check your gag reflex.

:puke:

To bad they weren't in Pompeii that day.

Our masters.

Koch is the German word. Both Koch and kok mean "cook". How they get "coke" out of it, I don't know. But then lots of people pronounce "van Gogh" as "van Go".

There's not enough money in the world for me to want to live like that.
Truly a soulless life.

are ages 70 and 75. They've already done immense damage to the country, but are certainly capable of doing much, much more in these crazy tea-bagging, FreedomWorks, Glenn Beck days. Their negative impact needs to stay in the spotlight....I want to see a lot of Democratic campaigners do what Alan Grayson is doing. Naming them and hitting them hard. This article, years earlier, put a face on the enemy.

Believe it was Stephen Colbert who said, "These brothers made their money the old-fashioned way - they inherited it."

And well, thank God she's not just merely more uber-rich riff-raff, you know.

''Julia's one of those people who occur in New York every few years,'' says Patrick McCarthy, who oversees the lives of the rich and fabulous in W and Women's Wear Daily. ''She's beautiful, she loves fashion, she knows how to entertain, she's married to an extraordinarily rich man.'' At a time when New York society has evolved from a collection of Upper East Side ladies to the gallimaufry of designers, models, movie stars and hangers-on much in evidence at the Met, Julia Koch is well positioned to become a leading fin de siecle society wife.

(...)

And if, as seems to be the case, America is once again living through a period when people feel that wealth is a true measure of a person's value and success, then Mrs. David H. Koch of New York, Southampton and Aspen is more than halfway there. "