ScrappleFace: Harlem School Kids to Inherit NY Times Empire

Harlem School Kids to Inherit NY Times Empire

(2002-11-22) -- Inspired by columnist Paul Krugman's criticism of America's inherited wealth and status system, New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., today altered his legal will. His share of the vast Times empire and fortune will now be inherited by the senior class of a Harlem, NY, high school.

"I read Paul's column," said Mr. Sulzberger, "and I agreed that my offspring shouldn't inherit my wealth, and the reins of the Times, just because they had the dumb luck to be born in my family. What about all those other kids who weren't fortunate enough to have me as their father?"

Under the terms of the new will, after Mr. Sulzberger's death, his share of the New York Times Company will belong to the Harlem high school's current senior class collectively, and the class president will be the publisher.

According to Mr. Krugman, all children from wealthy families who rise to positions of power or influence do so only because of the social status of their parents, not due to their own abilities, nor to the skills they learned from their parents.

The New York Times has been run by members of Mr. Sulzberger's family since 1896.

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Bouyed by Sulzberger's munificence, the Bush administration proposed a new round of tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy insuring even larger estates for the Krugman's Kids.

Posted by: rick mueller at November 22, 2002 09:30 AM

Nervous glances throughout the editorial department were observed, as many mainstays of the Op-Ed page, including the knee-jerk Clintonistas and crypto-socialists who opposed such programs as school vouchers (popular in Harlem), as well as the Society Page editors who have NEVER IN THEIR LIVES reported on the wedding of someone who DID NOT go to Choate/Brearley/Trinity fill in the blank and Harvard/Stanford/Brown fill in the blank where they went on to be a successful lawyer/doctor/journalist fill in the blank... realized that the priorities of a bunch of Harlem school kids and their families might be a little different from those of the current staff and their Upper West Side neighbors, and in short, the click clack of keyboards could be heard as the current Times staff got their resumes in order!!!

Posted by: the talking dog at November 22, 2002 12:25 PM

Well at least we can get the NYNEA behind raising the test standards. We might get a senior class whose average age is 37 or so.

Posted by: pooh bah at November 22, 2002 02:29 PM

I'm in the process of re-reading Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." It was published in 1957, but seems as though it was written this year. Those who think that wealth belongs in the hand of the non-productive need to have their heads handed to them on rusty wheelcovers.

Posted by: Beverly Kurtin at November 24, 2002 02:34 PM