#wealth-and-influence

#wealth-and-influence

Near the beginning of " The Way We Live Now," Anthony Trollope's searing satire of high-society London in the eighteen-seventies, Madame Melmotte, the wife of Augustus Melmotte, a crooked parvenu financier who has burst onto the British social scene, hosts a ball at the couple's mansion in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. Despite Melmotte's checkered past, many members of the London élite accept his invitation to the party, including many aristocrats, a newspaper editor, and Prince George, a member of the British Royal Family.

How could the Free Press-the total editorial output of which on a given day amounts to one or two reheated versions of "The Kids These Days Are Crazy," something like "Liberal Mayors Keep Lying About The 'Black Issue,'" and "How This IDF Wife Is Balancing Motherhood And Killing Child Terrorists"-be worth a reported $150 million, and why is its oafish founder about to oversee a huge press operation? Respectively: It isn't, and she shouldn't.

Mr. Rabin spent years fostering Ms. Ramirez's trust, weaponizing his wealth and influence to camouflage his manipulation as the support of a caring friend,