Society is dead. Even if it's alive, it has no power. No one cares about those people anymore.
If you believe any of those things, I have two words for you: Brooke Astor.
Last week, Meryl Gordon published a balanced and riveting book, Mrs. Astor Regrets: The Hidden Betrayals of a Family Beyond Reproach, about that dignified lady's undignified last days and death. It chronicles how one of Astor's grandsons, Philip Marshall, backed by her friends David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Annette de la Renta, accused Philip's father, her only child Anthony Marshall, of elder abuse, and how, Philip's best intentions notwithstanding, the sordid family feud became a public scandal. It was soon being said that the dying first lady of New York society had been manipulated to change her will by her now 84-year-old son, inspired by his oft-vilified third wife Charlene (the Wicked Witch of the North in this tangled tale, who'd left an Episcopal priest to marry him)—and hand $60 million she'd originally left to her favorite causes over to the Marshalls.