Mandatory?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A news article in the metro section of Sunday’s New York Times made reference to a local billionaire. It said he “has the mandatory (for a mogul) blond second wife.”
The rich are one of the few groups left in America that it’s still acceptable for the Times to stereotype negatively. In this case, however, the facts don’t bear out the stereotype.
According to Thomas Stanley’s book, “The Millionaire Mind,” based on a survey of 733 millionaires, “Millionaire couples have less than one-third the divorce rate of nonmillionaire couples.”
This is borne out not only by Mr. Stanley’s research but by federal surveys. “Higher education and income are associated with a lower probability of marital disruption,” said a July 2002 study, “Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States,” published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Affluence is good for the stability of marriages.”
So much for the myth of the mandatory second wife. As for the blondness issue, we’ve yet to see any definitive survey data. But we look forward to the day when the Times starts judging women, even rich, married ones, not by the color of their hair but by the content of their character.
