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Pinch started to epater le bourgeoisie his great-grandfather had courted, trying to turn the paper of record into the Village Voice, or rather what the Voice would look like if it ran ads from Tiffany's. The motif of the Times became late-60s protest, bent on annoying the male and the white.

Why is a great institution in the 21st century acting as if this were France in 1500, and it were the House of Valois? Most monarchies have long since dropped this system, disposing of kings, or making them figureheads--having realized that the genetic lottery is even riskier than the electoral one, and a lot harder to rectify. The Raines-Sulzberger dynamic is best seen as another example of the prince and court favorite, the age-old pattern of public disaster that has brought down so many regimes.

This is the trouble with dynastic endeavors: They may work for a time, but sooner or later comes an idiot child --Henry VI, Nicholas Romanov--who wrecks the entire regime. Pinch Sulzberger is doing to the Adolph Ochs Times what Edward VIII almost did to the Windsors and England. And there's no Mrs. Simpson in sight.

Thanks for the pingo MF. A memorable, brilliant, and elegant expose of the genetically-challenged "Pinch."