Looking at your various posts for the last week or so, I can say that all this opining about old money applies to solid middle-class families too. I don't know why dignity, because that's really what it is, is suddenly arcane and suspect.

Are old-moneyed families so strange? Unhappy marriages eventually affect everyone; telling secrets is ill-mannered; spending money you really don't have is déclassé and a thoroughly bad business.

I'm not sure where the solemn pontificating comes in about old money. The essay on Truman Capote was particularly odd: There was Capote weaseling secrets out of these women, and then when they realized the extent of his betrayal, and gave him a well-deserved cold shoulder, he blamed them for being rich and sticking together.

The bottom line for everyone should be, think before you act, and keep out the trash.