“How do you get from here to the rest of the world?”
The question is one of the most heart-breaking moments on this season of the Wire. It’s asked of Cutty, an ex-con turned proprietor of a neighborhood boxing gym. The youngster asking it is Dukie, of the desperate kids caught up in the mess of youthful drug dealing but who is told by friend and foe alike that his talents lie elsewhere. “I wish I knew,” is Cutty’s humble answer.
One guy who might know is Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire head of private equity giant Blackstone. And last week he went to the Sacred Heart School in the Bronx to deliver his answer. Unlike conventional advice—that it was important to work hard at school and stay out of trouble—Schwarzman seemed to propose that doing well in school isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
“I used to do homework and got a 90, but not much above that,” he told Victor Anoiske, who Schwarzman called “handsome” and the the New York Times describes as “a quiet, reed-thin fourth grader.” “But I couldn’t get 96’s like you did,” he told the kid.
Translation: “You don’t need those grades to live in the most prestigious apartment in New York City, kid.”
Victor, however, doesn’t want to follow Schwarzman’s path to wealth and infamy. When asked if he wanted to go into business like Schwarzman, Victor told the Times that he wants to be a doctor or scientist.
Schwarzman and his wife, Christine Hearst Schwarzman, were invited to the Bronx School in recognition of their $5 million donation to a scholarship program run by the Archdiocese of New York. It was the largest single gift ever to the fund. Or as Fake Steve Schwarzman puts it on his Newsgroper blog, “I gave more money to the Catholic Church than Jesus.”
Schwarzman apparently taught a class on that other notoriously sly businessman from Philadelphia, Ben Franklin.
Schwarzman’s School Ties [New York Times]
I gave more money to the Catholic Church than Jesus [Newsgroper]
Posted by guest, Mar 03, 2008 2:03PM
You should have left this one alone. SS gave big bucks to a place thats doing a lot of good (and is in fact a favorite Wall Street charity, especially among the Irish Catholics). He was also very gracious in his compliments to a kid that's succeeding against big odds. That's all that's going on here. No need to insert that snarky "you don't need to be smart to live at 740 Park.." bit. No one ever said that the big bucks go to where the biggest brains are. We all understand that brains are a factor, but just one of many.