Ernest Hemingway to the contrary, the rich are different. And back once again to show how different is Lisa Kerkorian, ex-wife of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, in a marriage which strangely featured a prenuptial agreement which guaranteed a divorce, on specified terms, within a month. When we last left her, she was suing for over $300,000 a month in child support for her daughter, Kira, who has expenses including over $100,000 a month in travel expenses, tens of thousands of dollars in restaurant bills, and high entertainment costs. Pretty swank for a four-year-old.

The theory behind the child-support suit was that Kira was Kirk's daughter; the money was to raise her "in the station of life and with the things and benefits befitting the daughter of Kirk Kerkorian." But in the most recent proceedings of the same lawsuit, Lisa is now claiming that Kira is not Kirk's daughter, and couldn't be --- Kirk, she now claims, is sterile, and the whole "Kirk's daughter" story, she now claims, was a plot they hatched together to make the billionaire seem more "cuddly", complete with faked DNA test. Why exactly she expects Kirk to pay child support for a child which, she now claims, is not his, is a question that I'll leave to those more versed in the law.

While I'm on the subject, New York's Mayor Bloomberg shows us another reason the rich are different --- they don't have to put up with incinerators in their neighborhoods:

Wading into dangerous political waters, he admitted publicly what most politicians only whisper in private: The rich have a lot more clout than the poor when it comes to blocking unwanted facilities.

"If you were to put an incinerator on Park Avenue, you would drive away the revenue base that supports this city," Bloomberg, who lives in a townhouse on the Upper East Side, told a reporter who asked if he'd welcome such a plant near Gracie Mansion.

"The fact of the matter is that where you tend to site things - unfortunately - it tends to be in areas that are also in proximity to people who are just starting their ways up the economic ladder," he said.

People, that is, who aren't as far up the economic ladder as Kira Kerkorian, who at the age of four, could have had $50,000 a month, or $600,000 a year, in child support (the figure in Lisa's divorce settlement, which she could have had for the asking). Which, like the incincerator, is once again a useful gut check on the glories of American egalitarianism.

(Links via Grim Amusements and Random Walks).