Dan’s Papers November 4, 2011 danshamptons.com Page 15
Pranks Fishing a Sex Doll Out of Town Pond & the Biggest Prank of All By Dan Rattiner Last Monday afternoon, an anatomically correct sex doll was found floating in the beautiful Town Pond in downtown East Hampton. The police came with fishing rods, hooked it and reeled it in. Presumably it was a she (or it wouldn’t have been a sex doll), presumably it was inflated (or it wouldn’t have been a sex doll) and presumably it did not impress the swans in the pond (who have seen it all. They are only impressed when a motorist drives a car into Town Pond.) I cannot show you a photo of the sex doll being removed. It was gone long before we had a reporter there. As editor though, I did think we ought to have a picture of the sex doll floating
in the pond in Dan’s Papers to accompany this story and suggested we go out and buy one, but my staff wouldn’t agree to such a thing, even when I suggested we could float it face down, mafia style. So here the story runs without a photograph. No arrests were made in connection with this incident. I’m not sure that even if they found who did this, the police COULD arrest the person, as I don’t recall any ordinances in the village that this might have been in violation of. It is a prank, though. It brings to mind one of the world’s greatest pranks that happened right here in East Hampton years ago. Alongside this, the sex doll in the pond pales by comparison.
At the time, and this was in the late 1950s, there was occasional outrageous talk among the kids, never serious talk, in which the high school kids would threaten to burn the school down some night so we wouldn’t have to go there anymore. No, I am not going to tell you the kids burned the school down. But I can tell you this. At the time, the high school was in what is now the Middle School on Newtown Lane, and it did not pass anybody’s notice that railroad tracks ran behind the school and there was a spur from the main line to within 50 yards of the back of the school cafeteria built so the school could (continued on next page)
OCCUPY WALL STREET, OCCUPY LONG WHARF By Dan Rattiner For two Saturdays in a row now, people in Sag Harbor have been standing out on Long Wharf with signs announcing their solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Meanwhile, others say they don’t understand the message. They feel sympathetic to the movement, but are confused by it. I hope to clear this up with the rest of this article. Here are a few things that might help. * * * John Paulson and his wife Jenny donated several million dollars to Southampton Hospital for the creation of a beautiful new Emergency Room. Their name is above the door for what they did. It is a great thing they did. Lives will be saved due to their generosity.
On the other hand, not long ago, members of Occupy Wall Street demonstrated in front of his Manhattan apartment building. They consider him part of the 1% who have accumulated vast sums of money while they have gotten none, and can’t find jobs either, or jobs that pay well enough for them to buy the basic things in life. Paulson made billions betting against subprime mortgages, as early as 2006. He won that bet. Some say he had a hand in the creation of some bad financial instruments. So it was a sure thing he would win. Billions of dollars worth of these instruments were sold—and those that bought them lost their money. He won the money. It’s dog eat dog out there. And as Gordon Gekko famously said in the movie Wall Street, “greed is good.”
* * * In Friday’s New York Times business section, on the front page, was an article headlined DEBT PLAN COULD DENY THOSE WHO BET ON DEFAULT. People who would have been interested in reading this were the speculators who made financial bets that Greece would go bankrupt. If it did—and there were a second worldwide financial collapse, they would profit by hundreds of millions of dollars. If a plan was approved to prevent this, these traders would lose. The Times’ article explored the meaning of the deal worked out by the European Union that would save Greece. Didn’t seem there was anything these gamblers could do about (continued on page 18)