NEW ‘GILDED AGE’

“ . . . [Donald] Trump is one of the defining showmen of our new Gilded Age, whether we like that fact or not. Grandiosity, ostentation, and at least a touch of vulgarity have been his hallmarks from the beginning, the beginning being his 1980 reopening of the old and dowdy Commodore Hotel at Grand Central as a Grand Hyatt, bathed in marble, mirrors, chrome, and glass — ‘classy,’ to be sure, albeit in a Great Neck catering hall kind of way.”

Michael Tomasky, “Trump,” in the New York Review, September 24, 2015, pp: 12-16.