Do Kovner’s Banns Signal Ban on Neocons?

We're a couple of weeks away from the New York Sun either staggering forward or closing down; it would seem that billionaire Bruce Kovner, one of the original funders, has lost interest in his ultra-Zionist offspring.  Kovner is a financial genius who has always balanced rightwing causes, say the American Enterprise Institute, which he chairs, with ones that are acceptable to his Manhattan host–like Juilliard, which he also chairs. Kovner's social world is New York. He loves music and theater, and is generous to the arts.

I wrote about the secretive baron two or three years ago for New York Magazine; he was then a lone wolf on the Isle of Manhattoes, and Jane Austen's formulation applied well to him: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." The women were baying at the high hedges of the hedge king's estate.

Well since then Kovner has wed. I missed it, so apparently did the Times. But FEC records on his gift of $4600 to John McCain last year say that half the gift was assigned to his spouse, Suzie Kovner, a homemaker. Cruising the internet, it seems that Suzie, a goodlooking redhead with a great smile, is the former Suzanne Fairchild, who worked at Sotheby's, described herself as a bookworm and nerd, and is like her husband, a lover of the high arts –in this case, Brit theater.

I wish them well, and hope that the Ascension of Suzie portends good news for the American political discourse. Like what would she make of the fact that AEI quietly slips $96,000 a year to mustachioed rightwing Israeli Dore Gold, who is doing everything he can to frustrate the peace process? It's sort of non-U, if you know what I mean…