Harold Hamm started up way the hard way—thirteenth child of a family of sharecroppers. Now he’s sitting on the oil rights to about a million acres of what geologists call the Bakken Formation, worth about $18 billion. Some folks might think that $18 billion should buy a man a little respect. But for the New York Times, ole Harold is just another hillbilly who couldn’t keep it in his pants.
I confess that I don’t monitor this sort of thing that closely, but I don’t recall the Times rattling the skeletons in Upper East Side closets as vigorously, and as cheerfully, as they do with Harold and his soon to be ex Sue Ann, noting, among other things, that Sue Ann documented Harold’s “extramarital behavior on audio and video tapes” and that Harold wanted to keep a “geode in quartz display” but Sue Ann wouldn’t let him. Still, I also confess that the Times did unleash my inner city slicker when it mentioned Harold’s “$4.6 million home in Nichols Hills, Okla.” Because how could it be worth $4.6 million and be in Nichols Hills, Okla.?
Afterwords
The odds are very, very good that Nichols Hills is an incredibly posh community, where you aren’t anybody unless your home is worth at least $2 million. But still.
