Beauty is Imperfection

New York, NY (API) Sheldon Wainwright III, 80-year-old wealthy scion of a large industrial-logistics fortune and vehement opponent of the so-called “death tax,” said Friday that he’s leaving his entire net worth, valued at $130 million, to multiple charities, the Episcopal Church, a stripper and his dog, and not to his “worthless” children his attorneys reported.

“The estate tax is an abomination,” Wainwright is reported to have said in a statement made through his attorneys. “It’s taxing a person’s dollar of earnings twice as it tries to circulate. It’s just wrong.

“But don’t get me wrong: I’m not giving those little bastards, my children Reginald, Littleton, Brooks, Mercedes and Reese, one cent of my money because they are all ingrates and s***-for-brains who have squandered their trusts and my good name in various displays of profligate dissolution.”

“They’re disinherited,” he said. “Screw ’em.”

Littleton said his father had been a staunch estate tax opponent all his life.

“Dad said that a person’s wealth should be a legacy for his children … or, if you don’t like your children, for the bimbo at the strip club outside Houston.”

Wainwright said that the most basic tenet of wealth preservation was that people save and invest so they can pass money on. “The estate tax penalizes such good people and robs them of those incentives for small business investment and other things that are their legacy to the world,” he said.

“But let’s be clear. Most of the money you give to your ingrate children they squander because they never developed the god damned discipline of a may fly,” Wainwright spat as he started to foam at the mouth. “Everybody knows that your personal business barely survives a first-generation transfer much less a second-generation transfer. Children who just get their money for free stay children forever, which is why my stupid kids have all turned into drug addicts, perverts and members of the Ringling Brothers circus. Every time you give your money to your children, it mostly just ends up going to one of their crack-addict ex-wives. I’m looking your way, Littleton.”

“Dad’s got very profound, deeply held convictions,” said Mercedes, who, now that she’s disinherited, lives in a “Gray Gardens” type mansion overgrown with weeds and teeming with jaundiced cats. “He never liked my first, second, third or fourth husbands, all of whom are now living in houses he indirectly paid for. So I guess he thinks he’s done enough for me. But let’s be clear. He doesn’t want the government to get any of his money either. I think if he could he’d rather just have it all buried with him in a big vault of gold bars like Tutankhamun.”

“I’m quite sick from morphine addiction,” she added.

Psychologist Dana Hiller with the University of Rochester, said that it’s often the case that old money families try to get their children involved in philanthropy and not give them too much money early in their lives without letting them know what it’s like to work.

“But that idea seems to have completely slipped by this family,” said Hiller. “Sounds like the old guy is just a bit pennywise and pound foolish. Frankly, I’d just give the money to the feds and not get an ulcer over it. He’s going to make himself sick.”

Reese Secord, often considered the most level-headed of the Wainwright children for her relatively minimal number of ex-husbands, asked her father repeatedly if she could leave something in the codicil of the will for her daughter Rebecca.

“No way,” said Wainwright in a letter faxed to his attorney. “I’m giving it to Bunny at the Bare Elegance cabaret lounge. I love my 12-year-old granddaughter Rebecca, but I’d rather see her rot in hell then Reese get one red cent of my money.”

“Damn Obama trying to take my money,” Wainwright said through an oxygen mask. “That money’s mine. And Bunny’s. Damn socialists.”