In today’s edition, New York Social Diary comments on my contrarian take on the Brooke Astor affair and the new book, Mrs. Astor Regrets. That book portays a case that’s been painted so far in tabloid black and white as something more properly rendered in shades of gray. NYSD’s David Patrick Columbia apparently thinks the same. He opines that the whole tragic affair is about greed and was pushed into public view only after the Society Queen’s much-disdained daughter-in-law, Astor’s son Anthony Marshall‘s third wife, received a piece of Maine property that the offspring of an earlier wife expected to get —a recipe for disaster —and predicts that the only winners in the family drama will be lawyers. I couldn’t agree more. (Except perhaps to add that Mrs. Astor’s other disinherited beneficiaries, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, stand to win big, too.) Dignity and privacy don’t stand a chance when millions of dollars are at stake.