Vulgar rich spoil a swell party

The weekend retreat of America's old money is being invaded by the `wrong sort' - such as the Clintons, writes David Usborne

OF THE four women of a certain age installed one day last week on Georgica Beach in East Hampton, only one is planning to stick around for the weekend. "So, are you going to the party?" one of the others asks with a nod towards high dunes that conceal "Quelle Farm", the home of Steven Spielberg, who this weekend will be host to one of several fund- raising bashes here for President Bill Clinton.

"I was," comes the reply, "but my friend is too mean to pay the $1,000 for a ticket. I'd like to go, to shake the President's hand." "Oh darling," one of the group exclaims in arch tones. "I don't think that shaking is what the President does with a lady's hand these days." The four folding beach chairs fairly jiggle with feigned shock at such ribald innuendo.

At Babette's, a bistro just off East Hampton's Main Street where celebrities come on the menu, they are taking Clinton's Monica predicament altogether more seriously. For weeks, it has been asking patrons to add their name to an indignant petition posted outside the entrance. "We, the undersigned, are disgusted by and fed up with the muck-raking 'witch-hunt', which has, at taxpayers' expense, culminated in the media frenzy known as the 'Clinton Sexgate Scandal'."

Maybe Babette's is hoping for a visit from the guzzling Prez. My guess is that Clinton, if his money-skimming schedule allows, will head for the Candy Kitchen in nearby Bridgehampton. Bill, you can do no better than eggs, bacon and home fries at its soda fountain-era counter.

In the life of any community, a presidential visit is an event. But nowhere can be harder to impress than the Hamptons, a collection of super-swell early-America-style towns on the South Fork of Long Island's easternmost reaches, that for decades has been the summer haunt of the most prosperous and most preposterous of America's spoiled and famous. A White House limousine might go almost unnoticed in the Mercedes-clogged lanes of East Hampton, Bridgehampton and Southampton.

True, the first whispers of Clinton's plans did trigger a brief rush for tickets for this weekend's assorted parties. To be guaranteed a touch from the presidential palm, some have paid $25,000 for an audience at the home of investment banker Bruce Wasserstein. A glimpse of Clinton at a dinner chez Alec Baldwin and his wife Kim Basinger offered slightly better value: that has gone for $1,000 a plate.

For others here, however, the descent of the Clintons is a giant pain in the surgery-enhanced behind. East Hampton's police chief gave an early warning to weekend commuters from Manhattan to expect Friday's 100-mile eastwards drive to take anything up to 12 hours. "It is going to be insane, just insane," exclaimed one server at the Bridgehampton Cafe. "A lot of people will just stay away."

For the old money here, the visit is symptomatic of something more ominous: the gradual degeneration of a once calm and self-effacing enclave into a magnet for nouveaux and arrivistes. Making a none-too-subtle point, the Maidstone Club, a veritable monument to the East Coast Wasp, has let it be known that it will regrettably not be able to accommodate Clinton should he be hankering for a round on the green this weekend. It has a private tournament going on.

Playing with her Tuscan bean soup one lunchtime at Babette's last week, property lawyer Georgia Malone concedes that after 10 years of weekending in the Hamptons, she is almost ready to flee. "The exodus has already begun. A lot of the most interesting people here are leaving." Among places supplanting the Hamptons are "Europe" and the Maine coast.

Malone, who spends her commute on the Hamptons Jitney bus service every weekend meditating, recounts an encounter she had with a stretch-limo from Manhattan as she was strolling down Main Street the previous evening. "It stopped and someone leaned out asked if I knew where Fatty's party was, as if everyone was meant to know. There's this 'let's-go-to-a-Hamptons- party' desperate thing going on."

Noel McStay, who works behind reception at the cosily outrageous Huntting Inn on Main Street, knows what she means. While he insists that tourism keeps the town's economy afloat, even he gets the occasional shiver. "The first question people ask is can we get them a reservation at Nick and Toni's," he says, referring to the restaurant most likely to boast a famous face. Billy Joel is a regular there.

In truth, this place displays a deep schizophrenia about the nature of its soul. While its high hedges and clubs such as the Maidstone bespeak a cultivated sensibility for discretion and privacy, there may be no other place on the planet where such unalloyed wealth is so conspicuously on display. Why else, for example, do so many mansion-dwellers plant little white signs at the ends of their drives with their names on them? Yes, families Epstein, Goldstein, Jackson and Smith, I know now that you are rich.

Nor is it a mystery why all 25,000 copies of Hamptons, a weekly glossy giveaway chronicling the local scene, vanish from the shops within hours of delivery each Friday. It is because half its pages are crowded with those photo-shoots of all the prettiest people grinning inanely at all the best parties. Never is a Hamptonite more insincere than when they say exposure in the press is something to be avoided.

In the season of 1998, when money from Wall Street washes ashore faster than the Atlantic tides, the Hamptons offer those who can afford it - and stomach it - a debauch of consumption, narcissism and galloping good times. But, as Business Week last week mused in a "Summer of Wretched Excess", it may be a balloon that is ripe to explode. "It's splendid. It's exciting. It's like that other Long Island party that Gatsby threw in the 20s, waiting to end badly."