The French confection

Bob Greene made me laugh this morning, writing about the magazine ad for a Hermès suitcase priced at $27,100. He thought at first it was a joke until the Hermès store in Naples Florida told him that it wasn't even their most expensive bag, which of course is diamond encrusted. This one isn't. It's trimmed in "Evercalf" leather which I suspect to be much like the "rich Corinthian" leather of Chrysler Cordoba fame, which means most of the cost -- at least $27,000 of it -- is in the trademarked name for a perfectly ordinary material. Otherwise it's just a canvas bag, or "officer canvas" as they call it, which means you may have to salute it if you're wearing a Hermès hat.

Why? Greene keeps asking, although I know and you know exactly why anyone would actually buy one at a time when more Americans are cramming their things into shopping carts and Hefty bags and wandering the streets. It's precisely because it cost $27,100 and you can't afford to toss that kind of money away on nonsense, hand stitched or not.

It's not the sort of bag most people would really notice, except that it doesn't have the silly handle and wheels that make our airports seem like farmyards full of goat carts, but then it's designed for another purpose, it's designed both to remind you and to help you forget that there are people -- millions of people trying to support families on one Hermès suitcase a year.

Hey, don't get angry. It's your money and you're taxed enough already. Under Reagan's tax structure you'd have had to make do with Louis Vuitton or, perish the thought, Hartmann, so the country owes it to you and you needed to buy it now, before that Marxist in the White House restores the tax rates of that prince of Capitalism -- right?