Tilting at Windmills.

• Author: PETERS, CHARLES

Warren Beatty vs. The Broadcasters * Florence Nightingale vs. The Bureaucrats The September Spending Spree * Carving Up Conrail * It's all in the Label

A FEW YEARS AGO I WROTE about a woman's resume that, after listing the schools she attended, stated that her son and daughter were at Yale and Brown. Had parents become so neurotic about having the right credentials that they were willing to borrow Junior's? I hoped I had not spotted a trend. Alas, according to Monique Yazigi of The New York Times, I had--and, what's worse, parents are now even exploiting their children's primary schools.

In fact, the headmaster of Spence--it's a super-chic private school in Manhattan--says she saw parents who lobbied for their seven-year olds to be assigned to class with children who weren't their friends but whose parents were rich and prominent, in the hope that the students would become friends and so would the parents. Back-to-school nights are, according to the headmaster, the scene of "furious networking" and have the "aura of a competitive Park Avenue cocktail party." Poor little Jennifer. If she doesn't wangle that partnership for Dad (or Mom), she may be washed up at seven.

I HAVE YET TO LEAP ON THE Warren Beatty bandwagon. But I was struck by one thing he said in that speech he gave at the Eleanor Roosevelt Award dinner last month: Broadcasters are not only among the biggest campaign contributors, they have the power to decide the candidates you see and for how long you see them. It's a rare man in public life who's got the guts to go up against the broadcasters."

This magazine has long crusaded against the giveaway of the public airways to the broadcasters. It's been a lonely fight because so much of the big media also own television and radio stations and doesn't want the whistle blown on what they're stealing from the rest of us. We aren't going to have real campaign finance reform until the broadcasters give free time to candidates--which is the minimum the broadcasters should do in return for all the free benefits the public has given them.

A NEWSWEEK REPORTER ASKED a 15-year-old boy why he bought his clothes at Abercrombie and Fitch. It's cool to be wearing it, he explained. It's the name

A similar explanation may help you understand why Saks Fifth Avenue customers are willing to pay $235 to outfit their dog in a trench coat. It's a Burberry.

Or maybe it's just that people have money to burn these days. While the poor languish in poverty the affluent have so much money they don't know what to do with it. Yet they still seem driven to make more even when malting more doesn't make sense.

FOR MANY YEARS, PEOPLE HAVE seen membership on educational and charitable boards as a way of doing good and at the same time advancing their careers. Sometimes they will use the board to get business, often legal or financial, for their own firms from the institution itself. More often they will see the board as a way of making connections with other potential clients. Whatever the motivation, competition for places on desirable boards has become so intense that, according to a recent article by Monica Langley in The Wall Street Journal, there are now agents who specialize in placing you on a board for a fee.

Consider the case of Katherine Brandt. For a fee of $1,500, she was placed on the board of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She got her money's worth and more. "My involvement on a nonprofit board was key to my being elected partner last year," she told the Journal. "I got extra points for being out there in the community in a favorable light."

The value of a board membership can perhaps best be ascertained by the look in the eyes of a lawyer or banker when he hears an important client respectfully quote a brilliant remark by a rival lawyer or banker at a recent board meeting. His stomach grinds as he contemplates the possibility that the client will be lured away by the brilliant rival.

THE FAMILY-RUN PHILLIPS COLLECTION in Washington used to be my favorite art gallery. It was comfortable, like a home. In fact, it had been the family residence. But not long ago it added a spiffy updated new wing, and recently redid the old house. "Painted, polished and relit," writes Paul Richard of The Washington Post, it now has the "curators, computers, archivists, conservators, registrars, accountants, fund-raisers and thermostats that forward-thinking...