A TABLOID ENDING.

A TABLOID ENDING. A few months ago, in connection with Colin McGinn’s contention that personality is “not a given, but a choice, not determined but free”, I retold a story that a friend of mine had told me. I left out the name and other details. A man who claimed to be a member of a prominent American family had chosen to give up everything in a divorce proceeding (including custody of a beloved child) rather than reveal his true identity. The sequel of that story has been on the front pages of the New York Daily News and the New York Post for the last week. The man had said his name was Clark Rockefeller. He kidnapped his seven-year old daughter in Boston last week. After a few days he was arrested in Baltimore (and the girl rescued unharmed). He was believed to be “laying the groundwork to live in a tony Baltimore neighborhood with her – and replicate the high-society life he’d abandoned in Boston.” At this point, nobody knows who he is.