Sorry, Rest of Dallas, Your Name is Not on the Guest List

Mazel tov, Harry Hunsicker, you're one of the 6,400 most powerful people in Dallas!

Finishing up some work tonight, and I just checked The Dallas Morning News' site for any late-breaking. Came across tomorrow's no-doubt front-page Dallas Morning News piece about UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas' "detailed list of wealthy, high-profile and influential people" it keeps in its back pocket to guarantee that special something-something extra should they roll up gut-shot or some such. Yeah, fine -- unethical, unschmethical. Far as I'm concerned, all the paper had to was publish the list: a 106-page PDF file that's probably the most engaging item in The News in years.

Where to begin? It's the ultimate It List, a scroll of the most powerful, famous, wealthy and well-heeled folks in town -- the ones, maybe, you wanna save should there be a plague that threatens to decimate all but 6,400 people within the city limits. The paper shoulda just printed the whole thing in bold -- who put this together, Alan Peppard? Some are as high-falutin', big-shit as they get; others, slightly less so; others, kinda rinky-dink, y'ask me. Regardless of just how much they have or just how much they've done, it's still more than I've got or done, clearly: My folks' best friends made the cut. A good friend of mine's wife is on the list; poor Michael ain't, though. So's my childhood crush, Jesus Christ. But Maw and Paw Wilonsky and they Lil' Jethro ain't sniffin' the top 6,400 eligible for free parking or even just an escort to the front door. Could be worse: You think Angus Wynne will want to know how he missed the cut, while bro Shannon got on?

So congratulations, Tom Leppert and Wick Allison and Darwin Deason and Bobs Decherd and Folsom and John Ware and Laura "Wolens" Miller. And, hey, you too, mystery novelist Harry Hunsicker. Woodrow Wilson's on there too, so maybe it's like a Spy magazine list -- nudge-nudge, wink-wink. All I can do is console myself with the knowledge that it's an old list: Tex Schramm is perched on that parchment, and he died in 2003. So maybe there's always room for one more. --Robert Wilonsky