The Best Things in Life Aren't Free

By MARGARET CARLSON

My first reaction was: what was he thinking? Just as Viagra mania was receding, along comes Ace Greenberg, the chairman of Bear, Stearns & Co., donating $1 million to give the drug to patients unable to afford it.

True, being poor and impotent in a society obsessed with money and sex is awful to bear, but there must be a more pressing use of a spare million than erections for the downtrodden. The good that Viagra for the Poor might do was immediately offset by another round of bad Viagra humor--tales that walking past all those signs saying WILL WORK FOR FOOD AND VIAGRA inspired Ace to donate $1 million in seed money to the cause.

Sorry, I couldn't resist, because like most people, I'm reduced to snickering adolescence when the subject of sex comes up. But Greenberg, a legendary freethinker, known for his unorthodox remarks, beguiling magic shows and his obsession with keeping office overhead down ("It's what killed the Egyptians!"), saw that Viagra could easily become one more way of separating the haves from the have-nots. His book Memos from the Chairman collects 17 years' worth of messages to his staff on ephemera such as returning every phone call, reusing envelopes and rationing cabs.

"Viagra," he says, "is a quality-of-life issue, just the way improving Central Park is a quality-of-life issue. 'Why not give to something more worthy like AIDS or cancer?' I was asked," he says. "This doesn't wipe out our other giving, which we continue to take seriously. It's just as worthy and might be overlooked."

Greenberg is a bit of a ham, but even he had to cut off interviews about Viagra after the requests threatened to grow longer than the S&P 500. Earlier, his much larger gifts--to the United Jewish Appeal, the Widows and Orphans Fund, the New York Public Library, among others--had elicited almost no attention. Known to be a pushover for a hard-luck story, he got this idea from a newspaper. "I saw an article saying that at $10 apiece, a lot of impotent men wouldn't be able to afford it. So I said, 'Kathy [his wife, who is on the board of the Hospital for Special Surgery, which will administer the grant], let's help,' and by Tuesday we had it done." The overreaction says a lot about our continuing confusing of sexiness with sex. Sexy, depending on your taste, is Monica Lewinsky's vamping in Vanity Fair. It's Baywatch and Barbie and James Bond. Whereas sex itself is a basic human need. It's food stamps, not dinner at Lutece; water, not champagne. It saves a marriage, makes a life. It's so fundamental to human existence that before Viagra, afflicted men would endure needles and implants to have it.

Much of the joking came from the thought that Ace might end up subsidizing a bunch of guys in gold chains and heavy cologne taking the drug for "enhancement" purposes, as one more hedge against middle-age insecurity, like Rogaine. The hospital will be weeding them out. Anyway, what they're looking for is a pill to cure rejection. Not even Ace has enough money for that.