Psalm 82: 1-8 (links validated 6/18/25a)

In his pitch perfect novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe both epitomized and skewered the 1980s and all its wealth-obsessed upwardly mobile yuppies. As the novel begins, we meet Sherman McCoy, a highly successful Wall Street titan. And we read this passage: “The Masters of the Universe . . . One fine day in a fit of euphoria, after he had picked up the telephone and taken an order for zero-coupon bonds that had brought him a $50,000 commission, just like that this very phrase had bubbled up into his brain. On Wall Street he and a few others—how many?—three hundred, four hundred, five hundred?—had become precisely that . . . Masters of the Universe. There was . . . no limit whatsoever!” In this life too many people fancy themselves as Masters of the Universe, as being “gods” in their own right.

includes “Rise Up” | Words and music by Isaac Wardell, with the verse melody based on a melody by Evan Mazunik