There’s healthy cynicism and then there’s the kind I’ve grown up with. News coverage of a midnight inferno never escaped Dad pronouncing it—without a second’s hesitation—as arson. No owner of a paper factory, no beleaguered garment manufacturer, no developer with heritage restrictions on their property, was ever to be given the benefit of the doubt. Of course they lit the bloody match.

Even now, any news of a hefty charitable donation will be followed by Dad dismissing it as a brazen tax reduction effort.