Isn’t there a difference between “putting him down” and calling him out (Posts #259 and #312)? I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt but he sounded so disingenuous on “On Point” yesterday. He is cagey about his finances. He was indignant yesterday that people would criticize him for paying for his daughter’s wedding. He says it was “only four figures.” Well, is that $1,000 or $9,999? In either event it was money he shouldn’t have spent, when she could have had a lovely backyard Hamptons wedding with a small group of family and friends for a modest sum.
He hasn’t been specific about the movie rights to the Winchell book. Filmmaker magazine indicates that a typical amount paid for an option that is exercised is 2.5% of the film’s budget. Assuming that a small film on Walter Winchell in the 1990s might have a budget of $10,000,000 that would be $250,000. 10% goes to your agent and, say, 40% to state and local taxes, leaving $125,000. That’s nearly enough for a 20% downpayment on a $700,000 house. A 30-year fixed rate mortgage in December 1994 was 9.2%. Do you spend the whole thing on a down payment knowing that you have no cushion and a high monthly mortgage payment?
Gabler does a disservice to two different groups of people IMO. He does a disservice to the millions of self-employed people, with erratic incomes, who plan responsibly for the lean times. I have a relative who is also a professional writer and a year younger than Gabler, and has probably made roughly as much money in his career. They live in a nice suburban house that they paid $240k for in the 1990s, a third the cost of NG’s. They put their son through the first three years of Purdue. When my relative lost a major writing gig during his son’s junior year, the son took out loans to finish senior year. The son is now a successful, well-paid engineer in NYC. I’m sorry, but I have zero sympathy for a person like NG who time after time had a lot of breaks, and made choices that consistently undermined the financial stability of his family. And he is now bringing out a book on Barbra Streisand, as if the world needs one more book on her? How many years did he spend on that???
The other group he does a disservice to are those, like @kkmama who hold down two jobs, make the best decisions given their day to day circumstances, and who quietly persevere in the face of all kinds of obstacles. Kkmama deserves our respect and admiration. Absolutely no ridicule towards her and the millions like her who make peoples’ lives better while living on the margins. Government, community foundations, the wealthy could and should do so much more to help people meet their goals. In my own large metropolitan area, 12% of the suburban population lives in poverty. Gabler does a disservice to this group because he purports “to feel their pain,” but he doesn’t.
To me Gabler’s Atlantic piece smacks of little more than opportunism. Some celebs leak sex tapes for attention. And some writers moan about finances for attention, as the Slate writer pointed out. I’m not usually this hard on people. Once I see a photo of him in the Bronx, helping to build a home for Habitat for Humanity, I’ll cut him some slack. Then again, he would say he just doesn’t have the money for bus fare to get there.
As one who is frequently aligned with @scout59, @dstark and @kkmama on so many issues, I’m a bit surprised to be on the opposite side on this one.
