"WHO IS rich? He who rejoices in his portion," said Benjamin Franklin.
- Maybe you saw Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week talking about how the world is full of rich people, very rich people who aren't pulling their weight for the lesser folks in their countries. She was emphasizing that there is a lot of money "out there."
And I just want to remind my readers of something Joe Nocera wrote in the Times recently about this subject. He really made me think. Here's Joe:
Thirty years ago, when Forbes published its first Forbes 400, a net worth of $75 million would get you on the list. Today it takes $1.1 billion. In the last year alone, the cumulative net worth of the wealthiest 400 people, by Forbes calculation, rose by $200 billion.
That compares with a 4 percent drop in median household income last year, according to the Census Bureau. One would be hard pressed to find a clearer example of how powerfully income inequality has taken root.
- WANT TO take your teenager to an acceptable adult-parent-growing child movie that will warm your heart but not present you with the usual "squirming" reactions delivered by the screen these days?
Grown-ups and teens can experience some recent historical moments in a movie called The Perks of Being a Wallflower with magnificent performances from the flowering Emma Watson (yes, of "Harry Potter" fame) -- as well as from the boy who doesn't quite fit in, Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller as an unrepressed gay misfit friend.
This is from writer director Stephen Chbosky and it is charming with Dylan McDermott and Kate Walsh as the middle-class parents (this is all more realistic and touching than TV's Modern Family). But it has plenty of laughs of its own.
If you survived teenage, then there is more than a little remembrance and looking back at what it was like to be a lonely naive high school freshman. Yet this story is about such a person being befriended and taken over by disgruntled seniors who have their own problems.
- HERE'S SOMETHING I wrote about 10 years ago: "She is a child star who has blossomed into a voluptuous teenage vixen. She is beautiful. She is talented. She has an inherently dramatic nature. I don't ever compare or think of 'the next so-and-so' but I do see Lindsay Lohan worthy of inheriting at least the hem of Elizabeth Taylor's garment."
Who the hell knew?! Shortly after I wrote this, I reported that Lindsay had been spotted flirting with Colin Farrell. Her then press rep called to berate me and told me if I didn't retract, I had "effectively destroyed Lindsay's career at Disney." I didn't retract, but I noted all denied that Lindsay flirted with Colin. (What was the crime? Who wouldn't flirt with Colin Farrell?) I then sent a note to this press rep relaying all I had already heard about Lindsay, at the innocent age of 16. "I could have printed all that, couched in rumor and been totally safe -- and correct -- in doing so." No response, naturally. Well, that was then and this is now. I have seen a lot of show biz tragedy in my long career -- "train wrecks" as they are known now. But nothing on this earth compares to Lindsay Lohan. She is 26. At 26, Marilyn Monroe was at the pinnacle starring in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes... at 26, Rita Hayworth was immortalized as "Gilda"... at 26, Elizabeth Taylor was the world's most revered young widow (that would soon change, but... La Liz just couldn't sleep alone.) At 26, Whitney Houston had yet to show any ill effects of her personal life. She was still a goddess of song.
Lindsay at 26? A shattered career and a wasteland of sordid publicity and unbelievably bad choices and "bad luck" -- thefts, DUI's, car accidents, public brawling, drinks, drugs and endless, nearly pathological partying that always, always leads to some wretched little disaster. The latest being her contretemps with a man she invited to her NYC hotel room at 5 a.m. He took pictures. He wasn't allowed to. They fought over the camera. He attacked her, she claims. She pulled the fire alarm and reported him to the cops. The police have declined to prosecute.
It's front page news but of the lowest, least glamorous, anti-star variety. She has become a byword for impending disaster; a dirty joke about Hollywood excess. Her obit is ready at the fingertips of every newspaper and gossip site in the country.