Mel Gibson Brutally Robbed by Housewife

Mel Gibson spent the last two years working out the details of his divorce with his former wife of 28 years. With a fortune measured at around $850 million, she ended up with half. His interim woman also received a settlement when he fathered a child with her.

I debated the merits of this settlement with a female, who took the wife's position. The argument went along the usual lines: That the wife spent years of her life both supporting his career, submerging her own life, and becoming accustomed to a certain lifestyle in the process. So why not give her half for her 28 years of support.

But this is nonsense. Giving a wife half of a man's money assumes a number of things. It assumes that the talent or skill that the one party has would not exist on the same scales, sans the other party. In other words, Mel Gibson would not have acted in The Road Warrior or directed Apocalypto without the support of his ex.

The split in the settlement essentially pins personal property, creativity and ambition against the wall and shoots. The bottom line assumption is that without a wife, Mel Gibson would not have been able to do all he has done. "Who would take care of the many kids while he is off making movies?" some say, supporting the wife. Hmmm, let's see how that works. Take the wife away, and how many kids does he have? Yea, no wife, no kids, no household duties to add to life's complexity.

Ambitious men tend to get prenuptial agreements but that is usually only after they have begun to taste the fruits of their own labor. Mel Gibson married early in the process of his own career, with his wife along for most of that ride. It would have been difficult to bring up a legal document five or ten years into a marriage when you both started from scratch. Indeed that would be inappropriate.

But the fact that she was "there" does not automatically imply equal achievement on her part or some moral equivalence in economic outcome. It's kind of like the argument you hear around Columbus Day, where the detractors of European discovery of the Americas assert, "Well the Native Americans already knew where they were, ha ha." This dubious statement is made in response to the fact that European explorers got their directions wrong, and reached places in the world they were not originally trying to reach, as in looking for India, but finding America.

But the critique is absurd. European explorers had the curiosity, the science, and the ambition to document the world beyond where they lived. That is an achievement undiminished by the fact that they may not have known where they were going. The knowledge gained through their curiosity created a better understanding of the world, versus a population--Native Americans in the United States--who might have just stayed put roaming the plains, and not seeking to understand the world beyond their immediate needs or document it.

The Gibson settlement is saying, "She was there, so she deserved equal reward." But she was the observer. You might be able to argue that her housework was equivalent to his outside work, and thus was the offset making her deserving of a payday. That is true to a point. But was her performance of housework the equivalent in quality with his execution of creating massive income with his skills? By all indicators Mel Gibson is outstanding at his job,when you consider the universe of actors who largely struggle. Was his wife the Van Gogh of housework? Was her housekeeping or child rearing on the level of a paid professional?

And while she was not rewarded with salary for keeping the household, she was rewarded with free rent, food, and support in ever escalating levels of quality. She likely got money and rewards along the way and received far more than her talents and career as a nurse would have rewarded her. One can also assume that any perk the Mel enjoyed, she enjoyed. One can also assume that if we grant her 50% of the fruit of Mel's work, Mel in turn should be rewarded 50% of the fruit of her work.

So if you could put a value on her work, and have Mel Gibson pay her, then fully half of that should come back to him. So let's say it's $50K a year for a top nanny, another $50K for a top housekeeper, and another $50K a year for the services of an escort. Right there you have the basic functions of a wife, and you can purchase top versions of those functions for about $150,000 a year. Over 10 years you are paying $1.5 million. Over 30 years you are paying $4.5 million.

See how that works? The high end commercial value of her work over a period of 30 years is $5 million tops. You could even add in another $30 million for intangibles--a million for each year. (And realizing that for $1 million a year you could hire a staff of 4 to 8 people easily).

Now having valued her work, does Mel Gibson get a share of half of that $35 million, leaving her with a more than adequate $17.5 million? If we assume she had a hand in half of Mel's success, did he not have a hand in half her success? Did not his millions make her job so much easier? She was not raising his many sons in a ghetto or struggling with them on the bus, or worrying where the clothing money would come from. She didn't have to do what many mothers do, and also work in order to create a two income household. At a certain point her life got really easy. Maybe that was in year two, or year 5, and certainly by year ten.

And yet, at the end of the day, Mel Gibson's wife gets half, or $425 million, for being there.

Obama & Healthcare: Less Imposition, More Choice

If there is any question at this political hour whether or not President Obama is a reasonable man, we need only look at the latest news from his health department.

"In a major surprise on the politically charged new health care law, the Obama administration said Friday that it would not define a single uniform set of “essential health benefits” that must be provided by insurers for tens of millions of Americans. Instead, it will allow each state to specify the benefits within broad categories."
(N.Y. Times)

Ahead of any health care rulings next year by the Supreme Court and the elections to follow, Obama is preparing the ground to counter any suggestion that he has imposed any sort of rigid ideologically driven program on Americans.  As we've long argued, he is far more interested in leaving a legacy than in undertaking a noble fight of purity that leaves him empty handed.

History will actually serve him well, even at this non-historical vantage point, given what has already been accomplished. Nobody will argue over perfection of implementation when the choice is one of imperfect policy or no policy. The Republicans have made sure that imperfect policy will always be the result, and until the public matches wisdom to outrage and supplies him with suitable support in Congress,  that won't change.

That said, if you were a soldier in Iraq, you are happy to be home. If you are starting to get some preexisting conditions or preventative care covered on your health policy, you are better off. If you are an Al Qaeda leader, you are likely enjoying the painful joy of your afterlife. And if you are headed to the ATM to pull out cash to finish your Christmas shopping, you are likely pulling an apple off the fruit tree of Obama economic sensibleness, where banks were rightly deemed important enough not to let fail in a manner that would lead to more bananas, less republic. If you are in Detroit making cars, you are for the moment relieved, and if you are buying a car, you have more choice than you might have had.

None of this was brought to you by his opponents, though we can thank George Bush for the offsetting visionary achievements of creating the economic collapse through blindness, and seeing the reasonable and quick partial solution via the TARP program. It's become common to criticize TARP from high (academic) and low (masses) vantage points, but in a bank run you don't fart around and your band aids don't come perfectly sized.

We assume the stark differences in achievement between the President and Congress, the President and the previous administration, and the President and his presidential opponent, will be made with some force next year. We hope people will be listening to actions, rather than reacting to words.

Obama Tells Iran to Return Trojan Horse

Iranian General points out tiny chipmunks

We could take this late night moment to talk about something important. Newt Gingrich, renaissance man of yesteryear, is challenging GOP leader Romney, taking him down to the undergarments in recent polls. And over there is our president, Mr. Obama, meeting with the leader of Iraq, while reinforcing a campaign promise kept (which was easier done than said given Bush's already set withdrawal timeline, but whatevs).

Instead we want to talk to you about drones. Nothing technical or deeply philosophical. According to news reports, a drone of ours, a kind of unmanned plane perfectly sized for chipmunk vacations, opted through magic, Iranian cunning, bad electronics or voodoo to land in Iran. Not crash land. Not shot out of sky into a million bits. But land, comfortable and apparently intact. 

The Iranians were glad to display this acquisition as it no doubt reinforced the truth that the Great Satan (that would be us, as in U.S.A) was not so satanically powerful after all. "We got your drone" they said via display, with further threats to take it apart, rebuild it with Iranian sauce, and wreak stealthic havoc back on us. 

President Obama eventually got around to requesting the plane back, though the general delay and all around casualness should make Iranians a bit skeptical about saying the inevitable "No, you can't have it back, Sons of Satan!"

"We have asked for it back," Obama said Monday at a news conference in Washington with Iraqi Prime MinisterNouri Maliki"We'll see how the Iranians respond." 

His comments marked the first public confirmation that the RQ-170 Sentinel drone now in Iranian hands is a U.S. aircraft, though U.S. officials privately acknowledged that in recent days. Iran has claimed it downed the stealthy surveillance drone, but U.S. officials say it malfunctioned.

(LA Times)

Now we don't want to be Obama fan boys and imply that this whole implausible situation is merely a diabolical plot concocted by the President and his administration to land a homing device inside of Iranian research facilities, because that would be mental hyperbole. It would be the same type of thought pattern that allows extreme conservatives to place Obama at the center of all and variable diabolical evils.

And yet,. the utter casualness in the official responses the past few days is almost comical, culminating in an almost ridiculous request to have the drone returned. Let's pretend the United States is Greece. Let's pretend Iran is Troy. Let's pretend horses can fly, like unicorns, and call them drones. Now let's pretend we land one or allow one to get captured. Now let's pretend certain components inside the flying horse are deeply locked and will take years to open and define. Now let's pretend Troy really gets on our nerves. And finally, let's pretend we turn the homing device on, and unload mega bombs on whatever high security research site is trying to backward engineer the horse.

Which is why if I were Iran, I would send it back and make a huge public relations gesture out of it.

While we strive to not get toasted and go conspiratorial here, hating the tendency in others, we nevertheless can't help but imagine what spy versus spy shenanigans might be going on between Iran and the United States. There is mystery in the belly of beast.