Michael Fumento posts to FB: Problem, Ray, is creative people are being told that BECAUSE they are creative they should expect no renumeration. I guess it’s a bit like an actor is about to quit your favorite series, thereby killing the series. So you send him an email saying, “But you can’t! You owe it to your fans! I KNOW you want to move on with your career and you’re tired of the series, but for the rest of us, please!”
Fine. I understand that. But you’re NOT telling the actor to work for free. Vital distinction. You’re asking him to continue his creativity with renumeration. Now in my case, it was a sort of different definition of creativity that did me in. What I did was painting or sculpting or fiction. But it was creatively UNIQUE. And it benefited society as a whole. That’s what put people in the mindset that I must provide it gratis, the same people who would never think to say that to the Navy SEALs who in a unique manner protect us all.
Examples serve. Best-selling author and professional racist Mark Fuhrman lost his ghost writer. So he and his agent approached me to deep ghost his next book. A deep ghost getz NO credit. Not even in the acknowledgments. PLUS he didn’t just want me to reshape his words, he wanted me to do the research. That’s not even a ghost. That’s “Let me put my name on YOUR book.” The normal pay rate for that is extremely high because money is ALL the author gets. His offer? Nothing. Zero. Zip. UNLESS it became a best-seller. After all, this would be a very important book they explained.
Example two. The head of a Canadian branch of an international global warming group wanted me to start up an American branch. He offered me $17,000 a year. That was about six months of my mortgage. But don’t you understand, this is for the good of humanity!
Example three. Fred Smith, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, making over a quarter mil a year plus bennies, and with 19 paid staffers, was always telling people I was the best science writer in the country. Not true, but he really believed it. But he insisted, perhaps because he thought my work was more important than that of his staffers, that I should work for free. I pointed out two guys at a competing think tank doing far less work than me each making $180,000 a year. His response: I was “jealous” and “envious.” Mike thinks that he should be PAID? Bad, Mike! Bad!
Example four. Popular Wisconsin talk show host hears that my income has fallen to virtually zero. She emails that even if it is zero, my work is so valuable that I OWE it to America to continue it. Hmm… But somehow America doesn’t owe me anything in return?
Final example, and merely representative. Think tank head writes to me asking me for an article, saying I’m uniquely qualified to write it. HE was right. I knew this better than any writer in America and it was a truly vital issue, the child vaccine controversy.
But lo! no mention of money. He explained his group couldn’t afford to pay me. Right. Maybe because it was paying him over $300,000 a year! Time and again rich people asked me to help “society” but said they couldn’t pay me! And thing is, they were right. My work DID help society. But this idea that because YOU help society, while the head of the Acme Fake Vomit Corp. is obviously in it only for the money, that you should work for free… It is literally a form of insanity.
Add that obviously this people couldn’t conceptualize that while THEY needed hundreds of thousands a year, Mike at least needs to eat. That is a form of hysteria. NO, they didn’t think I was making money on other projects. In each case they knew my income was close to zero. They didn’t care. My work was vital to society (and usually not incidentally would help THEIR bottom line) but because it was vital and nobody else could do it, I must needs do it for free.
I tried and tried to explain the obvious. But when you find yourself trying to explain the obvious, it’s time to hang it up. I made a massive effort to get support from people who donate to think tanks. Virtually nothing. So all that creativity, and intelligence, and experience whatever, was dumped in the river. Sorry to go on so long, but I’m not just venting.
This same mass hysteria is clobbering other Americans and hence America. When the most valuable to society — in the opinion of OTHERS — are told that they must work for free precisely BECAUSE they are valuable, this is a form of mass hysteria.
And another indicator of mass hysteria, in which by the way I was also the top journalism expert, is “Is this going on in other countries?” I always asked that. Were the same model and year of Toyota running amok in Europe? Was “Gulf War Syndrome” affecting troops from other countries without access to English-language newspapers? If the answer was no, bingo! A US mass hysteria.
Only the US, and to a lesser extent Canada, developed the idea that clobbered me. I am the victim of a US mass hysteria and guess what, so is the US. Says who? Indirectly, the very people who drove me out.