Strollerderby : men are pigs

No dinero for Dina

Brett Singer — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

What do you call a couple that spent $1 million on lawyers while getting divorced, and the result was that the wife got $100,000, plus $1,075 a month in child support?

You would call them the McGreeveys. (Well, not anymore, they're divorced.)

Yes, Mr. "I Am A Gay American" and the former first lady of the Garden State are finished with their contentious divorce proceeding. NYMag describes the courtroom drama as, "incredibly public, ugly, and drawn-out," which is kind of true, although it didn't quite have the legs of the Christie Brinkley / Peter "19 is legal, dammit!" Cook case.

What's fascinating to me is that Dina is getting almost nothing. She gets a one-time payment of $109,295 from Jimbo, which is half of their shared investments, so it kind of doesn't count in my book. $1,075 a month in child support is, if I may be so bold, bupkis.

So why no dinero for Dina? Jim don’t have no money. NYMag says, "since McGreevey argued that he only makes $48,000 per year while he is in seminary, the judge ruled him 'underemployed.'" So he's studying to be a priest. I guess his book didn't sell as well as people had hoped. Jim is living with a "super-wealthy financier" but those assets don't factor in. ("Jim's in love with a Jersey boy..." OK, don't go there.)

Judge Karen M. Cassidy said that both Jim and Dina, "clearly had agendas," and "their anger seemed to override any ability to testify credibly or to be reasonable." At least she went after both of them, unlike the judge in the YouTube cuckoo-wife case.

I have to wonder how angry you have to be at your spouse to spend $500,000 on attorney's fees - each - when you must have known that there was no pot of gold at the end of the divorce rainbow. Sure, Dina was married to a guy that was sleeping with, well, another guy, so she's mad. And Jim… well, he's mad at her for something, I guess. According to the New York Post, the couple will do some swapping of 401k plans and other relatively minor assets, like a $1500 checking account. She was only asking for $2500/month. So how do you rack up half a mil worth of legal bills? Fuzzy math, at best. They have a daughter together; hopefully they'll be able to deal with each other somewhat civilly.

image/source: NYMag

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Brett Singer — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Remember when Christie Brinkley and Peter "Hey, she was nineteen, that's legal, right?" Cook got divorced, and the judge said that Brinkley needed to "examine her taste in men"?

Well, apparently that doesn't go both ways. In the recent divorce of Shubert Organization honcho Philip Smith and Tricia Walsh-Smith, known to the tabloids as the "Youtube Divorce" because of Tricia's bizarre video rant, there's something I don't recall reading.

What is it? That Smith, 25 years older than his now-ex-wife, needed to examine his taste in women.

If you've never seen the original video, it's posted below. Tricia is, in my unprofessional psychiatric opinion, in desperate need of a good shrink and several thousand Zolofts (not all at once, of course). She makes Peter Cook look like a candidate for Husband of the Year – well, not quite, but you know what I mean. Still, I'm always intrigued when a woman who marries a schmuck somehow has questionable "taste", but a man who marries a loony-tunes just, you know, made a mistake. He didn't know she was crazy.

In other Tricia Walsh-Smith news, she's leaving town because New York is "full of liars," thinks that Kathi Lee Gifford wants to have her killed (which is, to put it mildly, a tad inaccurate), and is just generally a great big pile of crazy. You can read it all on her very own web site.

Image: NYPost

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Rich guy pretends to be gynecologist to see women naked

Brett Singer — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I always thought that if you were rich, you could get dates. I mean, money can't buy you love, but it can buy you sex, right?

Well, maybe not. Zalman Silber, a "wealthy businessman" from Monsey, NY, has been accused of playing doctor, literally. Two women have charged that Silber rented a Park Avenue office and pretended to be a gynecologist. Then he gave the women, um, a full exam. This article at LoHud.com goes into a little bit more detail; let's just say that Silber did a very thorough examination.

He may have worked a similar scheme with a police officer in Rockland County. According to today's Daily News, Silber would tell women that they needed a gynecological exam in order to obtain a certain insurance policy, and that the exam had to be given by this doctor. At his house. Except that the doctor wasn't really a doctor, he was a cop. Then Silber would watch from another room. The officer has been suspended from the force without pay pending a full investigation.

It gets better (well, creepier). Silber's lawyer is Kenneth Gribetz, a former Rockland County District Attorney who resigned in a scandal that included such juicy details as an extra-marital affair and photos of him in women's clothing. So far his defense of Silber is that, "the statute of limitations [has] run out on two of the incidents cited by investigators," and "only two of four victims were able to pick Silber out of a lineup." Oh! Then he must be innocent.

This should be some trial.

Silber, a Hasidic Jew, is married with five children and another on the way. His wife Gila, "declined to comment." Wouldn't you?

Let be the first to say that Silber is not good for the Jews.

If you want to know how he got rich, you can read this article over at Inc.com. Silber created the Skyride, a simulated helicopter ride at the Empire State Building. He then sold the business for almost $10 million. A sample of his business advice: "Take advantage of other people's toil. That's really what everything is about." What a guy. He is described a "well-known philanthropist" who is "known within the Jewish community for helping people pay for medical care and other services." Or offering them a discount if he treats them himself! (Ba-dum-bum.) His ex-wife's brother, Alexander Halpert of Borough Park, Brooklyn, said, "He's a good man. When someone needed a doctor, he would arrange it." Yeah, maybe that's not the best thing to say right now.

It should be pointed out that all of these charges are unproven and are merely allegations. Even R. Kelly was found innocent. So who knows. But what a creepy story. It's like I've always said: men are pigs. (And I can say that, because I am one.)

image: New York Daily News

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