Andrew Koenig is dead. I did not know him.  I knew of his father.  I am a huge Trekkie and could tell you the plot of every episode of the original Star Trek series.  Andrew’s father of course played Ensign Pavel Chekov in the original Star Trek. Andrew was  best known as Richard “Boner” Stabbone on ABC’s sitcom Growing Pains

I did not know Andrew but I knew his pain.  As I followed the story of his disappearance and learned about his  battle with  depression and recent slide into the darkest finality of the suicide abyss, I was reminded of just how all so fast it happens.   I read so many things that rang up painful memories of my past.  My slide into the same bottomless pit of night.

This  slide into darkness has its own unique components for different people. Some are luckier than others in the support they get or their ability to reach out for that support.   I was very lucky.  I had everyone who loved me living in my city and within a few miles of me.  They were all in my life and knew my routines. That is what saved me. If I did not have that I would be dead.

I do not remember placing the Italian 45-caliber automatic pistol that my best friend had given me for a gift on my nightstand. I do not remember emailing him for bullets.  I do not remember emailing others of my desire to end my life. I realize now that it was my way of reaching out for help.  My only memory of those terrible few days on the edge 6 years ago was being  wakened out  of a Xanax stupor by people who cared for me. It happens that easy.   It was all so easy to slide in the fog from a Xanax coma to a 45 cal bullet. It did not happen.  People loved me, cared and intervened.

I have battled depression for much all of my adult life.I really could not tell you how long because you have to realize it’s an issue to start the clock.   It has had its ups and downs.  Medication works wonders. Talking to professionals helps. Having a family that loves me, recognized something was wrong and was willing to intervene is something that many who suffer do not have. I am very lucky.

There however was one dark period that the low was so low and the fog of depression was so great that I only have vague memories of literally living on the edge of permanent darkness.

I have thought about telling this story before. I have always backed off because of self-interest.  I did not want to be perceived as spent.  I did not want to be stereotyped, stigmatized or slandered. I did not want sympathy.   In the end, it is what it is.  If someone can take the message from this that there is hope and recovery from the edge of darkness to happiness and accomplishment in life. If someone will see that reaching out even when you do not want to has the greatest up side at all.  If one person gets that I will take all the  S’s people can throw at me.

Actor Nic Cage recently disclosed that he was in dire financial straights. Another star caught up in a celebrity cash crunch with a new but sadly familiar story in the Hollywood ranks of stars either unable or unwilling to take an interest in the mechanics of their finances and paying a heavy price.  It is being reported that actor Nicolas Cage filed a $20 million lawsuit against his former business manager Samuel Levin. He alleges that the manager failed to pay taxes when they were due and had placed him in speculative and risky real estate investments “resulting in (the actor) suffering catastrophic losses.”

Nic is not the only star to go down “the road to financial ruin”  Many a star has fallen victim to bad investments bad advice and down right fraud because they detach themselves from the fruits of their labor.

Facing bankruptcy, former Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon  went public regarding the financial miscues leading to the possible foreclosure on his $4.8 million mansion.  He owed more than $600,000 on the mortgage, some $750,000 to American Express, and around $1.5 million overall.

“Being Ed McMahon was an expensive proposition,” David Fisher, the co-author of McMahon’s autobiography, told the Huffington Post. Fisher recalled watching as McMahon walked through hotel lobbies doling out money to anyone who tipped his cap. In a Larry King Live interview, McMahon’s wife Pam McMahon explained, “Because you’re a celebrity, people think you have a lot more than you have. And you always want to take great care of all of your friends and your family and everybody, and you do …. ”

It’s hard to sympathize. Did anyone really feel sorry for singer MC Hammer after he declared bankruptcy in 1996?  When he filed the paperwork, we learned that his living expenses far exceeded his annual income of $33 million: Hammer owned a $12 million house and reportedly had a staff of 250.  (Yes, 250.) Who wouldn’t love to see that spreadsheet?

And the list of celebrities and athletes who’ve gone bust goes on: Michael Jackson, Kim Basinger, Suge Knight, Dorothy Hamill, Burt Reynolds, Mike Tyson, Anna Nicole Smith ….

Why is it that celebrities and pro athletes who seem to have everything can’t seem to control anything related to finances?  They make millions, but they live paycheck to paycheck.  Most of them couldn’t tell you how much they have in their checking account. Many have never written a check or seen a bank statement.  From time to time, they go broke, but don’t even know it until their agent or business manager tells them.

The public perception is that these high-paid celebrities and athletes are completely out of touch with basic money management skills. Is that perception accurate?  I spoke with several professional athletes and Hollywood celebrities to find out.

“Most celebrities I know do not manage their own finances,” the actor Ed Begley Jr. told me.  Begley’s been around—best known for his role as Dr. Victor Ehrlich on the television series St. Elsewhere, he currently hosts a reality show on HGTV called Living With Ed on Planet Green—so he’s seen actors enter and exit, financially speaking. “I can count on one hand the celebrities that I know who write their own checks,” he says. “I know many who sign their own checks, but I’m talking about doing it all yourself on Quicken or QuickBooks, as I do. I actually enjoy it.”

Celebrities, Begley says, need to to do more with their money than just spend it. “At the very least, make sure that no one other than you can sign a check for over $500. That would save a lot of the heartache you hear about with folks losing all their dough to someone they blindly turned over their fortune to.”

Celebrities can be especially vulnerable, the actor Armand Assante (Gotti, American Gangster) told me, because not only do they frequently make enormous sums of money, but the perception that they handle it badly can attract greedy hangers-on.  “There’s a general perception that people in the arts and entertainment industry have little business acumen,” Assante says. “They are therefore easy prey to financial exploitation.”

I asked Assante how he handled his finances.

“I’ve always had good instincts in business,” he said.  “I have very little interest in it for its own sake, so I have chosen people I entrust important decisions with.  That’s where your instinct has to reign. Most of the people I deal with are impeccable with excellent business sense and do superbly for me because they’re trustworthy, reliable and independent in their decisions.  Sadly however, even the best-intentioned of financial advisors fall prey to others if profit is the moral motive of the moment.”

Ultimately, Armand says, “one has to assume total accountability.”

The financial landscape is no less bleak in professional sports. I’ve seen estimates projecting that 50 percent of all NBA athletes live paycheck to paycheck—this in a sport where the minimum salary is currently $442,000 for a rookie—and that over 60 percent of NBA athletes are broke within five years of retirement. There’s no reason to expect that the numbers are much different in other sports.

“It’s hard to argue with the widespread perception that athletes and celebrities are the worst managers of their money,” says Patrick Johnson, a former wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens and the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League. Part of the problem, he says, is that they then turn to advisors whom they shouldn’t trust. “Exposure to so many unethical advisors paves the way for what eventually happens. Any advisor that is worth anything should care about what happens to his client.  Many of them do not.”

Spending too much, paying insufficient attention to their finances, trusting their money to people whom they haven’t thoroughly vetted ….

Everyone can enjoy a little schadenfreude in seeing overpaid celebrities and their money soon parted. But are their financial mistakes really so different from ours?

©2010 Brian Cuban

Enjoy this piece?  Be sure to join the Cuban Revolution Fan Club and/or subscribe to my newsletter to stay abreast of future posts and live celebrity interviews on The Revolution Rant

** I originally wrote this article for Worth Magazine.  I am republishing it with their permission.

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren was invited to speak  to about 500 students at University of California at Irvine on Feb. 8.

About 6 minutes into the presentation a number of protesters from the Muslim Student Union rose and began chanting, “MR. OREN! MASS MURDER IS NOT FREE SPEECH!” as well as allegedly yelling “Killers!” “How many Palestinians did you kill?”

Mr. Oren left the stage but eventually came back out and finished his presentation. The protesters were removed from the venue by security.  11 were arrested for disrupting a public proceeding and the students among them face university discipline.

There has been debate over whether the students who were engaging in what is being called a “heckler’s veto” should be punished. Were the students engaging in protected free speech which would preempt any type of discipline?  Has the the line between free speech and the academic freedom needed to put on such presentations without disruption been blurred beyond recognition?  In coming to any conclusion it is important to keep in mind that UC-Irvine is a State University.  This was a University sponsored event.  Both the Federal 1st Amendment and the California 1st Amendment would therefore be in play.

While I  disagree that there is no right to a heckler’s veto as an absolute, I am on the side of Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Irvine School of Law in his editorial published in the L.A. Times and Professor Alan Dershowitz in his Huffington Post editorial.  This was not spirited political debate in which a response was expected or allowed. It was coordinated censorship.  What’s the point of academic freedom if it can not be exercised to the benefit of the student body to the same extent as the protesters would expect if someone they admired was speaking.

From a practical spectator standpoint, I would also be pissed as hell if I was sitting in that auditorium unable to hear because of obnoxious students. I don’t care if they are Muslims, Jews, Hindus or Hare-Krishna’s.They are ruining the experience I have a right to enjoy and engage if I so choose.  Let’s be clear.  This was a structured event. It was not a “free for all come-all” in a public square. Unlike a public square, the protesters got into the event to the exclusion of other protesters and spectators. That is not open free speech as if they were in the square and anyone could chime in.   It implies rules of conduct and a level of respect and decorum.

I understand that free and unpopular speech does not always occur in convenient places. One of the the points of protest is to do it in a manner to make a point.  As obnoxious as these kids were, that can not be brushed off.  Free speech sparing is not always done by the Marquess Of Queensbury Rules.  We can only protest if we are nice and polite?  Were the framers always polite in their dissent of the crown?  They never shouted down the King’s emissaries as they addressed the colonies on new taxes?

In the end, the video speaks for itself to the detriment of the motives of the yelling students. This was not a spirited debate. This was an attempt to silence by screaming.  The epitome of verbal terrorism. It was an attempt to stifle the academic freedom rights of Ambassador Oren and other students on the same level they claim their rights were snuffed out.  This was not a come all campus wide  protest on the University Green.  This was an invited speaker, organized event in which the attendees had a right of reasonable quiet enjoyment and Ambassador Oren had a right to retort to any protest.  This  was not an open public square available to all who want to shout down the shouters.  The hecklers should have been escorted out.

The statute under which the hecklers were arrested reads as follows:

“Every person, who, without authority of law, willfully disturbs or breaks up any assembly or meeting that is not unlawful in its character, other than an assembly or meeting referred to in Section 302 of the Penal Code….. is guilty of a misdemeanor”

In Hill v. Colorado the court held that the First Amendment right to free speech was not violated by a Colorado law limiting protest, education, distribution of literature or counseling within eight feet of a person entering a health-care facility.

What this tells me is that the University and city can establish reasonable content neutral rules that prohibit acts that endanger the safety of the speaker or the other members of the audience. They however can not regulate based on the content of the speech.  It does not end there.  I take issue with the California statute as applied here.   What does “disturb” or “break-up” mean?  Would it even be possible to craft a jury instruction?  There is an argument that these words as applied to the protesters are so vague as to be unenforceable and therefore unconstitutional as applied to the protesters.

In the end, I am glad the protesters were escorted out.  I have the same right to listen that they have to be heard.  They can be heard outside the event.  They do not have the 1st amendment right to shout down to the exclusion of all others in the room. This is not a public square.  I however am uncomfortable with any academic discipline or legal action against the protesters.  They wrere not inciting either the speaker or the crowd to violence against the speaker or other members of the crowd.  We should be arresting the dangerous, not the obnoxious.

Most do not know that I have actually served in the military. Between my 1st and 2nd year in law school I spent a whole 3 weeks  in the Marines Officer Candidate School at Quantico Virgina before I was drummed out for knee and foot problems.  During that three weeks the only combat I  saw was the daily verbal assault from my Sergeant Instructor about my unworthiness to be a Marine. (He turned out to be right).  The only heroic deed I accomplished was to not cry when I was being yelled at.

I do have some regrets about not being of the caliber the Marines were looking for. Not being one of the Few Good  Men.  If I stayed, I may have been deployed to Desert Storm which is where many of the the people I was in with ended up.  Maybe I would have went on to save my platoon, fallen on a grenade, some other heroic deed.  Hopefully I would have  lived to tell about it and received my medals, maybe even the “Medal Of Honor”.  In the end, the closest I have come to Marine bravery since is finishing the Marines Corps Marathon with a personal best of 3:27.

The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress.  The bravery required to receive this honor are chronicled in the heroic acts of the living and dead since 1861.

In 2005, Congress felt so strongly about protecting the memory and integrity of military awards  and the “integrity of valor” inuring to military  medals from those falsely claiming they have received them, that the Stolen Valor Act was passed, signed into law in 2006 by President George W. Bush Jr.  The law expanded a previous law against fraudulently wearing a service medal to include falsely representing that one had received that honor. Violators can be fined or jailed for up to six months.

In essence, the new law criminalized lying.  Not just lying about having received a medal to profit in some way but lying for ANY reason.  The constitutionality of this under the 1st Amendment is about to be tested.  Attorneys in Colorado and California are challenging the law on behalf of two men  charged under The Stolen Valor Act taking the position that the First Amendment protects almost all speech that doesn’t hurt someone else.

While I disdain those who would dishonor the honor paid for so dearly by thous fighting for democracy,  I also hold the 1st Amendment in the highest regard. While those lying for the sake of lying are not engaging in any act personifying the debate that embodies the “idea of free speech” such as burning the flag which is protected, they are also not engaging in conduct that creates any “tangible” harm, only perceived intangible harmed.  To criminalize this when it is not an element of another criminal act such as fraudulently claiming medals for profit,  personifies the essence of the “thought police” and is not what our military brethren paid for with their lives and limbs in receiving such medals.

The Stolen Valor Act to the extent it criminalizes lying for the sake lying is unconstitutional and should be struck down.