AMERICUS — “All I want is fifty million dollars, a champagne fountain bubbling at my feet,

With Rockefeller waiting on my table and Lombardo’s Band playin’ while I eat.

All I want is wheat germ for my breakfast, if Tuesday Weld would only be my wife,

If I could only stay sixteen forever, then I think I could be satisfied with life”



Here’s a great old novelty song written early in the last century. Variously attributed to both George M. Cohan and S.H. Dudley, I guess at this point it really doesn’t matter who wrote it. The lyrics were updated and recorded by the late Tiny Tim in the early 1970s. I was no real fan of Mr. Tim, but the song is great and, I believe expresses the feelings of many of us regarding wealth. Having lots of money would be nice … it’s good to be the king!

Make no mistake about it, the rich are different. I’m convinced I would have made a wonderful wealthy person. There is no doubt about that. My preference would be to self-make my fortune, but I don’t see anything wrong with making money the old fashioned way … by inheriting it. I’d like to try my hand at participating in a little philanthropy. Having my name on a building or perhaps owning a small yacht would be nice, but not likely. I do think I would be a good steward of my money. At least, I would try to make better use of my money than some of the new-moneyed bozos recently reported in the news. Wealth is not the problem. An absence of class is.

Take the darling Miss Lindsay Lohan, for instance. She has done well for herself, at least financially. Her agent or whoever is to blame took a cute, but rather plain, freckled-faced, teen actress, gave her a boob job and some overdone make-up and created the Bride of Frankenstein. What does she think gives her the right to behave the way she does without suffering any consequences? “I just can’t go to jail,” she weeps. But the hand wiping her tears has an obscenity painted onto a fingernail, clearly intended for the judge’s viewing pleasure.

 Yes, you can go to jail, Lindsay, and you can take comfort from the fact that you are a guest in the same cell that housed your cute little friend, Paris Hilton. Enjoy your stay. You might want to keep that cell clean for a long list of Hollywood punks and thugs who know way too much about life in the fast lane, but not much about life in the real world.

Not all of them will go to a prison cell. They don’t all break laws, though most do a pretty good job of bending them. For instance, consider the fate of Mr. Tiger Woods. Perhaps the greatest golfer in the history of the sport, he has ruined his reputation, maybe forever. He has lots of money and lots of fame and, to his credit he is fairly generous with his philanthropic interests. But think what he has lost in the process!

He is the butt of late-night talkers and the laughing stock of the locker room. It will cost him a pant load of money to worm out of this mess, but his loss is bigger than money. He has lost his family and his reputation. Money can’t buy that.

And any discussion about spoiled rich kids has to include the erstwhile Athletic Director at UGA, Mr. Damon Evans. What a waste! He’s a married man with beautiful children. With what could he have been thinking? It certainly wasn’t his brain. I hope he had a really good time that night. I hope his wife takes him to the cleaners and spends some of her money on some real nice red silk panties.

Of course we have our usual nut cases that just don’t know when to shut up. Michael Richards, aka “Kramer” on the Seinfeld series endeared himself as a bumbling but harmless buffoon to his television audience. One night on the stage hurling racial slurs and epithets cost him his career. He and his cohort in filth, Mr. Mel Gibson, obviously could benefit from some anger management classes or some Valium.

Obviously, Mel has slipped off into the deep end. During his marriage, he kept company with a little trollop, had a baby out of wedlock, and now she has tired of him. She’s exposed the real Mel to the world. Mel Gibson had, at one time, a family and a career. A good Catholic father by most accounts, he and his wife were married for 29 years and produced seven  children. Now he seems to hate almost everyone and he claims to be broke. I have a sneaking suspicion that “broke” to Mel Gibson and “broke” to Stick Miller might mean two entirely different things. In his case I believe “broken” might be a more appropriate term. Quite possibly, Mr. Gibson needs to consider switching to decaf.

All of the aforementioned miscreants seem to have one thing in common: they are the “nouveau riche” products of fairly instant fame and fortune. Like the lottery winners who go through big bucks in a hurry, buying double-wides and moving to Alabama, these guys are blowing their lives in pursuit of the business end of a camera lens.

I don’t sit in judgment. That is for our Lord to do. All I ask is that one day I get a chance to try my hand at being rich.

I promise, I’d be great at it.

Boyce E. “Stick” Miller III, an award-winning columnist, lives and works in Americus. Contact him at stickmiller@ gmail.com