The guy who covers the "billionaire beat" over at Forbes.com - who must be pretty busy these days, since according to Forbes there are now over 1,200 billionaires in the world - was able to chat this week with some billionaires to see what they think about the possibility that fellow (alleged) billionaire Donald Trump will run for President. As I wrote (at Forbes) in response, only a couple seemed to be in favor of this development, although it seemed like none of the billionaires wanted to be too critical of another (alleged) billionaire. "Evasively non-committal" might be a good description of their reactions. "Do you think he'd be a good president?" "He has some very interesting ideas." That kind of thing.
On the other hand, the six billionaires surveyed represent only 0.5% of the world's billionaire population, so for all we know the other 95.5% might overwhelmingly support The Donald.
While I was checking this out at Forbes.com, I noticed a headline that read "Billionaire's Obsession with a Clown," and I was prepared to be pissed off that somebody beat me to that story but it actually wasn't especially odd. (I guess the only odd thing about it is that Trump isn't involved.) It turns out to be about John Pritzker (currently #692 on the billionaire list), who has produced a documentary about Wavy Gravy called "Saint Misbehavin'."
Fun fact from that story: according to Pritzker, Wavy Gravy became a clown in the '60s because he was active in the protest movement and was frequently getting beaten up by police. In an effort to minimize the beatings, he decided to try wearing clown makeup. "He was right," Pritzker says. "It turns out that police won't hit a clown." For some reason I find that hilarious.
I wonder if cops feel free to beat up mimes. Probably, because it's not like they're gonna tell anyone.
