“But I thought David Talbot is rich”
Um, sadly no, I’m not. And yes, that’s another reason you should donate $25 today (or $50 if you’re a big spender) to keep this little ship afloat. I know, I know — we just survived an Election Year, and politicians are STILL begging us for cash. Then there’s the pandemic, which has devastated our economy and left many of us scraping for food and rent. There are many demands on our limited funds.
But here’s the thing: we need an independent flow of information and ideas. That’s the lifeblood of free societies — that’s how they live or die. So, along with contributions to my favorite candidates (and, hey, we did pretty well in recent months), I’ve decided to pay my share for The Guardian, Common Dreams, Democracy Now, 48 Hills, Journal of the Plague Year and other publications I frequently read. I’m also mulling over subscribing to the newsletter of Matt Taibbi, whose reporting and insights I’ve valued over the years.
It took me years to finally get off Facebook, and I still use it as a redirect page, so I’m not going to lecture you about the evils of the social media giants. (The New York Times has at least two pieces today about how Facebook and Twitter enabled the metastasizing white nationalist Trump culture.) But you should know that I’m no longer going to join the conversations on my Facebook page. I’m determined to recreate the liveliness of that chatter on these pages. Here at the David Talbot Show we’re just one click away — so join us.
Now, back to my fortunes as a journalist and author — or lack thereof. This is not a whine. How tedious that would be. I made my choices in life, to remain outside the velvet coffin of corporate journalism, and I’ve been happy to live with the consequences. Even my beleaguered family adjusted to the ups and downs of this life. So this is simply a factual report on the bank account of an independent media maker.
It’s true that I’m the son of a once-famous Hollywood actor, Lyle Talbot. (That’s Lyle below with Loretta Young, one of his real-life romantic companions, in “She Had to Say Yes,” a racy, pre-Code movie.) And my late father had his flush years, as well as his lean ones. Hey, he was an ACTOR. I read somewhere while he was still doing the occasional TV show that something like only 5 percent of the membership of the Screen Actors Guild (which he cofounded back during the Great Depression) actually made a living from acting. So I was amazed that my dad was able to keep the roof over our family of six (sometimes barely). And when he died at the advanced age of 94, after a very full life (read all about it in my sister Margaret Talbot’s lively biography, “The Entertainer”), Lyle was able to leave each of his four children with an inheritance of $50,000.
Most of my windfall promptly went to paying off debts that my wife Camille and I had accrued as we built our own family. But easy come, easy go. My father, who was a bit like Dickens’ Mr. Micawber, always echoed him during hard times in his show biz career. “Something will turn up,” he’d confidently say.
Camille and I often echo his plucky remarks whenever we’ve hit a challenging time: when I leapt into the unknown in 1995 to start Salon, despite nagging debts and mortgage and young kids; when I had to borrow money to finish “The Devil’s Chessboard”; when I had my stroke and Camille had to indefinitely delay her own book to care for me. No one got rich off Salon, including me. We were always a prayer away from bankruptcy, despite all the dotcom hype. And I’m here to tall you that earning bragging rights as a “New York Times best-selling author” (twice) doesn’t earn you a dime in royalties. But through it all, our mantra remained “Something will turn up” — and it almost always has.
That’s why I’m still doing what I do — voicing news and opinions that seldom get aired, and giving others a platform to do the same. If we stick together, if we help each other thrive, we’ll never be silenced. Please donate today. The Show must go on.
