An actor, an actress, a district attorney and a small-town mayor
Under watch:
Actor Alec Baldwin, whose divorce from actress Kim Basinger reads like “War of the Roses,” leaving an angry phone message for his 12- er, 11-year old daughter Ireland. Both Baldwin and Basinger have been on my radar for years. I learned long ago that the addict in a familial relationship can easily be misidentified and that in the case of Baldwin v. Basinger, we really can’t know if it’s him, her or both. However, as recovering alcoholics readily admit, the movie “War of the Roses” starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner was a story requiring alcohol or other-drug addiction in either or both. So it likely is with Baldwin/Basinger.
Durham, North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong, roundly condemned by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper for rushing to accuse and failing to verify allegations of rape of a 28-year-old black stripper by three young Duke University lacrosse players, highlighted in the April-May 2006 issue of the Thorburn Addiction Report. Cooper called Nifong a “rogue” and “overreaching” prosecutor and, to his great credit, said flat out that the three players were innocent. Nifong faces ethics charges for withholding DNA evidence showing that several unidentified males and not the accused were the sources of genetic material found on the accuser. Cooper has not ruled out filing criminal charges against Nifong after the ethics charges are resolved, but decided against filing such charges against the accuser because he concluded “she may actually believe the many different stories she has been telling.” There’s no question about the accuser having the disease of addiction. There is also no question that Mike Nifong, having stuck by a false accusation in a bid to increase his power (he won an election because he won the black vote due to his support for the accuser’s story) that could have resulted in 30 years imprisonment for each of three innocent men, exhibited as destructive a behavioral clue to alcoholism as exists short of murder.
Adelanto, California mayor Jim Nehmens, 50, and his wife, Kelly, 44, charged with grand theft by embezzlement. Nehmans was president of the Adelanto Little League for the last nine years and allegedly stole more than $20,000 from 2004 to 2006, mostly from the sale of fireworks intended to supplement the Little League’s income. He was reelected mayor of the small but fast-growing San Bernardino town in 2006 after first being elected to the city council in 2000, the year he and his wife filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and then mayor in 2004. Mr. and Mrs. Nehmens, since it would be defamatory to suggest you could be so callous as to declare bankruptcy while running for elected office and then (allegedly) steal from children while sober, we hope either or both of you have the disease of alcoholism and that you seek appropriate help.