Above: The Wire creator David Simon suggested that Tom Perkins sell his $300,000 wristwatch and use the proceeds to open a couple of drug rehab centers in Baltimore.
From Bill Moyers’ essay, Advice to Plutocrat Perkins: Time to Shut Up!:
“I don’t regret the message at all,” [Tom Perkins] said. “Anytime the majority starts to demonize the minority, no matter what it is, it’s wrong and dangerous and no good comes from it.”
[in this Bloomberg TV interview] Perkins also said that he has family “living in trailer parks,” but bragged like some cackling James Bond villain that he owns “an airplane that flies underwater” and a wristwatch that “could buy a six-pack of Rolexes.” That watch, on prominent display during the Bloomberg interview, is a Richard Mille, a charming little timepiece that can retail for more than $300,000. At that price, a watch shouldn’t just tell you the time, it should allow you to travel through it, perhaps back to the Gilded Age or Versailles in 1789, just as the tumbrils rolled in. Here in the office, our $85 Timex and Seiko watches have crossed their hands over their faces in shame.
That Richard Mille watch triggered TV producer David Simon’s comment on Moyers & Company that it should be sold and used to open drug treatment centers in Baltimore, the city where Simon was a crime reporter and which served as the backdrop and central character of his classic HBO series The Wire.