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Mining money walks away from Scooter Braun, and we are forced to ponder questions about exploitation.
“The unluckiest heiress.”
We adopt Heir Mail-y in Paris as an official section name, even though I didn’t mean to write about her. (Why can’t I help it?)
From the rest of the alert: a very specific collection, lemme rent that bong cellar, the big yellow Kusama pumpkin that wasn’t, IYKYK and you’re probably a lot, boyfriend/accused murderer hates jail, the guy who invented the 8-track tape did the most.
“Ariana Grande Honeymoons In Amsterdam With Husband Dalton Gomez While Manager Scooter Braun's Marriage Falls Apart,” Radar Online
“Music mogul Scooter Braun separates from wife Yael,” Page Six
“Scooter Braun checked into intensive 'psycho-spiritual retreat' before split,” Page Six
Often when the tabloids take aim it can feel deeply cruel and uncalled for. You hate to see an innocent caught in a grotesque ridicule machine that they could never possibly understand or survive. Other times, a mega-manager and adult-who-goes-by-Scooter separates from his wife.
Carefree, fun, symmetrical. | @Yael’s Instagram
And she, it turns out, is a mining heiress! Named Yael Cohen Braun.
I’d like to pause for a moment and just acknowledge that Yael is “tragic young wife seen only in action movie flashback footage” beautiful. Sorry, I’m being weird, especially because I do controversially hate murder, but this is white heterosexual America’s most reverential expression of a woman’s value! It’s a huge (deranged, sad) compliment!
On top of that, Yael is rich in a serious way. (From harnessing natural resources. Obviously coming back to that.)
Leaving aside the Taylor Swift of it all, Scooter’s story is that of the man who discovered and to whatever extent tamed Justin Bieber, at least into profitability if not happiness or positive social value1. Child entertainers are a time-honored form of exploitation, but that doesn’t make it good. The adult who looks at a little kid and sees dollar signs is a golem. Today, Scooter has a remarkable amount of control in the entertainment industry, and if rumors are to be believed he’s been unafraid to use it to his advantage. But no matter how successful he is — and Celebrity Net Worth puts him at $400 million successfuls — he’ll always feel like that guy from your high school whose smile and party invitation you shouldn’t trust. (He got his start as a party promotor, at just 19!)
So it seems, at first glance, like tabs are spicy about Yael and Scoots’ separation. Radar devotes an article to how all of his managees are happy in love while his own is “fall[ing] apart,” writing that the separation may be the outcome of a “rumored ‘third party’2 and that Yael is also allegedly sick and tired of Scooter's treatment of Taylor Swift.” Page Six is pissed at the fact that he lied to them (they say it, lied) about entering a program called The Hoffman Process, which a line-drawn cartoon indicates is a therapeutic workshop based around the idea that we all learn bad shit about love from our parents.3
Ultimately, though, it’s not much, claws-wise. If Scooter’s clients are happy, it actually seems like he’s managing well, and even the Post notes that he was “instrumental” in the benefit concert for victims of the horrific bombing at client Ariana Grande’s London concert. The tabloids know what kind of snark they can get away with, what’s not worth it.
But we learn so little about Yael! Who is she?
She was last in the news defending her husband amid his Taylor standoff, but does her own stuff — she founded a charity called Fuck Cancer in 2009 after her mom Diane got sick, had a contributor blog called Motherlucker that seems to have petered out around 2018, advises Bumble.
Before all that, she was and is the daughter of David Cohen, who founded multiple Canadian natural resource companies, with shifting names like “Northern Orion Resources Inc” and “Gold Wheaton Gold Corp.” All of them seem to have started in the 2000s, a couple sold for a billion+. The family moved from South Africa to Canada in 1994, and at some point in a past life, as per Bloomberg, David worked for diamond company de Beers. He’s been in gold, silver, oils, platinum, copper; if you could take it out of the planet and make money from it, seems like maybe he was open to a conversation. David’s done this work all over the world: his companies have projects in Macedonia, Belgium, the UK, Peru, Mexico, West Africa, the US. Wheaton has a platinum group metal mine in Montana, for one.
David Cohen, looking much more contemporary and fit than I personally picture a mining magnate. | @Yael’s Instagram
I have to admit: I only skimmed this 2010 report looking at human rights concerns at one of Gold Corp’s Guatemalan mines. It’s awful and impenetrable! Some of the main issues surround “consultation” (i.e., letting people know what the hell was going on), “land acquisition” (e.g., has the “process has avoided involuntary resettlement”?), and the environmental effects of the mine — contamination and “reduction” of water, the effects of loud booms and the resulting dust on people living nearby. The report says that the company “lacks adequate due diligence… to ensure respect for human and labour rights by its contractors,” a whole lot about not having HR that seems a little beside the point, and notes that complainants about their treatment of workers included the Catholic Church. (The company said in 2012 they’re working on it!)
Anyway, here’s a story from a website called Dirt about David and Diane overpaying for the house next to Yael and Scooter. In-laws!
Estimated Net Worth: The Sun puts Yael at $20 million herself, but notes that her father sold a company he founded (again, there are multiple) for $1 billion. Scooter’s net worth has been clocked at $400 million.
“Heiress Kira Kerkorian Bing and Damian Hurley cut out of their dad's $A600 million fortune,” News.com.au
Kira Kerkorian Bing is, definitely, the daughter Lisa Bonder, a former pro tennis player. Indisputable!
Somewhere around the time Kira was born, Lisa married Kirk Kerkorian, a Vegas-based hotel magnate and on-off owner of MGM studios. Kirk was 82; Lisa was in her 30s. The marriage lasted a month — it was intended to legitimize the child, and Lisa had promised Kirk a divorce. (Highly rec this 2003 VF piece; amazing details, camp levels of slut shaming.)
A statue of Kirk Kerkorian in Armenia | Wikimedia Commons
But Kirk, who died at 98 in 2015, suspected that Lisa’s baby girl was not his. He hired a P.I. to steal the dental floss of one Mr. Stephen Bing and cross check it, finding a match.
Steve was the grandson of real estate developer Leo S. Bing (he built the Gramercy Park Hotel, among other buildings), and after he inherited $600 million at 18, he set out for a career of paying for stuff in Hollywood. (He also wrote the movie Kangaroo Jack.) Steve was famous for being friends with Bill Clinton (i.e. he was a huge Dem donor), providing the jet that saved Lisa Ling’s sister from North Korea, and most of all, his sperm.
In the early aughts, Steve was the subject of two simultaneously-publicized paternity spats: Lisa/Kirk/Kira, and Liz Hurley and her child Damian. This second thing you may remember. I do; it was big news. For years, he denied Kira and Damian.
Steve Bing and Liz Hurley | @elizabethhurley1’s Instagram
But eventually Steve met his adult daughter. In 2019, he explicitly included both Kira and her half-sibling in his will, as per THR.
In June 2020, fell from a building; reports called it suicide.
Today, News.com.au calls Kira “the unluckiest heiress alive.” She was cut out of both men’s wills.
Kirk, the logic follows (also, he didn’t leave her empty handed). Meanwhile, Steve’s dad, Dr. Peter Bing, doesn’t want illegitimate children benefitting from his generational wealth; he’s directed the funds to his daughter Mary’s children.
The question of who “deserves” whatever’s become of that $600 million dollars is complicated, easy one (no one!!), but I’m going say a chunk of cash being controlled by someone who holds an antiquated idea of legitimacy over the more tangible concept of responsibility sucks ass.
Estimated New Worth: Kira reportedly inherited $8.5 million upon Kirk’s death.
Heir Mail-y in Paris (say it in a French accent!!)
“Paris Hilton lands amateur cooking show - titled Cooking With Paris - on Netflix as she will embrace 'very newly domesticated side,’” Daily Mail
I feel like I understand so much about how Paris Hilton’s upcoming cooking show, Cooking With Paris, came to be but also I’ll never really be able to understand.
This, but on Netflix now. | @Parishilton’s Instagram
I understand that, especially during the pandemic, cooking shows with famous non-cooks have been an effective formula (Selena + Chef! Extra Virgin! Tia Mowry at Home! Amy Schumer Learns to Cook!)4.
I understand this iteration is connected to a viral5 cooking video/backdoor pilot Paris made in January 2020 (in which she makes lasagna).
And I understand, intellectually, that despite her wealth and the often brutal time she’s had in the public eye, Paris Hilton is a person who continues to pursue that attention, with DJing, documentaries, her podcast, etc. and more importantly that there is presumably a small ecosystem around her in service of that; other people who make money off of her endeavors, who are, possibly, greedy but ~checked out~ from an ~ideas perspective~, who have one lens to look through and the lens is “Paris”, so they say things like, “oh it’d be funny if you like, made lasagna. Like, people would like that.” But even putting all that together… do people like that?
There is, at least, no journey, as Daily Mail’s surprisingly supportive headline implies. She’s doing homemaker shit; the premise of the Simple Life in 2003 was literally “Paris Hilton doing regular things.” We’re nigh on 20 years of “Paris Hilton doing regular things” and I don’t think I’m being overly harsh when I say she is just not particularly interesting at it. I specifically enjoy the trappings and consequences of money, but this original video — watched in the spirit of journalism, you’re welcome — is not compelling, even as ASMR.
Or maybe that’s exactly what it is? Fine, it’s ASMR.
Estimated Net Worth: Paris is still coming in at $300 million, according to Express, Stylecaster, and Celebrity Net Worth.
From the rest of the alert
Sarah Belk Gambrell was the daughter of the founder Belk department stores, opened in 1888. She died at 102 last summer. One of her hobbies was adding to her collection of very specific European porcelain. Now that she’s passed, someone had to sell it all. It went better than expected!
Intensely mysterious weapons heiress Anna Shay from Bling Empire sold her house. Where her son’s bong cellar lives!
Angela Gulbenkian was born an Ischwang, but married Duarte Gulbenkian, who ArtNet describes as “the great-grandnephew of British-Armenian art collector and oil baron Calouste Gulbenkian.” After the wedding, she promptly seems to have started using the family name to con the art world, saying she was going to sell one art advisor a big yellow Kusama pumpkin (great choice, sir!) and never coming through. Additionally, she defrauded her masseuse (Jacqui Ball, great name) to the tune of $69,000. This week, she pled guilty.
“Granddaughter of Soho sex baron and property mogul Paul Raymond” India Rose James reopened her gallery in an IYKYK location.
The inquest into the death of Keroche beer scion Tecra Muigai is ongoing. Her boyfriend/accused murderer (and occasional no-show) is upset at his conditions. Omar Lali maintains Tecra simply got drunk and fell (and could go to the bathroom alone basically fine before she died?), but doctors say there’s no way her massive head injury came from a fall.
Word salad: “Lear heiress launching first all-electric flight school for women.” Erin Lear’s grandad also invented the 8-track tape. Okay!
Purpose bangs.
If you click the link, they mention RHOBH’s Erika Jayne which: whew!
A video on the program’s site sees a man with a beard and a podcast tell a man with a large hat that Neil Strauss, author of The Game, is a huge proponent of the program.
Did you know, as I just learned, that Patricia Heaton had a show for two seasons in 2015 called Patricia Heaton Parties? I genuinely despise Patricia Heaton but that title is amazing if you think of as a complete sentence.
5.1 million views, as of this writing.