| Topic Name: |
WPLG v. WUSA w/ KAMAL |
| Message Name: |
In paragraph form |
| Date Posted: |
05/10/2005 |
| Message: |
Dave, Thanks for the link to the Kamal interview and slideshow though it's totally gruesome. Bill, to me, seems delusional with hopes, if he says God enough, of returning, someday, to TV. Sad.
On one of the many dark prison days yet to elapse maybe even someone as silly and self-centered as Bill will come to the realization that the media corps will never forgive and he will never again feel the warm kiss of klieg lights and mass local adulation. Of course he'll need a few ounces of functioning brain mass but maybe a smarter and healthier future Bill will stumble into creating a weather blog and a podcast. The tragic slideshow, at least, made me glad to see the traces of what I felt was meth abuse erased from his face as it appeared in the arrest photo.
If you don't know or can't remember Bill came to WDVM at age 26 and was earning over $120K. By the end of the WUSA run he was over $200K. I'm told his Miami salary was over $350K per. To be so young, televised and so flush with cash and so hell bent on the gratification of every desire was hardly an American celebrity phenomena exclusive to our Bill. Bill will never return to the toob partly because he's a frivolous venal boob but also because the media corps who employed him enabled him, like they enable others, through many warning signs, klaxons and whooping, bleating sirens that could have forestalled Kamal's pedo-doom.
The calls to male sex phone lines using the Channel 9 weather office phone, the turban-wearing DC cabbies who regularly told 9 staffers of Kamal sightings "kissing man on lips" outside SE dance clubs, the day Kamal thought he was to be murdered at the old TOP building when a tall muscular black man announced to the lobby guard that he wanted to see Bill and that he was "Mrs. Bill Kamal" (ask me later) and the endless ranks of young, pretty boys around Bill at work or at play all scream that 9 management knew and looked the other way.
I know I had several serious talks with Bill about his behavior over the years I was chief director at 9 with the most memorable happening after I received reports of an elegantly suited Bill making a grand entrance late one night at the old DC Eagle flashing jewels and a huge wad of cash. Some of us knew it was only a matter of time before Bill stumbled.
Long before I saw your links to the reports of his DUI arrests, when vacationing in the Keys and watching Bill's weather on south Florida TV, I knew from the signs of massive facial surgery on his not-yet-40 year-old face that Bill was way out of control. I thought to call but I didn't as Bill, among many, never called when I left 9 due to a pre-remission terminal illness. The Florida station had to know of troubles similar to those that happened in DC but, hey, why rock the boat? Why fix it when it ain't broke? Now poor Bill's broke and it's really tragic to read between the lines of his interview. I hope some of the letters he receives will help him see the brutal light of reality but I'll be surprised to see him rise from the ashes of his current predicament.
All the best...I enjoy your site, Sean (5/10/05)
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