Money for nothing, chicks for free?

Seth Finkelstein made a very valid point on Kelly's blog yesterday. The Marsden story, salacious as it is, is really just Jimbeau's problem. A quick look at Marsden's bio will show that she is better known in Canada for her lurid sexcapades than for her integrity as a journalist, and I am sure that both Sue and Jay Walsh, who come from the Canadian journalist community, could back up these charges. It is no mere metaphor to say that Jimbeau got in bed with the wrong woman … this time.

Why "this time"? Because ValleyWag seems to have missed a few of the facts. I've known about several of Jimbeau's affairs long before I started working at Wikipedia because, well, he used to boast of them to me. And not just to me either. In fact, I'd need two hands, two feet, and a bunch of other extremities to count all the people who knew. So Jimbeau is a lech. That still fails to address Seth's point that his sex life is no one's business but his. True, perhaps, but the fact is that this had an impact on much more than Jimbeau's integrity. It impacted the Foundation's cash reserves, which are derived from donations. You see, Jimbeau was certainly not frugal in his spending on his endless trips abroad, but when it came to handing in receipts, he could be somewhat careless. At one point he owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit. Not a bad sum, considering that many of those trips had fat honoraria, which Jimbeau kept for himself. (Florence will surely remember his explanation for one of these: "I don’t make any money, and my wife needs a washing machine." Her response was wonderful: "A gold-plated washing machine?")

So Jimbeau cancelled an upcoming trip to Italy, Serbia, and Croatia, and got to work finding receipts. I helped process them. Subway ticket in Moscow: $0.50. Massage parlor in Moscow: priceless. Some were accepted; others were not, like the $650 spent on two bottles of wine during a dinner for four at Bern's—I remember that one because he submitted it twice, once with the tip scratched out. I wonder if the students who gave up their lunch money to donate to Wikipedia would have approved of that expense. In the end he reached a deal with Brad—details unknown—and paid the Foundation about $7000 in two checks. I don't know what happened with the rest, but the checks can be found in the list of donors.

I remember how, in Mexico City, Bono explained to us how the band leaves the arena after a concert by running through a long plastic tunnel stretching from the stage to their limos. "I need one of those," Jimbeau responded, "because I am like a rockstar too." That may be. He certainly gets to have sex with groupies. It is just unfortunate that for the longest time, some of this was funded by well-meaning donors, who really thought that their $5.00 would pay for hardware and bandwidth.