The Broke and the Beautiful: Junk Edition

This week on The Broke and the Beautiful, Rhode Island’s governor blasts Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios and Taylor Swift helps out the Nashville Symphony. Also, another N-Dubz member is in financial trouble.

It’s getting any easier for ex-baseball play Curt Schilling, whose videogame company has been mired in controversy since its bankruptcy filing last year. And now, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee is piling on, the Associated Press reported. Calling 38 Studios’ flagship videogame “a lot of junk,” Gov. Chafee said this week he wasn’t surprised the game didn’t sell at an auction. Gov. Chafee, who’s been critical of the $75 million loan guarantee from Rhode Island to 38 Studios, said Thursday that the state’s investment on the company was “insane.”

“People just panicked and gave a retired baseball player a huge amount of taxpayer money with no experience in this industry or any other businesses,” he told a Cranston, R.I., NBC affiliate in an interview. “There was this whole groupthink across the business communities.”

Singer Taylor Swift knew it was (in) trouble, so she stepped up to help out the Nashville Symphony. According to the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Swift donated $100,000 to the orchestra, which has been having financial problems, including almost losing its performance space and having musicians take a 15% pay cut. (Previously, the Nashville Symphony had sought a 30% pay cut.) With any luck, their songs will be playing for a long, long time.

Is it becoming an N-Dubz tradition? Earlier this month, Dappy was having tax problems. And now, according to the Independent, rapper Fazer has been declared bankrupt. Bankruptcy isn’t the rapper’s only problem of late, either. Earlier this week, he was criticized for posting an Instagram photo of a bejeweled gun with the caption, “U ain’t worth my bullets!” (The image has since been deleted.)

Write to Melanie Cohen at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @MelanieLisa.