"Screech" Dustin Diamond The Latest Former Child Star To Hit Hard Times

The latest former child star to fall on hard times is Dustin Diamond, formerly known as "Screech" in the very popular early morning teen sitcom, SAVED BY THE BELL. When this program first aired in 1988, adapted from the 1987 Disney channel teen sitcom, GOOD MORNING, MISS BLISS, starring Hailey Mills, young Dustin Diamond was a mere 11 years old. At least three years younger than any other cast member. Today at the young age of 29, he faces foreclosure of his home in Wisconsin unless he can come up with $250,000 in the next 30 days.

Dustin Diamond is the latest former child star to hit hard times in life after fame in his early years. Since SAVED BY THE BELL, Diamond has tried his hand at standup comedy, and as a bass player in a band, Salty and the Pocketknife. And besides a very few cameos on TV or in some movies, nothing has compared to his previous fame as Samuel "Screech" Powers in the old SAVED BY THE BELL series. Like nearly all former child stars, fame just doesn't seem to come around the second time.

In a very desperate attempt to rescue his home, Diamond hopes to sell 30,000 T-shirts at $15 each or for $20 with his autograph.

In recent years it seems like Diamond could hardly get a break. He lost a lawsuit over the rights to his domain name in which a 21 year old representing himself defeated the law firm that Diamond hired. And although DVDs of all the previous episodes of SAVED BY THE BELL are marketed and some royalties likely are coming the way of Diamond, it still just doen't appear to be adequate to bail him out of his problems.

If former child stars ever seem to prove anything, it's that lightning seldom ever strikes twice for them. It seems as though their Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame has long since come and gone. Former FULL HOUSE star Jodie Sweetin has recently survived a reported bout with crystal meth addiction, and hopes that hosting a new game show that involves strippers is a path to a new 15 of fame, or less at least a little less shame. For Diamond the fall hasn't been as disgraceful, yet having to appear on radio programs to plead poverty, and that his money is gone is no source of pride at all.

Diamond does have his detractors though. A poll in STUFF magazine rated him as the third most annoying TV personality. And a commenter on one blog even claimed that he had squandered away $2 million dollars by time he was 18 years old. But regardless of how he got into this situation, he does need some serious help right now.

It is likely that Diamond was a victim of one of the new home finance scheme traps, in which persons with weak credit ratings sign terrible home finance contracts that set them up to fail, and lose everything. Congress seems to be too busy debating Gay marriage and the stale old 1984 event in which a single radical burned an American flag outside of the Ronald Reagan renomination Republican convention, than to attempt to protect hundreds of thousands of home finance trap schemes. Republicans have gotten years and years of political mileage over this single 22 year old event in which a single member of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party was arrested. Yet much meaningful legislation is never even given decent consideration such as protecting Americans from various home financing schemes.

Over at www.getdshirts.com, Dustin Diamond has a pathetic almost homeless look with a beard, starved look, and a penny jar all clearly visible. For all the laughs he gave us over the years on SAVED BY THE BELL, it would be a great thing for the appreciative public to rescue Screech this time. Saved by his public would be a great act of appreciation.