Life destruction learned the hard way

There is a real mob mentality these days. If people disagree with you they will try to rally as many people against you and attempt to, for the most part, ruin your career and life.

We see it all the time with public figures. They might make a radical comment that offends some and suddenly there are calls for boycotts, petitions and campaigns to have the person’s life destroyed.

Oftentimes these things blow over rather quickly because another scandal creeps in and steals the spotlight.

Case in point: Bill O’Reilly was hated for weeks but then Kathy Griffin upstaged him with that infamous Donald Trump decapitation picture last week. And just days later Bill Maher stepped in it and people were calling for his head after a racial joke.

But how a person responds helps dictate their fate.

For O’Reilly, well, once the public found out upwards of $13 million had been paid out to settle sexual harassment lawsuits, his goose was cooked. How could that work in his favour? He was later fired from Fox News after advertisers dropped out and outrage hit the TV network.

For Griffin, she apologized in a video hours after the fallout began but instead of laying low and letting the furor pass, she called attention to herself with an awkward press conference where she said Trump and his family were bullying her. The bizarre presser saw her flipping from joke making to crying. She didn’t do herself any favours. She lost work before and after the conference.

Whereas Maher owned it and he wasn’t fired from HBO (as of press time, anyway). People were fired up about his N-bomb but his comment seemed less threatening because he called himself the name. I imagine it would have been a different story if he called a politician or fellow celebrity the N-word. Plus, he was attempting to make a joke and wasn’t saying it hatefully. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not justifying his remarks.)

Nevertheless, people are learning the hard way in an overly sensitive society that your life can be forever ruined if you say the wrong thing… or at least the wrong person hears it and amplifies it enough. It’s actually kind of sad.