I originally considered making it just Cosby-vs-OJ, as I was certain that’s what it was going to ultimately boil down to, and while I was basically correct about that, something about doing it that way seemed… non-inclusive, so I pulled the rest of the list from just off the top of my head, thus big misses such as Matt Lauer.
I see a lot of folks want to compare offenses; this is NOT about the severity of the transgression, but rather the overall distance from zenith to nadir.
Martha Stewart got nailed on a technical violation of insider trading that thousands of people did every day, at a time when the Department of Justice was eager to show how tough they could be on white collar crime. Aside from forcing her to step down from her position with Marth Steward Living Omnimedia and having spent a five month term in federal prison and two years on hose arrest, it isn’t clear that this has done anything to diminsh her status as a media personality or entrepreneur.
One not listed above is Elizabeth Holmens, founder, chairman, and CEO of Theranos. Holmes left Stanford University at 19 to found the company to develop so-called “lab on a chip” diagnostic tests, raising over $400M in private VC funding and obtaiing a valuation from Forbes of $9B in 2014, with Holmes’ personal net worth estimated at $4.5B due to her private common stock and option holdings. The company had agreements with Walgreens, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as the prestigous Cleavand Clinic to use their technology for medical diagnostics on hundreds of thousands of patients despite there being no published or peer-reviewed studies on its efficacy or reliabiliity. By 2016, Tyler Shultz’s whistleblowing to New York state public health officials and to The Wall Street Journal had alerted the industry and fthe FDA; the valuation of the company plunged to $100M (basically, investment capital and held assets) and Holmes net worth was valued at $0. This is notwithstanding all of the patients whose health and accuracy of treatment may have been impacted by false negative results from a technology which, according to people inside the company, never worked to any appreciable degree. The magnitude and baldness of scamistry has also hit investor confidence in other medical biotech startups, many of which are potentially legitimate. The list of rapists, murderers, and fallen sports icons are all deeply flawed individuals (some more than others; I mean, Tiger Woods was kind of a jerk, but he didn’t steal or kill anyone) but none who have had such a direct impact on such a wide number of people.
A lot of it’s a matter of perspective. For example, Paterno may not have taken the biggest fall from grace, he’s in with some real losers here. If you take into consideration though the way the fans and residents in Happy Valley regarded him as some saint though, then yeah, he fell pretty far and there’s a place in hell for saints like Joe. It’s hard for me to decide who on the list fell furthest, they’re all such good choices.
This is an excellent contribution. As for OJ and Cosby, I think it depends when you grew up - I never knew OJ for much beyond being in The Naked Gun films and was aware he was a gridiron player, so I didn’t get the impact of Beloved Sporting Star’s Dramatic Fall around the time of the trial.
Cosby, on the other hand, was well known when I was growing up (Fat Albert, the Cosby Show) and his image was of such an upstanding chap that discovering he’s been accused of being not just “a bit handsy” but doing some truly vile things is extraordinarily jarring to say the least.
I voted Cosby, but was tempted to go with Paterno (c.f. post 43).
The bizarre thing about OJ was how radical his public persona (e.g. his goofy mugging in the Naked Gun movies) differed from his private one. But Cosby started out higher.
I voted for Paterno. Cosby was the obvious choice, but remember that in the entertainment business he was always known as a not very nice person. Not nearly as bad as he turned out to be, but no one in entertainment ever mistook him for a nice guy. Sure, he portrayed himself as such in public, but like so many actors that was his stage face. As soon as the cameras were off and the interview was over the real jerk was right there. Why so many women were willing to date him I have no idea. I guess power and money colors female eyes at least as much as boobs and short skirts color male observations.
Paterno was not only a revered coach but a revered coach of kids. Public and private he portrayed one persona and used it to victimize children.
As for Nixon, he was the opposite of most people on the list. His public and professional persona was pretty awful-he showed his paranoia to all. Privately to many accounts he was a thoughtful and nice person. Kissinger made that comment a couple of times that I remember. And as an example, Nixon paid the college tuitions of several young people who never knew who their benefactor was. It was something he kept as private as possible, and he kept that up during this political career and afterwards. Besides, as John Dean recently commented, if FOX had existed back then Nixon probably would have sailed through his second term without any consequences.
interesting side note about OJ. After the trial a big majority of black people thought he was innocent . Now 20+ years later more blacks think he’s guilty. Can’t find the cite for that but I will look again
Did any medical/psychiatric folk theorize that Simpson may suffer from football-induced brain injury? Other ex-players with TBI have gone off the rails in similar criminal ways.
Armstrong’s crime is kind of meh to me (I don’t care much about athletic doping “crimes”).
Let’s not forget John Edwards. Perhaps he could have at one time had a shot at being POTUS…but fathering an out of wedlock child while his wife was fighting for her life got in the way of those dreams. Schmuck.
Since 1997, when a civil court jury found him guilty. And if you continue to insist on pedantry, I never specified if he was a brutal murderer civilly or criminally.
I made my pick based on the person’s reputation before the fall and the weight and overall WTF nature of the act (or acts) that triggered the fall. Bill Cosby is the runaway choice so far in the poll but people forget that even before the first sexual assault accusations started leaking out around 2005, there were some signs he wasn’t exactly best role-model for fatherhood. For one thing, the guy spent so much time at the Playboy Mansion that it was practically his second home. (He even got into a drunken brawl there with Tommy Smothers in 1976 after Smothers started snarking on him over the failure of his ABC variety show.) The only surprising thing about Cosby’s fall from grace were the large number of assaults he was accused of and the fact he was still doing it after he’d moved into the “moralizing old man” phase of his career.
Richard Nixon had a reputation for under-handed political tactics going back to his first congressional run in 1946 when the “Tricky Dick” monicker was attached to him. Watergate was hardly a surprise to anyone.
My pick was O.J. While there were some domestic abuse reports before 1994, the double murder he (allegedly) committed was truly shocking and unforeseeable.
Also, for honorable mention, let me suggest Winona Ryder. Granted shoplifting is quite petty compared with most the offenses discussed in this thread but the WTF nature of the crime was pretty high. She had been a major star during the previous 10 years and considered the quintessential Generation-X poster girl prior to the incident which brought her career to near dead stop. It’s only recently with her role in “Stranger Things” that she’s emerged back into the public spotlight.
Was Paterno accused of actively participating in any acts of child molestation? It was my understanding his friend and assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was the one who actually committed the acts. While Paterno knew what Sandusky was doing and covered for him (which was bad enough), I don’t think he molested anybody.
Yeah, I’m wondering the same thing. I knew he knowingly looked the other way and covered up what was going on, but I never heard anything about him being an active molester himself.
My choice was Cosby, with OJ a close second. A lot of others didn’t do things that measured up nearly as bad as serial rape or multiple murder, or they weren’t nearly as high up in the eyes of the general public.
Between Fat Albert, The Cosby Show, and his stand-up routines, I find it really disturbing how much he influenced my childhood and teen years.
I’m surprised not to see Oscar Pistorius on the list. The face of Paralympic athletics, huge sponsorship deals, arguably the first global Paralympic superstar.
But you shoot one girlfriend…
I don’t think he’d win, but he deserves to make the list.