Judas.
Right hand man to the ostensible son of God to being reviled for 2000 odd years.
He did play a critical role in the redemption of our sins. Thank you Judas!
Two letters say it all: O.J. After getting away with a double murder, he doesn’t have the sense to stay on the right side of the law. Instead, he’s arrogant enough to think he can break laws and get away with it again. Stupidity personified.
Cosby because I interpreted ‘biggest’ as distance of fall and consider how highly regarded the person was prior. Nixon’s fall was certainly more broadly consequential than that of the celebrities on the list, but he was a highly controversial figure all along. A lot of people saw Watergate as just confirming what they always thought of Nixon. That goes for a lot of the other celebrity candidates also.
OJ is not an unreasonable answer since it’s still pretty rare for somebody that famous to be charged with a murder (committed in person, I don’t go along with the rhetorical style of accusing politicians of murder over war policy differences, though again the results are more broadly consequential). But OJ was a semi-joke quasi-has been, my impression as already well into adulthood when the murder story broke. There were elements of controversy to Cosby’s image (too conservative-friendly in his statements about the African American community’s challenges to some ears) but by and large an example of a ‘good guy’ and more serious person that OJ.
The point about Armstrong’s achievements having been officially revokes is reasonable. But there isn’t really much practical difference compared to say Bonds among sports cheaters. And if almost everyone thinks you’re much, much worse than a sports cheater (eg. Cosby) not sure how it helps that some entertainment award hasn’t been taken from your mantle piece.
No. I accidentally typed “was” instead of “wasn’t” - need to proofread more.
Good points about Saville above - but does the fall count if it was entirely posthumous? That line about smashing up his tombstone, though - wow. I don’t recall that happening for anyone else in the US or UK.
I’d say OJ beats out Michael Jackson by a nose. ‘Pop star to child molester’ is not as great a fall as ‘sports star to double murderer’ IMO.
Regards,
Shodan
The ‘most severe Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy ever found in a person that age’ (per some reports) in Hernandez’ autopsy somewhat changed the perception of him I think. As conceivably it might for OJ eventually to some degree.
On another theme of public people always having being known to have an unsavory side, I don’t think that counts if it wasn’t the general public perception. And although Cosby’s sort of late period rat pack type private persona in the 60’s wasn’t unknown people didn’t care as much, no crime (they knew of) and he’d grown into a more respected figure later.
Likewise the idea proposed for Nixon that he was gracious in private. That’s been said at least somewhat credibly about Trump also (though OTOH nobody IIRC ever gave personal accounts of Nixon sexual impropriety). I’m not here to condemn or defend Nixon or Trump in a political debate, but that’s the point, politicians are judged through a political lens until long after. And the societal/political divide of today evolved from that of the '60’s, it’s never healed. Most people except the most morally and least politically conscious tend to let politicians on ‘their side’ off the hook on personal stuff (unless easily disposable) and heap it on the ‘other side’, when it comes to politicians. And they are perfectly capable of hating opposing politicians who appear basically decent in their mature private lives (Bush, Obama etc). It’s hard for modern US politicians to ‘fall from grace’ except on one side of the divide. They are already ‘fallen’ on the other side, or else both sides don’t like them as either ‘not as bad as some but still one of them’ or ‘squishy traitors’, respectively.
Good question about the posthumous validity - although I think the fall would not have seemed quite so meteoric if he had still been alive (I mean, there could have been no desecration of the grave - and many of the statues that were torn down weren’t initially erected until his death).
I know of cases where celebrity graves have been vandalised, or desecrated by private individuals, but the real kicker with Savile is that the act was quite official/institutional - there was a ‘soft’ cover story about removing it so that it wouldn’t offend anyone or become a target for vandalism or sick tourism, but a newspaper visited the site and got photos of the headstone smashed up and thrown into a skip with a load of construction waste and other garbage.
What about Dennis Hastert? From Speaker of the House to federal prison for molesting teenage boys is a pretty damn big fall.
They may have missed a valuable fundraising opportunity. I imagine there were plenty of people who would have paid money for a swing or two of the sledgehammer.
I voted for Cosby. The feeling of betrayal is unfathomable.
For people not on this list, I’d say JFK. No one thinks well of him anymore, or his whole damn family come to that.
Further back, there’s Columbus. Once celebrated by all with his own holiday. Now seen as little more than a genocidal sociopath.
What decided me was Nixon’s gargantuanly lopsided re-election victory in 1972, the like of which hadn’t been seen since Monroe 1820—I remember watching that and still have difficulty dealing with the fact; it was ridiculously out of all proportion to anything—and 21 months later he was out on his ass and his name was mud. I still don’t know WTF was the deal with that '72 election, especially since Watergate had already been in the news for several months.
I don’t agree with this one - Nixon still had a public life by the 1980s, and seemed to be regarded by latter presidents as someone worth listening to. Baby Boomers, especially Democrats, really don’t like him and like to treat him like the Devil Incarnate, but I don’t think his reputation is actually that bad outside of that particular very loud and self-congratulatory circle. It’s not like people say ‘Watergate was great’, but it’s also not the darkest thing ever. And all presidents are the butt of jokes, I doubt his ‘butt of jokes’ issue is actually worse than Dubya’s. I don’t think he’s going to be remembered all that badly in history, I suspect his ‘history book passage’ will be more like “Vietnam war, opened China, at the end screwed up badly with the Watergate thing,” I doubt it will even register as much more than a footnote by the time the scandals involving the 2016 candidates fully come into the light.
I’m not saying ‘he’s great’, but I don’t think he’s had the kind of fall that OJ Simpson or Bill Cosby did.
Since the OP is looking for farthest fall and not severity of crime, I think a decent metric is the ratio of the number of fans at their peak versus the number of supporters they have now. Someone like Nixon was never as universally popular as Cosby or Simpson, and Nixon still has a fair number of supporters. Weinstein may have been powerful, but he never had enough fans to start. Paterno still has a ton of supporters. I don’t think anyone can approach Cosby or Simpson on that metric, although Savile is probably the closest.
How about the common man’s fallen hero?
How many people think they have anything but a slim chance of being a famous comedian or a Senator/President or a world class athelete?
Buy anyone of us could have managed get a bit fat…go on a sub sandwich diet and become a rich and famous spokesman for SubWay.
Jared…the common man’s man…he wasn’t that high…but he was pretty damn high for no real reason…and boy did he screw that up…and his life and fortune to boot.
Maybe I am just jaded at this point, but a famous person raping, murdering, cheating, or doing other unsavory things doesn’t shock me. Look at the list, there’s basically duplicates for each of those things.
Joe Pa, to me, is different. Covering up sexual assault on children is still shocking to me (at least outside of the Catholic church). He gets my vote.
If people don’t think well of the Kennedys anymore, how come JFK’s great-nephew got to do the rebuttal to Trump’s SOTU speech?
With Columbus, you’re dealing historical timelines which are a lot longer. Quite often, the standings of historical figures wax and wane over time. Columbus was regarded as little more than a footnote figure for more than 100 years after his death and really didn’t come prominence until the 1700s (and even then, many people like Voltaire thought his biggest achievement was introducing syphilis to Europe). Nonetheless, Columbus’ reputation remained high until fairly recently when it started to wane again.
King John of England …
He started as the absolute ruler of England and half of France … wound up losing his French possessions and signed the rest over to Parliament … to this very day we still name our toilets after him …
Pedophilia AND necrophilia. He went from revered DJ and do-gooder (“Jim’ll fix it”) until the stories came out after his death.
Of the others: Nixon had a big fall, but recovered, and anyway it goes with the job in politics. OJ? You don’t much lower than an unrepentant murderer - and I for one think he bought his freedom with expensive lawyers. Cosby? A serial scumbag. Michael Jackson? The rumors of serious weirdness turned out to be true.