# Career-killing SCANDALS!!!! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 3, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007 "2004-09-03T19:44:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TeaElle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@TeaElle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TeaElle)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/61 "2004-09-05T07:36:30Z")
> [@Little Nemo](#): > > Like I said, she didn’t vanish. But five years ago she was a regular on Letterman and Leno and other talk shows. Didn’t Paula Poundstone serve as Jay Leno’s “political reporter” during the 2000 presidential campaign? It still seems utterly preposterous that it was perfectly legitimate for the SFPD to announce what crimes she was charged with, but “privacy concerns” for the children left them unable to explain the reason for the charges, leaving everyone months to tar her with the label of child molestor. ---
**Author:** ![Iyamity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/96bed5/32.png) [@Iyamity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iyamity)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/62 "2004-09-05T12:12:51Z")
I can’t believe no one has mentioned O.J. Simpson yet. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2004, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/63 "2004-09-05T12:33:16Z")
> [@Iyamity](#): > > I can’t believe no one has mentioned O.J. Simpson yet. Uh, the OP did. 'course he also mentioned Micheal jackson and someone listed him, with details. ---
**Author:** ![Iyamity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/96bed5/32.png) [@Iyamity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iyamity)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/64 "2004-09-06T11:24:07Z")
Oops, skipped over that. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/65 "2004-09-06T13:08:46Z")
> [@](#): > > The artistic style of “Bloom County” and “Outland” are nothing like “Doonesbury.” I agree they were never alike. Bloom County and Outland were funny. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/66 "2004-09-06T15:56:11Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > **Greg Brooks** , artist of the retro-styled _Crimson Avenger_ comic book for DC Comics in the mid-80s, killed his girlfriend with a ball-peen hammer. Presumably still in prison, he hasn’ been heard from since. He didn’t perchance inspire that crap-fest movie COOL WORLD, did he? ---
**Author:** ![Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@Bippy\_the\_Beardless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bippy_the_Beardless)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/67 "2004-09-07T16:36:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Can’t believe nobody has mentioned **Oscar Wilde!** I had heard that he lost his artistic drive after prison. Did the scandal itself distroy his reputation and kill his career? Wasn’t he pretty much known to be homosexual long before the trial and accepted by society as such? ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/68 "2004-09-07T19:12:08Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 😕 The artistic style of “Bloom County” and “Outland” are nothing like “Doonesbury.” And I don’t see why Breathed’s Pulitzer for editorial cartooning was “undeserved” – his 'toon had real political content even if it didn’t run on the Op-Ed page. In their “Swipe File” feature, The Comics Journal ran a Doonesbury strip and a Bloom County strip side-by-side, a strip with Mike/Milo engaging in a conversation with his/their bathroom mirror and getting dissed about his/their acne in the final panel. Both strips were in their infancy when the panels were originally published, but the Doonesbury one was about ten years earlier. Homage or swipe? I refer you to the bottom entry of the [Doonesbury FAQ page “Out There”](http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/faqs/faq_ot.html) section: > [@](#): > > ``` > Q: I know Bloom County bugged you and I cannot figure out why. I mean, why didn't the old saw of "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery mean anything to you? > > ``` > > –Peter Zale, University Heights, Ohio > > ``` > A: A critic for the Comics Journal once wrote that to call Bloom County funny is like complimenting a shoplifter on being a snappy dresser. Breathed borrowed from a variety of his colleagues -- even as he scorned their work. He once wrote a series of strips about two characters looking at clouds that was so clearly lifted from a legendary Peanuts strip that the Washington Post called him on it. His reply: It was an "homage" -- never mind that the Peanuts strip had appeared 20 years earlier and was not referenced. The line between emulation and theft is a fairly subjective one, but Breathed developed a poor reputation among his peers because of the specificity of his lifts -- and his arrogance when confronted with them. > > ``` Feel free to disagree with me, but this view didn’t originate with me and I’m far from the only one to hold it. As for Breathed’s Pulitzer, the cartoonist himself speculated (in a speech to assembled editorial cartoonists) that the prize had less to do with the quality of his editorial vision than with the general sameness of all the op-ed cartoons that year. I’d link to the speech, but I can’t find it archived anywhere. The “scandal” part comes in because he nominated himself and won for a category that most other cartoonists believed he didn’t qualify for. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/69 "2004-09-07T19:24:18Z")
> [@Bippy the Beardless](#): > > I had heard that he lost his artistic drive after prison. Did the scandal itself distroy his reputation and kill his career? Wasn’t he pretty much known to be homosexual long before the trial and accepted by society as such? There was a world of difference between “known to be homosexual” and "confronted by deviant sexuality in an extraordinarily public way in a Society That Does Not Speak Of Such Things. Wilde wasn’t particularly public about his sexuality anyway. He was a dandy and an aesthete, certainly, but he was also married and had two children. The first Wilde trial was initiated by Wilde, when he sued Queensbury for libel after Queensbury (Lord Douglas’s father) left a card accusing Wilde of “posing as a Somdomite [sic].” His closest advisors begged Wilde not to press the charge but Douglas prevailed upon him as part of his ongoing grudge with his father. Wilde withdrew the suit after Queensbury made it known to Wilde that he had a parade of “rent boys” ready to testify to the sex acts Wilde performed with them (truth being an absolute defense). Queensbury then turned the material over the the Crown, which used it to initiate the criminal trials against Wilde. ---
**Author:** ![snorlax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@snorlax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snorlax)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/70 "2004-09-07T20:02:35Z")
Another spectacular flameout was Michael Barrymore, a light entertainment kingpin in the UK who hosted several popular family television shows. He weathered numerous storms including admissions of drug abuse and homosexuality but the final nail in the coffin was when a man was found floating face-down in his pool with what were described as “anal injuries caused by a firm object”. Barrymore escaped prosecution, but his career didn’t; I believe he is currently cooling his heels in New Zealand. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/71 "2004-09-07T20:19:48Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > I’m wondering if we could include Keanu Reeves here. He was one of the biggest young stars around in the early-mid 90s and was touted as the next big action star. Then he was photographed kissing another man somewhere or other and a ‘scandal’ erupted over his sexual orientation. He basically went from the biggest action star in Hollywood after “Speed” to everything he did tanking for the next 5 years until “The Matrix” picked his career up again. It’s hard to say whether the gay scandal was what caused is career to tank or whether it just happened to coincide with everyone realising that he can’t act at all. I doubt that the world is ready for an openly gay action start just yet. Huh? Sure, Keanu has had some rumors of fluid sexuality since appearing in _My Own Private Idaho_, but he’s had longterm relationships with women. I think he’s gotten married recently, in fact. He wasn’t exactly cursed with failure in the years between _Speed_ (1994) and _The Matrix_ (1999) either. He made several movies, at least two of which were modest successes – _A Walk in the Clouds_ and _The Devil’s Advocate_. ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/72 "2004-09-07T20:25:22Z")
Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet, was accused of molesting some boys several years ago. I believe there was an out of court settlement, but he never returned to his TV show after that. He had a history of heart problems and died recently. A very sad case, and I don’t think it was ever determined whether the allegations had any basis in fact. ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/73 "2004-09-07T20:35:10Z")
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned **Trent Lott** and his interpreted enthusiasism for some of that “old-time segregation.” While still a senator, I would imagine that since resigning as Speaker of the House his days as a senatorial force are numbered. ---
**Author:** ![Gamaliel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b487fb/32.png) [@Gamaliel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gamaliel)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/74 "2004-09-07T20:35:36Z")
> [@Krokodil](#): > > As for Breathed’s Pulitzer, the cartoonist himself speculated (in a speech to assembled editorial cartoonists) that the prize had less to do with the quality of his editorial vision than with the general sameness of all the op-ed cartoons that year. . Not to defend his self-nomination or swiping, but he does have a point here. And, well, they can’t keep giving the Pulitzer to the same three guys. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/75 "2004-09-08T00:31:16Z")
> [@Ol'Gaffer](#): > > I’m surprised that no one has mentioned **Trent Lott** and his interpreted enthusiasism for some of that “old-time segregation.” > > While still a senator, I would imagine that since resigning as Speaker of the House his days as a senatorial force are numbered. Actually, that would be Senate Majority Leader. Speaker of the House is in the House of Representatives. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/76 "2004-09-09T12:46:24Z")
Patty Duke hasn’t worked much since the revelation that her son Sean Astin was fathered by Michael Tell, with whom she had a month long relationship and an eleven day marriage. She insists to this day that the relationship was never consummated, and the DNA testing is wrong. Since at the time she was suffering with severe mental illness and in a quandry over whether the father was teen ager Desi Arnez Jr. or married John Astin (who later adopted Sean), she could have just said “I don’t remember sleeping with Michael Tell.” But she still denies it. Miss American Vanessa Williams did manage to reemerge on Broadway several years after resigning over the Hustler lesbian photographs. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/77 "2004-09-09T14:25:34Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Patty Duke hasn’t worked much since the revelation… How much was she working prior to that? I think it’s pretty well accepted that she’s nuts (er, bipolar), and I can’t imagine anyone other than the gentlemen involved – and, oh, her son – caring all that much. She’s a fine actress, but she’s reached “a certain age,” and I suspect that has more to do with her working less, rather than any scandal. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/78 "2004-09-09T14:34:01Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Miss American Vanessa Williams did manage to reemerge on Broadway several years after resigning over the Hustler lesbian photographs. According to [her IMDB bio](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001853/bio), the photos ran in the same issue of **Penthouse** (not **Hustler** ) as Traci Lords’s centerfold, and since Ms. Lords was underaged at the time it is illegal to own the magazine unless the centerfold has been destroyed. Just some random trivia. Funnily enough, Vanessa Williams seems to be the _only_ former Miss America who went on to become a real celebrity. Aside from her stage work she’s had a fairly successful recording career (“Save the Best for Last” hit #1) and been in quite a few movies. I don’t think I can even remember the names of any other Miss Americas past. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/79 "2004-09-09T14:39:11Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I don’t think I can even remember the names of any other Miss Americas past. Bess Myerson (who of course had her own shoplifting scandal a couple of decades later). And, uh, Mary Ann Mobley. twicks, lifelong (“whaddya mean, they’re not going to do the talent segment any more?”) Miss America fan ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007/80 "2004-09-09T15:37:21Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Actually, that would be Senate Majority Leader. Speaker of the House is in the House of Representatives. :smack: Actually, **Ol’Gaffer** is a _dumbkopf_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/career-killing-scandals/263007.md?page=5)