Gee, I hope she wasn’t slapped around before confessing she was both.
Gary Hart dared the media to find dirt on him while he was running for president in 1984. They didn’t find dirt, but they did find Donna Rice happily sitting on his lap on the boat Monkey Business. She wasn’t Gary’s wife.
Can’t believe nobody has mentioned Oscar Wilde!
You’ve got it backwards. It’s Keanu who has incriminating photos of various Hollywood directors. How else can he manage to get cast in so many big movies, despite a total and complete lack of acting ability 
Then there’s Michael Jackson – no wait, he still has a career! :eek:
Does he? I thought his last couple albums tanked big time.
I was basing that on the fact that, when he went to be arraigned in L.A. on child-molestation charges, there were pro-Jackson mass demonstrations in Mexico City, Moscow and Tokyo.
How does he do it? 
He’s a nutjob, and obviously still has his share of nutjob fans. As a musician, he seems to be through and a half.
An arts figure has basically three career prongs to worry about: Public perception. critical perception and peer perception. Breathed lost the critics by being a Trudeau tracer (In other fields, this is known as “plagiarism.” In cartooning, it’s just damn sloppy) and lost the respect of his peers by nominating himself for an undeserved award and winning it, giving the real editorial cartoonists a rather public spanking. And by stopping, re-starting, and re-stopping his strip multiple times, I think he’s overtaxed the public’s perception of him as well.
It’s not up there with marrying your thirteen-year-old cousin or killing your ex-wife and the nearest waiter, but among cartoonists this is pretty punk behavior.
Rob Lowe, although he’s finally making a comeback after many years, but mostly on television.
Jeffrey Jones, not a huge star but he’s one of those actors that you’ve seen in lots of movies and recognize him but don’t know his name. Probably best remembered for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He’s involved in a big child porn scandal.
“I know you are, but what is this?” 
Actually, it wasn’t so much that as his being bested by Clinton in the government shutdown of 1995 and–especially–the GOP’s disappointing showing in the congressional elections of 1998. Granted, the divorce didn’t help things but, by that point, it was pretty well icing on the cake.
Flynn continued to be a top star even after the scandal. The decline in his career was due more to the health problems related to his rampant alcoholism (and other overindulgences). Flynn built his career playing physically-demanding roles in swashbucklers like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Unfortunately, by the time he was 40, the years of excessive drinking had so prematurely aged him that he was unable to play the types of roles that made him famous.
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.
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BTW – how come Charles Brooks’ annual Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year collection (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1589802004/qid=1094337965/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-7211968-1416726) never includes anything from Ruben Bolling’s “Tom the Dancing Bug” or Tom Tomorrow’s “This Modern World”? They don’t run on op-ed pages either (they run in alternative weeklies – just like “The Straight Dope”!), but they’re better than most cartoons that do, and they’re definitely political!
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We haven’t heard much of former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders since 1994 – she attended a UN conference on AIDS and said teenagers should be encouraged to practice masturbation as an alternative to sex. Controversy flared and Clinton asked for her resignation.
To this day I still don’t understand what anybody found objectionable about her remarks. It’s a plain fact that teenagers are going to fuck, masturbate, or both. The idea that they can be persuaded to do neither is preposterous.
Paula Poundstone is a recent scandal victim. The accusations of child abuse made against her were almost certainly false but they pretty much derailed her career. She was on the verge of being a major star five years ago, now she’s back doing small clubs and college shows.
She was recently on the Letterman show. The two of them hugged in a ‘that’s what friends are for’ moment.
Due to drugs, **Mackenzie Phillips ** totally destroyed her acting and nascent signing career and burned all her bridges – and triumphantly rehabilitated herself after 8 years. But for those 8 years she was unhirable (great E True Hollywood Story so very true to the formula).
And he’s probably shot his career or comeback in the foot by pricing himself out of The West Wing.
Academic and author mis-behavior
Wasn’t there that famous historian Stephen Ambrose who plagarized lots of stuff form fellow historians
and Alex Haley of “Roots” fame who kinda sorta plagarized lots of “Roots” passages (and settled out of court)
and
and famous feminist studies/psychology researcher Carol Gilligan’s missing data in support of her most famous studies and assertions.
Oh and and the cold fusion guys
Like I said, she didn’t vanish. But five years ago she was a regular on Letterman and Leno and other talk shows. She did running commentaries and was a frequent guest host. She was doing major tours and annual HBO specials. She hosted award shows, appeared on game shows, wrote magazine columns, and was offered deals for books and movies and TV series. All of which is gone.
Joe Biden remains one of the more respected Democrats in the Senate and was even considered a dark-horse possibility to be John Kerry’s running mate, so I don’t think his career has been killed.