Case in point, the Hoff. Hoff is a nice guy who gave us women running on the beaches and lots of great Eurotrashesque rock and roll that tanked. He’s a walking joke and was filmed by his 14 year old daughter half naked having a Harold and Kumar moment on the floor of his sparsely furnished apparently living room.
And its released to the world and a few skips later he’s hosting some quasi reality show ala America’s Got Talent and everyone still loves him.
Britney on the other hand has been fed through the wood chipper several times and every time her pulped out wreck of a mess drags back for more people throw her back to the piranahs.
What gives?
What about infidelity. Angelina Jolie reals in Brad Pitt and everyone still loves her, no one really cares except for a few rabid Aniston fans. Bill Cosby and his little love child mess. Woody Allen and Soon Yi Previn, moved way on past the fact that she was basically his daughter?
Why is it some people do things and no one seems to care yet other people do things and its the world gone wild?
Good PR and management types working behind the scenes?
I also note that of the examples you listed, typically the folks who rebound in the public eye also have a somewhat substantial “clean” history-- their screw ups seem like anomalies-- and they tend to lay low after their public screw-up, which lends further credence to the screw-up being an anomaly. Britney, on the other hand, has had a nearly unbroken string of bad incidents for a few years in a row now, so bad behaviour doesn’t seem anomalous for her. Thus she’s trashed for it.
It’s kind of like Chris Rock’s bit about Michael Jackson. “We liked Michael so much, we let him have the first kid!” or something similar. Due to his history in the public eye, many were ready to overlook the first accusations; it was an anomaly, and if he’d just laid low afterwards, no problem. When the anomaly began to repeat, it really hurt his reputation.
(Of course, there are counter-examples-- Fatty Arbuckle, Paul Reubens… both knocked out of the public’s esteem by an anomaly.)
Frankly unless there is the slightest chance of them doing me,I don’t happen to care who is doing whom…
Although my personal take on Woody Allen and Soon Yi -
Let me see, I can see absolutely no genetic link between a nebbish from New York and a girl born in Korea, so bang away. No chance of genetic incest, so big whoop te doo.
As far as I am concerned, if there is no genetic link, only an ‘accident of legal paperwork’ no big freaking deal. Skeevy, mind you - but no big freaking deal. Everybody has a different squick level - and I couldn’t do it, but obviously woody and soon yi had a different view.
As to the OP, Paul Reubens (as suggested by Student Driver) is a very good example of getting slammed. If he was Keith Richards and was found in the Theater with his pants open and a quart of whiskey in his veins, I’m sure not much would have been said. Just another Keith moment. But for Paul it totally derailed a promising career.
As to Woody Allen, the issue as I see it, is that as a parent you have by default huge formative influence on the child you are rearing. To use that influence to start a physical relationship is more than wrong, it’s child molestation. And even if it seems to be honest, mutual, adult relations… don’t do it! You can’t win the perception game (and as much as I hate to see “perception” winning, this is a case where it should).
The Hoff: the scoop I heard was that he had asked his daughter to film him so that he could see how stupid he behaved. In that case people saw it as ‘he was trying to help himself’ so they let it go. (Whether or not that’s true doesn’t matter so much as that people believed it to be true).
Fatty Arbuckle was framed, and his career was ruined over it - it wasn’t even an anomaly but an untruth.
Well, Keef is a dissipated rock star. Paul Reubens was hosting a kid’s TV show. But notice that when Keef claimed to have snorted his dad’s ashes, people paid attention - it fit the Keef story of pushing it too far and being a…dissipated rock star.
I honestly think that it has to do with the type of narrative that can be woven around what happened to the person. With Britney, she was this supposedly wholesome sex kitten who actively sought media attention, then couldn’t control it. Hoist by her own petard, as they say - add to it the fact that she exhibited “white trash” behavior (e.g., barefoot in a public restroom) that hadn’t surfaced during her initial years of hype and you have a solid narrative that the media could really sink its teeth into and that a public could follow and fill in the blanks on because the story felt familiar. Only when she began to demonstrate truly unstable behavior did people back off a bit…
So when it comes to the Hoff - what’s the narrative? Where is the moral balance; how is he getting his comeuppance? I am not sure there is a “classic story” in what happened to him, so it didn’t gain traction…
Yeah, Fatty Arbuckle was pretty much railroaded-- it’s a sad story. (I have a few of his pseudonymous “Will B. Good” works on LD and such, and always feel a twinge of sadness at seeing that name… like a plea to people to give him a chance.) I do think it’s a good example of someone’s career being derailed by a single incident, whether or not they were even involved.
Wow what happened to Fatty off to google
The Woody Allen thing was basically grooming his daughter to be his wife. Sorry blood work or not that’s just messed up.
Wikipedia has a decent article about him, covering both his career and trial. It corrected me on my misremembered “Will B. Good” comment, he took the similar but less obvious name of “William Goodrich.”