Checking up on the good, the bad and the ugly of contemporary behavior
Labor Day weekend is upon us, and fashion-conscious people everywhere are confronting an annual question: Is it appropriate to wear white after Labor Day?
There has always been a no white after Labor Day debate among fashionistas and the style-conscious. While it is uncertain where the rule originally began, many say it had to do with society and class structure, while others credit the changing seasons. Regardless, most of us really do, or should, care about the image we project.
She has dipped her toes into the waters of indiscretion before, but this latest episode involving Sarah, Duchess of York, has disgraced her family in ways like no stunt she has ever pulled. (And she’s pulled some doozies.) By accepting an undercover reporter’s bribe in exchange for the promise of influence-peddling with her former husband, Prince Andrew, the Duchess has crossed the line into behavior that’s criminal on top of being embarrassing.
She’s apparently in desperate financial straits, and if indeed her bank-account picture is bleak, that gives her something in common with the untold Britons and Americans who are likewise struggling to make ends meet in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But they are not accepting bribes to pay the bills.
By embarrassing the House of Windsor, Fergie also has something in common with her nephew Prince Harry–maybe royal misdeeds are a redhead thing?–who in years past has shown up at a costume party dressed as a Nazi and made fun of his grandmother the Queen on video in front of his fellow cadets. But Harry is 25. Sarah is twice his age and clearly, should know better.
A New Testament parable counsels: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” To date, the Duchess of York has been given opportunities most people could never dream of. And to her credit, she has done a great deal of advocacy work, using her name and influence for good. But she’s going to have a long road ahead of her to atone for this misstep. And the “punishment” should not amount to an appearance on Oprah followed by a TV movie of the week.
Could it possibly get worse? Maybe tomorrow we’ll hear that Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson crashed the state dinner for Manmohan Singh, too.
Can it be that easy to get into the White House? You simply show up in the right van and get waved right on in? At the very least, that was the case for White House Crasher #3, Carlos Allen. A mortified Secret Service announced over the weekend that the Tarek and Michaele weren’t the only uninvited guests hobnobbing with the Obamas that night back in November. And unlike the Salahis, Allen even got to stay for dinner! Only he knew better than to post about it on Facebook.
As far as Allen’s attorney is concerned, the fact that he enjoyed a meal with other dignitaries proves he’s no swarmy crasher: “This whole issue of him being a third gate crasher, while it merits more investigation, he’s unlike the other two individuals who are subject to this investigation. He did stay for the dinner.” Talk about digging one’s client in deeper.
It gets better. The propietor of a company called HUSH (an acronym for Help Us Support Humanity) Allen avers that his company’s mission is to promote philanthropy. Just how he does so is not entirely clear. Does it mean he throws around HUSH money? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more unreal, consider this comment of his attorney: “He is not a social climber. He covers social climbers.” Got it. Maybe that’s why he was in the White House that night….he was an embedded reporter doing a story on the Salahis!
All I can say is: Where are Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson when we need them?
See my tips on Digital Life with Shelly Palmer. (My interview comes in at 00:04:41.)
It’s been a sorry year for good behavior, with personalities both famous and not achieving notoriety for misdeeds that have shocked, tricked and saddened us. Whether through deception, publicity grabs, meanness or displays of rage, they have lowered the bar on manners to depths that seem unrecoverable. As such, the ten persons on this list are guilty not just of setting a poor example, but also of coarsening our expectations. With each public lapse, these “honorees” have taken away more of society’s innocence. They’ve taught us to trust less and suspect more. That is their greatest offense of all.
Presented here in order from merely bad to outright despicable, are the Ten Worst Behaved Individuals of 2009…
These days, Tiger's got a little less to smile about.
“It’s a widely held belief that men who wear Le Tigre sportswear get widely held.” And so concluded one of the top commercials of 1984, a promotion for a preppy brand of clothing that’s now largely forgotten. But that slogan could easily be updated for 2009: “It’s a widely reported story that men named Tiger Woods get widely held.” Though he has had a very generous helping of embraces from adoring women, the celebrity golfer is now paying the price with a public that is adoring him a whole lot less.
While David Letterman has emerged relatively unscathed from his own revelations of marital infidelity, Tiger seems to have achieved the tipping point of no return. That may be owing to the sheer number of flings (fourteen and counting) he engaged in during his five-year marriage to former model Elin Nordegren.
Is Tiger that different from other cheating athletes who spend tons of time away from home cavorting with beautiful and often unsavory women? Perhaps not. But what stings so much with this story is that Tiger cultivated such a squeaky clean image for himself. And yet, as he reliably injected vigor and excitement into a sport that sorely needed it, in his personal life, he was simultaneously carrying on as though he were on a non-stop bachelor party.
His indiscretions are for him and Elin to work out, but his actions also represent a violation of the public’s trust. His carefully crafted persona as a role model (combined of course, with his unprecedented talent in the game of golf) snagged him both the admiration of sports fans and the dollars of companies as varied as Gillette and Accenture.
In essence, he has let everyone down. His given all of us one less reason to trust, one fewer role model to believe in. While it may once have seemed impossible to hold back Tiger Woods, it may be even more difficult now to hold him in high regard.
It’s not easy being a next-door neighbor to New York City. How many cities—let alone states—can compete with the culture, glamour and sophistication of the Big Apple? Even the outer boroughs of America’s largest metropolis pale in comparison to the bright star that is Manhattan. (Though my friends from Brooklyn would disagree.) To be bold enough to challenge Gotham’s supremacy of chic is usually a dangerous proposition. Connecticut knows better than to try and instead polishes its image as a wealthy wallflower. New Jersey, on the other hand, is the noisy kid brother who just annoys the heck out of his cooler sibling.
All of which is not to say that New Jersey doesn’t get its share of attention. It gets plenty…nearly all of it negative. Is there any other state in the Union that is more abused? Or, as its residents would say, misunderstood? From the inevitable question any Jerseyan faces when meeting someone for the first time: “Oh…you’re from Joisey? What exit?” to the insistence by New Yorkers that the Garden State is actually one massive dump, there is no end to the jokes that people who call the eleventh most populous state must endure.
And the state is under attack yet again…this time, from MTV. With its new show Jersey Shore, the network whose fortunes were built on the backs of New Jersey entertainers such as Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi has declared war on a place that is sacred in the minds of people from Paramus to Princeton. The beach communities of the state’s Atlantic coast have not been savaged this viciously since the Jersey Shore Shark Scare of 1916.
So what’s the problem with MTV’s reality show, which is set in the honky tonk community of Seaside Heights? Like The Real World, granddaddy of the reality genre, it takes nubile twentysomethings who’ll do just about anything for a camera and tosses them into a mix that always includes a hot tub, lots of alcohol and most important, deft editing to create a “reality” that is far more entertaining than the truth.
This is not the first time that pop culture has attempted to depict a dumbed down summer scene at the Jersey Shore, a place that in actual fact is comprised of incredibly varied and mostly lovely towns. In 1992, Fox debuted a sitcom called Down the Shore that featured six characters looking for fun and love in the town of Belmar. Nothing conjured by that program’s scriptwriters ever came close to equaling the debauchery that is the staple of Jersey Shore.
The show, which looks to be a runaway hit already, joins The Real Housewives of New Jersey on the list of evidence of the entertainment industry’s character assassination on the state’s already precarious image. What is most despicable about the show and its cast of tanned and oft-inebriated kids (who have names like Vinnie, Ronny, Pauly and Sammi) is that seven of the eight of them are from New York. Indeed, three of the show’s stars are from Staten Island.
Curiously enough, the same muck being tossed around on the show was featured in the July 2008 newsletter of Ken Pringle, mayor of the town of Belmar. Speaking specifically of the Staten Islanders who invade his town each summer, Pringle wrote: “They’re always tanned to the color of coconut shells and easily identified by their plumage: satin shirts and short skirts on the females; Armani Exchange T-shirts and artfully distressed jeans on the males.” His tongue-in-cheek rant did not stop there, and got him into very hot water with residents of Staten Island, who begged to differ with his portrayal of New York’s fifth borough and its large population of Italian-Americans. Boycotts were threatened, but after much hullabaloo, the situation was quieted when Pringle ate crow (and presumably a few cannolis) during a goodwill visit to Staten Island. Either way, the mayor’s attempt at comedy planted a seed with someone at MTV, because now the whole world can sit back and laugh at New Jersey yet again, and Staten Island along with it.
New Jerseyans will grin and bear it. They’ll console themselves with the knowledge that most people who criticize the state have never strayed from the confines of Newark airport or the New Jersey Turnpike. And considering the competition it’s got from its glittery neighbor across the Hudson River, New Jersey ain’t doin’ so bad. As Oscar Wilde famously said, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Tareq and Michaele Salahi with Vice President Joe Biden
“There isn’t anyone that would have the audacity or the poor behavior to do that….no one would do that, and certainly not us,” said Michaele Salahi of the accusation that she and her husband, Tareq, had crashed the Obamas’ state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The denials, made on this morning’s Today show during an interview with Matt Lauer, evoked similar protestations of innocence by Richard Heene, father of the so-called Balloon Boy. “That’s horrible,” replied Heene, in response to a question about whether the boy’s mid-October “disappearance” had been staged as a publicity stunt. The indignation in his voice as he clutched his son Falcon was palpable. As if to say, You should be ashamed for asking such a question! How could you even think something like that after all we’ve been through today? Indeed. How could we?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice….
So forgive me if the Salahis who—much as it pains me to say it—are innocent until proven guilty are sounding suspiciously like their fellow reality television aspirant Richard Heene. Prior to this blow-up, the Salahis had been working with Bravo, filming for the forthcoming Real Housewives of Washington, D.C. For their part, the Heenes had been featured in an episode of the show Wife Swap and were continually looking for ways to thrust themselves into the spotlight.
What was so galling about the Balloon Boy case and what is now the same apparent trajectory in the case of the accused White House gatecrashers is that the denials are so strident. Like Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich before them, these individuals excel at playing on the general public’s good nature as they look into the cameras and flatly deny any wrongdoing and make us feel guilty for questioning their actions.
“Everything we worked for, Matt,” stated a stone-faced Michaele, “for me 44 years….just destroyed.” On the contrary, getting into the White House despite the fact that they were not, according to President Obama’s social secretary, on the invitation list, actually appears to be the pièce de résistance for Mrs. Salahi, who allegedly (and rather dubiously) promoted herself on various occasions as a Washington Redskins cheerleader and a former Miss USA. As a high-flying couple, the Salahis have left an exhaust trail of unpaid bills, lawsuits and acrimony in their wake. Pity anyone unlucky enough to have mistaken their smiling faces for the visages of an honest couple. And now, the White House can be added to that long list.
Fortunately, the only real harm done in the case of the Salahis’ party-crashing is a pock mark on the good name of the Secret Service. Apart from that embarassment, no great damage was done. And the incident will surely result in tougher security standards at White House functions from here on in, which is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly when not one, but two heads of state are in attendance.
As for the Salahis, perhaps they should have heeded the words of Barack Obama during a question and answer session earlier this year and not been so brazen as to post the state dinner pics on Facebook:
“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook,” he said. “Because in the YouTube age whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life. That’s number one.”
“This was supposed to be a lifetime memory,” she complained to Lauer during their interview today. Regardless of how this turns out (and there is no doubt in my mind that the Salahis will spin gold from the entire incident), it will certainly be a lifetime memory for her regardless. Sadly, a lifetime memory for the rest of us, too.
This is parody, of course, but as with all parody, there are many elements of truth here. Thanks to SNL and Mad Men’s January Jones for highlighting what a difference 40 years makes.
Richard Heene embraces his "found" son Falcon
In the hit 1967 song “Up, Up and Away,” The Fifth Dimension sang that “The world’s a nicer place in my beautiful balloon/It wears a nicer face in my beautiful balloon.” Apparently, not all balloons are created equal.
Today, Richard Heene, perpetrator of last month’s Balloon Boy hoax, plead guilty to a felony charge of attempting to influence a public servant. It was the beginning of the end of a month-long joyride that took the media and the public for hapless, breathless suckers.
On October 15, Heene and his family purported to have been working on a homemade weather balloon when (unbeknownst to him), his son Falcon crawled inside. Shortly thereafter, the silvery craft escaped from its tether and into the skies. Alerted to the balloon’s supposed stowaway by the boy’s brother, Richard made frantic phone calls to the local NBC affiliate near their Fort Collins, Colorado, home, as well as to 911. Quicker than you can say ratings bonanza, television stations around the country were carrying the NBC news chopper’s balloon chase live, following the helium craft as it ultimately came to a rest two hours later sixty miles from its starting point. As viewers watched from the edges of their seats, Colorado authorities tackled the balloon to ensure it did not head aloft again. Much to their consternation, however, they discovered that the balloon did not contain a boy at all.
Fearing that Falcon had fallen out, presumably to his death, the sheriff’s office began a manhunt that was not called off until nearly three hours later, when the boy was “discovered” sleeping in a box in the garage at the Heene home.
Richard Heene, a shameless self-promoter who, along with his spouse, Mayumi, had already starred in an episode of Wife Swap, was hoping for more reality-show glory by pulling his elaborate stunt, a ruse that fell apart in the days afterward thanks to a few botched TV interviews and some sleuthing by the sheriff’s office. Even Heene could not have predicted the intense interest the story would generate, the goodwill it would engender, the money that would be spent on search and rescue (estimated by the New York Post at $2 million) and ultimately, the Halloween costumes it would inspire.
But like the boy who cried wolf, Heene abused the good nature of neighbors, his local authorities and even the worry and the prayers of the world. In his quest for reality show glory, Heene poked a little hole in the balloon known as trust in humanity. And with every hole that fakers like Heene make, it becomes harder to keep that balloon aloft.
Where are the Fifth Dimension and their “nicer place” when we need them?