Two recent news stories sent this old noggin spinning this morning; Bill O'Reilly's firing over on Fox, and football player/murderer, Aaron Hernandez' prison suicide.
In both instances you find fatally flawed human beings, their flaws eventually doing them in, just as they did with iconic funnyman, Bill Cosby.
In an age where society seems to value the superficial, an image created especially for a hundred yard gridiron, or a TV screen, we usually find the flaws much later than we do among our intimate friends. That's just the way it is.
And yet, we are all something of the artichoke, a multi-layered being who strives always to put on the best face in public, and save the nasty stuff for hearth and home.
In both of these media celebrities there's something to ponder. In Hernandez you had a Latino kid who lost his father at age 16, searched for something to replace him, and found the world of the street thug to his liking. His teammates, searching for something kind to say about him after his suicide, said that Aaron really loved kids, apparently only before they reached puberty, cause after that they were subject to being gunned down by Aaron and company. Still, those stories reveal another layer of the human being that was Aaron Hernandez.
In O'Reilly's case, you have a seemingly intelligent man who just couldn't keep his dick in his pants. There's precedent for that; Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton suffered from a similar affliction. So, this week, O'Reilly, who was pulling in $20 million a year, finally suffered the consequences of treating women with less respect than he demanded of himself. So, again we see another layer of human being....the sartorially splendid and articulate Bill O'Reilly, done in by those layers of human frailties that lay beneath.
Please don't engage me in a debate about the unfairness of O'Reilly's firing. Given the plethora of victims in O'Reilly's wake he probably deserved it. And I do despair that the incestuous liberal snake pit over at CNN, and MSNBC, and CBS, and ABC, never seem to get nailed for their own peccadillos. Slick Willie still draws huge crowds and rakes in tons of speaking fee money, and Hillary didn't fire her Chief Campaign Aide just because her husband was flashing his wiener on Facebook, nor have liberals ever complained about Joe and Mika, both married to others, but making the beast with two backs when the camera lights are dimmed. Nor has anyone questioned a capability for objective reporting given how many of our "news kings and queens" are married to our government masters. Yet the liberal set spared no outrage for O'Reilly's failings....because, let's face it, he was conservative.
America needs a good artichoke peeler. We might not like what that peeled artichoke looks like after...but it would certainly reveal any rot below a hell of a lot quicker.
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