Yesterday at dinner, my mother told me a sad story about a co-worker of hers.
At work, this young woman was in a room when she had a severe panic attack. Mom took her into another room, where she helped her settle down. She was hyperventilating and my mom retrained her to breathe normally. When she finally settled down, she told my mom about her suicide attempt last year. She even told my mom that her mother told her that she wished she was dead. Tragically, the hurt that she felt from wanting to end her life is fresh in her head.
My mother gave this poor woman some sage advice: you can't change the past. All you can do is work on your future.
It's tragic to think about the people in our lives who have all entertained us through the years who are no longer with us because of suicide. I think about people like Kurt Cobain, Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. All these people had money, families and fame. Yet, there was still something missing from their lives. I know in the case of Kurt Cobain, he didn't have a happy childhood. Chester Bennington admitted that he was constantly being sexually molested as a young boy by somebody he thought was a friend as a kid. And yet, being famous couldn't heal the wounds of the past.
I understand. My childhood wasn't happy, either. I lived in northern Michigan while my cousins had happier lives downstate. Because of this, I started blogging. I felt that people up north were simply looking at my generation like thugs. Since then, I've used this blog to attack those who need to be attacked.
Sadly, one of my pet peeves are toxic workplaces. Trust me, I've worked for an ultra-conservative Jebus freak who was worth millions while I was barely making it for ten years. Before that, I worked for a drunk Arab who sold my workplace to a bunch of hilljacks who gave a lot of my hours away to a heroin addict. Before that, I was a minor who worked alongside a retarded child molester who performed oral sex on a six-year-old boy. Not only that, my boss's son was in his mid-20s and dating a 14-year-old girl at my school. By the time I was at my company for ten years, I too, was having panic attacks. I'm now on Citalopram as a result.
As a kid growing up, I wanted to be a radio personality. Thank God I never became one, especially with the toxic work environments I've heard and read about over the years. One person that comes to mind never paid his employees, threw computer monitors at people and at the end, ended up with five silent radio stations since word got out and all of his advertisers were alienated. When it was announced earlier this week that his stations all got their licenses renewed, it showed the world how purely fucked-up the FCC has become over the past 40 years.
When I read Good Morning America meteorologist Ginger Zee's post about the fact that she tried to attempt suicide while working at WEYI NBC 25 in Saginaw, I shook my head. Most TV experts in Michigan know that WEYI was a bit of a shoestring operation, especially when it was owned by Barrington Broadcasting (it's sadly a Sinclair station now). But thankfully, she's long moved on to GMA, happily married and has two kids.
Now, as a long-time fan of Howard Stern's, it does piss me off when he steps up to defend Ellen DeGeneres. Years ago, he played a clip from her show where she's in tears because she had to give up a rescue dog. Often, he used the clip as a bumper on his show. Now, he's buds with her because he feels bad about her being shamed for being a lesbian. Sadly, he even appeared on her show when she was getting backlash for the fact that she attended a football game in Dubya's skybox.
Over the summer, Ellen was getting even more backlash when it was revealed that she created a toxic work environment for her show. There were stories about producers screaming at her fans not to look at her. One instance was when a woman played a game on the show and was briefed by the producer "not to be smarter than Ellen" and ended up getting doused with cold water. She ended up waiting 45 minutes for a clean change of clothes while she was soaking wet and cold.
Former employees claimed that the show was a breeding ground for racism, sexual misconduct and intimidation. The show's parent, WarnerMedia (owned by AT&T) launched an investigation and fired several of the show's producers.
On her show's season premiere Monday, DeGeneres apologized to both her fans and employees, though many - including several of her former employees - didn't buy it. Critics even panned her apology because they felt it wasn't sincere enough. One employee told Buzzfeed “There’s nothing wrong with being the 'be kind' lady if you’re actually true to your word.”
When Howard Stern tells his fans that he defends Ellen because she was alienated for coming out, I shake my head. Whites shouldn't get treated differently from blacks and vice versa. Same with the LGBTQ+ community. Trust me. It's like a show with drag queens: it's not my thing. Should I be shamed for not embracing the gay community because of this? NO! Same with country music: I hate it to death, and when I was in high school, I had a passenger in my car who forced Garth Brooks upon me. Shortly thereafter, he was banned from riding in my car. Plus, as I've mentioned in the past,
this asshole exposed himself to me and tried to force me into having sex with him.
Look, we shouldn't love Ellen because she's a lesbian. We should hate her for being a self-centered cunt. Same with Bill Cosby: yes, he's black, but he also raped and drugged women. OOOOOOHHH! Ellen just gave a poor family a $10,000 gift card from Walmart! So? Jimmy Savile raised millions for children's charities in England and he raped nearly 600 people, many of them children.
When bad outweighs good, it's up to the viewer to decide whether or not we should accept people like Ellen into our homes. Honestly, I could care less, since I've never been a fan of hers. Only time will tell if this scandal will kill her career or not. She's to the LGBTQ+ community as Stepin Fetchit was to African Americans.
For somebody who tells us to "be kind", it's up to us whether or not if we should do the same to her.
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