Stop making psychos famous

By GonzaLo López Martí – Creative director, etc. / LMMiami.com

• Marketers have learned the hard way that their brand endorsers and spokespersons must be meticulously vetted.
• The adored football/basketball star of today could be in trouble tomorrow for kneeling during the National Anthem, ODing on a cocktail of blue woody pills & Medellín’s finest or embroiling himself in an illegal dog fighting ring.
• Conversely, we’ve also learned as of late that the public can not only be surprisingly forgiving but also utterly amnesiac.
• The breakneck speed of the 24-hour news & social media cycle does that to people.
• Nobody knows it better than our beloved POTUS.
• Some terrorist kills 50 humans with automatic weapons in Vegas and a week later it vanishes from the headlines.
• And the tweets.
• Why do assorted crazies pull these inexplicable acts of evil?
• They want to go out in a blaze of glory.
• Yup, they want to be famous.
• Methinks that if we keep plastering social media feeds and newspaper covers with their mugs they are gonna keep a-comin’.
• In their deranged minds they associate being famous with being powerful.
• And you know what?
• They have a point.
• There’s plenty evidence around us that famous people can get away with, well… a lot.
• Simply for being famous.
• Our dear leader of the free world is living, tweeting proof of it.
• It just so happens that some folks seek fame in outrageously insane and hateful ways while others do it cold-heartedly and methodically.
• If we shift our gaze from terrorism to showbiz -or politics, AKA showbiz for ugly people- it becomes plenty apparent that we live in a groupie culture that worships and enshrines sociopaths, psychopaths and abusers.
• We sporadically throw them under the bus and act surprised when we simply can’t keep collectively looking the other way.
• Everybody in Hollywood knew full well that Harvey Weinstein is a predatory lech.
• His day of reckoning came when he started showing more misses than hits in the box office department.
• Rampant hypocrisy.
• The same happens with drug use.
• Every time some celeb checks into rehab or, worse, ODs and kicks the bucket we put our best dumb face and go “so X&Y had a drug problem? You don’t say…”
• But back to the titillating topic du jour: sex.
• What if alleged pervs of great renown such as Charlie Rose, David Lasseter, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Mario Batali et al are functioning psycho & sociopaths who deliberately seek fame as a pretext to obtain the power and impunity that comes with it?
• Is it possible that their real calling in the first place was power as opposed to, say, journalism, filmmaking or cuisine?
• Psycho & sociopaths are charismatic, manipulative, domineering, unable to fill empathy or remorse, narcissistic, consumed by egotism and incapable of controlling their appetites.
• I’m no psychiatrist but the symptoms seem to fit the aforementioned list of fallen idols like a glove.
• Most psychos don’t kill people, they just use them.
• As a society we have our share of fault though.
• I get stern looks when I say this but these successful individuals have been having casual consensual sex for so long, they are so used to having their way with impromptu partners, that they reached a point in their lives in which they simply couldn’t take no for an answer.
• They got to a point in which they believed anyone who said no to them was just flirting, playing hard to get.
• Forgive me for stating the obvious but we’ve collectively catered to their egos, appetites and whims with reckless abandon for so long that the abuse simply became routine.