Public Shaming: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Public

shaming

or, as we call it in England, internet parenting, it has never been easier to pile on

public

shame. In fact, it's now one of America's favorite pastimes. The Wisconsin families' photo shoots have gone viral and are now sparking outrage. Viral video online. sparks outrage on Long Island now outrage over another viral video the outrage machine never seemed to rest when actress Sarah Michelle Gellar discovered that some people online are just looking for an excuse to be angry, wait what did Sarah Michelle Gellar do? I'm already I'm very angry about that, actually don't tell me, I just realized, I definitely don't care.

The point is, this is a golden age of Internet

shaming

that you've probably participated in if you've ever gotten angry at a potential Oscar host. shitty tweets a company that made a blackface t-shirt a beloved Irish actor who wants to commit murder and an aquarium that named an otter Thicke a gender reveal party that started a forest fire who attacked justice Millette who didn't believe in Justice Millette and finally Justice Millette, we're basically goldfish, except instead of discovering a new castle in our fish tank every nine seconds, we find something new to be outraged about online and maybe you'll expect me to say that all shame

public

is bad, but I don't really think so.

When well managed, a lot of good can come from if someone is caught doing something racist or if a powerful person is behaving badly, it can increase accountability. In fact, this

week

it was learned that Tucker Carlson, the answer to the question I wanted to ask, grew up. a face I said some horrible things on a radio show a few years before here, throw it away, that meant I was unfairly caught in public shaming the great American outrage machine it's something extraordinary, one day you're having dinner with your family imagining that everything okay, the next your phone blows up with calls from reporters, well, first of all, no one who has had dinner with Tucker Carlson ever imagined that everything was okay.

Most people's answer to the question of whether you could have dinner with someone dead or alive is Tucker Carlson died and if you look at why Tucker got caught up in that outrage machine it's because he publicly called Iraqis semi-literate primitive apes, compared women with dogs and basically said that Warren Jeffs, who was serving a life sentence for the sexual assault of his minor. The girlfriends weren't so bad now, Tucker refused to apologize and all

week

they have been trending with hashtags like boycott Tucker Carlson and fire Tucker Carlson and Tucker Carlson Fox's Roomba, but that wasn't technically trending, but I got the Strange feeling that it will be in about 20 minutes, but Tucker is actually a good example of how an Internet tower deserves.

He is a public figure. He made the comments about it publicly. They're awful and he supports them but clearly it's not always that simple because when misdirected internet towers can completely Destroy people's lives so

tonight

let's try to talk about the power of public shaming because it's often not a famous figure who receives misfortune seemingly daily. Ordinary people who didn't ask for attention can't get caught. the center of attention like this woman did a few years ago they call her the aunt from hell and the Antichrist an aunt filed a lawsuit against her 12 year old nephew claims she broke her wrist when he jumped into her arms sued her young nephew for 127 thousand dollars that's right 127 thousand dollars for a hug the aunt's defense was that when she goes to a cocktail party now she actually said this was it is very difficult for her to hold the plate when the hors d'oeuvres are passed around because of her doll, that sounds terrible, Although I will say this, I know that's not the point, but everyone finds it very difficult to hold a plate of hors d'oeuvres, you have a plate in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, how do you eat? you grab the food from the plate with your teeth like some kind of trained horse you hold the wine in your armpit while you grab the food with your other hand and then you spend the rest of the night drinking wine from your armpit it's an unsolvable puzzle but it's nice It's a Shit forcing a 12 year old to pay six figures for hugging you too enthusiastically, which is, of course, what she didn't actually do.

The real story is much more complicated. Basically, her health insurance did not cover all of her enormous medical bills. To cover his costs, his best option was to turn to his relatives' homeowner's insurance, but to do so he had to name a person in a lawsuit even though the boy and his family were completely fine with that and would not be required to. pay. She went on The Today Show to explain all of this after the story broke, unfortunately, it didn't seem to undo the damage, perhaps because even what she was discussing, the actual facts that the Today Show graphics read worse, are never expressed, which it doesn't.

It doesn't really help, as she was being relentlessly attacked on the internet, meaning that anyone who Googled her in the future would probably be inundated with the inaccurate version of that story which, as she will tell you, became a real problem. when I was looking for work. It was very difficult to find another job. People reached out and then canceled interviews or then said, "Oh, we've changed our address. I've taken certain steps to reestablish myself and I have a renewed identity, which is a pretty drastic step to take to help her get through this. If you talk about

tonight

's show, remember to tag it with the hashtag just a normal chick.

The hashtag is not from hell. The hashtag Tucker Carlson Fox has grown. There were many reasons for her to believe that updating her identity was necessary because two months later. that she went on TV to correct the record, Fox News was having this discussion, I heard the hashtag worse than ever, but I will tell you that she then went up to one of the media outlets and said that she needed that she was obviously injured. and he wanted to sue the homeowners association but he had to do it or the homeowners insurance and he had to name him as the party and he felt bad about the way he fell because he was so excited to see her that he stopped me Jen I.

Te I love you I love you What are you doing there? This is the worst, I've never done it, but in all seriousness, she legally did the only thing she could have done and she feels quite remorseful about it, but the important thing here is that she is the worst aunt ever. and now I'm not saying those TV personalities are terrible people, they just want to occupy your time rather than say things that are true, but at some point it's up to everyone to consider both the context and the consequences if they're going to do it.

Pile on shame and I'm not saying anything here is easy, like did I just publicly embarrass that lawyer in the

last

clip? Yes, I probably did, and honestly, I'm absolutely fine with that, just like I'm fine with calling. him, a busted human neck, whose facial expressions say, "I wish Greenbook had won more Oscars. Look, let's be honest, we make fun of people constantly on this show, it's a comedy show, although, for what it's worth, we think probably more carefully than you." Imagine who we're making fun of, why we're doing it, and how we ask ourselves questions all the time, like if we should use their name, how much power they have, and if they have a soul patch.

That

last

one could be real. deciding factor and I'm not saying we are perfect at all. You may not agree with the decisions we have made, but we have thought about it honestly and sometimes the decision becomes difficult. Just look at another major scandal that broke this week over college admissions fraud Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lauri Lachlan, among 33 wealthy parents accused of bribing coaches and administrators to get their children into elite colleges. Lachlan and her husband Massimo Gianelli allegedly put up half a million dollars in exchange for their two daughters being recruited to Team USC even though they didn't make the team, okay that's such a strange story, I don't think anyone would guess. that the next big celebrity scandal would be Aunt Becky from Full House who supposedly spends half a million dollars for a boy to impersonate her.

My daughter is good with boats and, by the way, if all that is true, the worst never is. The truth is, I have no problem making fun of the parents accused of doing that or the guy who ran that service. Where it gets more complicated is with children. How much is it fair to mock them? I would say that one of them, Olivia Jade, is a public figure, she has almost a million and a half followers on Instagram and she has worked with all these companies that she has actively made money with her brand. Fun, relatable college students who post videos like this.

I don't know how long I will attend school, but I do want the experience of game days and parties. I don't really care about school, as you all know, eh, okay, even before we found out this week that he was a little deaf, although not as deadly as this sponsored post he did for Amazon in which he decorated his bedroom in the USC with the letters do and if you don't see a connection between the letters do and USC maybe it should cost half a million dollars to get you there now. I feel comfortable. I feel comfortable making those jokes.

Am I comfortable with the entire Internet piling on her? Honestly, that depends on how and for how. long enough if it's death threats and viral comments then of course not, if that defines her forever that seems unfair, the window to make fun of her is probably closing, although I will say it should stay open long enough to tell you that a person went to your Sephora makeup product page and left a one star review reading. I thought this would give me real practice, I spent hours rolling on my leg, bro, turns out it was all a sham, but come back, that's the hard thing here joining in.

In a pylon there is a lot to take into account and when millions of people feel the need to intervene and do so potentially for years, the punishment can be very disproportionate to the infraction and perhaps the best example of this is Monica Lewinsky two decades ago This country put her through hell and she will be the first to tell them overnight. I went from being a completely private figure to one publicly humiliated around the world. I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantly. Wow, that has to be scary although to be fair almost everything is scary when you add the phrase on a global scale, if I said that Karen's ophthalmologist says she'll need reading glasses on a global scale you'd rightly think what's going on with the Karen's eyes, but look, she's not wrong. and if you don't understand Monica Lewinsky's story at age 22, she and President Clinton began a relationship that, long story short, ended in graphic details that were made public through independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report and it's impossible to overstate how world famous Monica and the private details of her life caused the media to obsess over every angle of her story, from sensational stories like these to cartoons in which the microphones pointed at her face were replaced by penises - endless comedy jokes night, look, my hands are not clean here either. wasn't in the US at the time, but ten years after the fact it appeared in a Daily Show article marking the 10th anniversary of the scandal, on top of a graphic reading ten years of shit, which is disgusting, It's disgusting and since then many comedians have publicly expressed their regret for things they said although one who didn't and was one of the most relentless was Jay Leno seeing Monica as President Clinton calls her my little wet one or 1 million DNA samples said that it's the largest DNA collection in the world not counting Monica Lewinsky's closets and humidity, I'll tell you people's clothes are stickier than Monica Lewinsky's, it was like you couldn't get away with at least one of these Lewinsky back on her feet and the Grammy for Best Organ Recital went to Monica Lewinsky.

Later, those jokes haven't gone down well in any sense of the word and are pretty harsh, especially coming from a guy who this week complained about late-night TV and said he'd like to see a little civility return, you know? That time he did a bit with a fake book about Lewinsky called In the Hat and if that's what you mean by civility, can I offer you my new book, Oh, the Places You Can Go Yourself, Jay Leno and, given Is all that frankly a miracle? that Lewinsky seems to have come up with her sense of humor on taxes because when someone recently tweeted I don't know who Monica Lewinsky is, she responded I'm the girl with over 125 rap songs, which is really funny and also technicallytrue because he referenced in all these songs, we actually found a hundred and ninety-three of them and that may surprise you with a lot more rap songs than the ones that have been mentioned to me and to be honest, it feels like a personal game, you know, what name is easy to name. rhymes John I'll show you you go Swan Louie Vuitton beef bourguignon lots of options there you know what also rhymes pretty tight Oliver I don't want just a piece of desire Oliver touching all the points that were mixed together like John Oliver almost nothing but the point no it's that he should be in more rap songs, although he absolutely should.

Lewinsky went through absolute hell to get to the point where he could make that joke about being the rap song lady and it can be easy to forget. how fierce and devastating the public attention was. I don't even know how to begin to describe what it was like, but it was seeing my face on TV and reading my name in the newspaper. People have no idea what, when this is done. is doing this behind the name Monica Lewinsky there is a person and there is a family there is so much pain that has been caused by all of this and it was so destructive it was so destructive that it is horrible and it is impossible to imagine how bad it was, but for a second try to think about the dumbest thing you did when you were young, not the dumbest thing you ever did. you got caught doing the dumbest thing, you did the thing you stole or cheated or accidentally sexted and again I'm sorry mom, now imagine hearing that every day for decades, that's a little bit of what it was like to be Monica Lewinsky. and I know that everything about the topic of public shaming is complicated, but Monica Lewinsky might be the perfect person to remind us all what the consequences of a misdirected avalanche of public anger can be and the reason I know this is because I I sat down with Monica earlier this week and this is what happened 21 years ago Monica Lewinsky has been at the center of a media frenzy in recent years.

She has been credited as an important voice in anti-bullying and online shaming initiatives and she was recently kind enough to sit down with me. in a fancy apartment that neither of us live in, so over the last few years you've been doing a lot of work around bullying and shaming people, is that an issue that you think has gotten absolutely worse? I mean, I think with the advent of the Internet and of course social media, we now have situations where it's exacerbated beyond what anyone could have initially imagined and the anonymity that comes with that unleashed these people completely. new to people, is if you have the opportunity to create a second persona, you decide to think about exactly how much I can amplify each aspect of my personality by a hundred.

Would you agree that somewhere on the shame spectrum there can be positive effects? I'm just thinking about people whose bad behavior hurts others and who might not change that behavior without an audience and say yeah, you know, that's interesting. I mean, obviously, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and we tend to look at it. Because it's kind of a binary question, right, should we be publicly shamed? We shouldn't wait. I think there is a spectrum of behavior on which we could judge as a society. Is this where shaming is effective in changing social behavior?

It hurt you, you were on the receiving end of one of the worst Internet-fueled public shamings of all time, and hopefully, somehow, how did you get past that? Yeah, I don't really know, you know, I mean, it was a shit storm. It was an avalanche of pain and humiliation and obviously I couldn't have gotten through it without my family and finally when I was allowed to talk to my friends, my friends, and I think, at 24 years old, it was very difficult to take. to a pinch of dignity or self-esteem when you know the butt of so many jokes.

I'm being misunderstood right at that moment, everything escalated, the whole reaction: What's it like to see this kind of character of yours that has your face? and name, but what would have less and less relevance to who you really are I'm sorry, I mean, it was just, I mean extraordinary, not with any positive connotation and I think it wasn't just slut shaming, not only do you know having had a intimate relationship with someone who now describes me in a way that was like no young woman wanted to be described, there was also my appearance, I mean, the night, you know, it was a lot about the touch-ups and the makeup because I like part of My vanity now comes just from the wound of being mocked for my waiting, you know, people saying I wasn't attractive and it was scary not just because I was watching myself or this version of myself, I was running away from I, I mean, I was robbed.

My identity was stolen just in a different way. I didn't want to see that I had no flaws and you know I didn't make terrible mistakes or do stupid things or say stupid things because of course they did it right, you know that well, every 22 years. -old is a version of an idiot, you just lost a lot of you, not the one who's 22 now, I'm not you, so it's that bad, it's not, it's not like I'm this, you know, angel Perfect, right, but I saw this kind of The deconstruction of me and the reconstruction of me is like a transformer.

Nearly many victims of public shaming say it affects their ability to earn a living. Did that happen to you? Oh, 150% I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't get a job, I and that actually was, you know it was interesting because I went to grad school in 2005 and I graduated in 2006, so I was like, "Okay, Now I will begin my life." Now I'm leaving Monica Lewinsky behind and I'm going to be so and... I'm also an employee and when I couldn't find a job, you know, someone offered me a job for the wrong reasons like, oh, you're coming to our events, that's your work and there's media there, you know, or people telling me you know the The opposite of well, could you get a severance letter from the Clintons, like because we depend on government money and Hillary could be president?

So I really mean there was a wide range of not being able to support myself and also having a purpose which was what it is. Equally important to feel like you are important in some way, is it hard sometimes to just get over it? yeah, people who die every year ask no, that's probably a fair answer for basically most things here, is it hard though sometimes just getting there? Going through a typical day without having to deal with this because the ubiquity of references to you is incredible, it's crazy. I think you know, in part, a lot of things that happened because of this, you know, the really sexist thing that happened, is that the scandal was named. after I was named above, it means that at any point this has been referenced every day, every day for the last 20 years, so it may not be a direct reference to me, but because the investigation and scandal have my name, I am So, therefore, did you ever consider changing your name?

There were several reasons why they didn't. I mean, first of all, I don't think it would have really worked, like when I was looking for a job, people even suggested to me that you know why don't you put a different name on your CV when you are? I thought then I'm going to walk into an office for an interview and the person who's screaming like a person looks like Monica Lewinsky, you know, and you're wondering and you're starting a professional relationship with a lie, so there's no such thing and, Lastly, I think it was also a principle in the sense that Bill Clinton didn't have to change his name, no one ever asked him if he thought he should change his name, etc.

I think that was an important statement, you know, I'm not proud of all the decisions I've made in my life, but yes, I'm proud of the person I am, I'm not ashamed of who. I am and I think as hard as it has been to have that last name at times and the pain I've felt about what it means to other people in my family who have that last name, I'm glad I didn't do it. change it I definitely don't have your courage or strength of character I don't know honestly I really don't think you know that oh no I already have a mental list of fake names I'm going to make Alvin I like it oh it's not a great name but I think I can tell you , can you, could you really take Alvin?

Thanks Monica, oh you think I could too. I don't know about Alvin Oliver, that's a lot, that's true, that's not cool, my second. one was Jack with no last name, no explanation, just jacks. I like that I was able to support him, so let's talk a little about how to laugh because you joke about your experiences. How long did it take you to get to the point where you could do that? There are stages that you know or things that happened a couple of years ago. A friend of mine had a 25th party in Surrey with her friend and they met in the 90s so this party they had for all their friends to celebrate their friendship started in the 90s which meant everyone had to come 90s dresses.

I was like, oh, I just thought, okay, you know, so for the first time in about 18 years I put on a black beret and went to my friend's party, if I could. I know partly because I thought it was a pun, it was funny, oh it's definitely funny, right, it's not a marker of having come a long way, although you can actively engage in humor related to what you went through, which reiterate again was clearly, whatever, yes, I like berets, I can laugh at other clothes, jokes, not so much, what is your experience on the Internet now, because now you are on Twitter and you are very funny, thank you, so how did you decide? to continue because I guess some of the times I get really deflated, what do you tweet something funny and then make the mistake of scrolling down?

Oh yeah, it can become a sewer pretty quickly, yeah it can, I mean I get a lot of empowerment from blocking people so I wish people wouldn't say shitty things but they do it for sure and literally to me it's like when i block someone i'm like oh really that's literally what it feels like to me it's like i'm basically telling someone to delete it feels great so i wish they hadn't said something that made me want to block them to begin with, but blocking is incredibly empowering. I mean, actually, I was lucky that social media wasn't around.

I think that would have made it worse in some ways and I haven't made it worse. I know I didn't reach my maximum. Could be. Do you really think it could have been? I guess maybe you know. I don't. No. I know, I mean it could have been worse in the sense that there certainly would have been a lot more opinions, but what could have been better would have been that I think I would have heard some support from people, so I could have been worse. would have been a little more balanced, so would it have been really meaningful to you at the time if social media had existed just for a stranger to tweet something like I think what you're going through is complete, yes, yes, absolutely because one of What happens with these types of experiences is that you just start to disappear, you start to feel like you don't matter and I think when someone sees you, you know that and just recognizes your humanity in the slightest, it can really make a difference. world of difference you don't know what could help save someone's life and they think that's important what would be your advice to someone who is right now in the eye of the storm of public shame or a child who is being humiliated in online school?

There is something you could tell them from your personal experience that no one else could. The first thing I would probably say is you can get over it, you can get over it. I know it feels like right now your life will always be defined by this, but it won't be and it may be hard, it may take longer than you ever imagined, but you can get through something like this, Monica Lewinsky, many thanks for talking to you.