In Defense of Ellen

Insincerity in journalism is something that riles me, gets my blood running hot and lo, I boileth over.

I know, I know, COVID-19 has pretty much emptied everyone’s brain of any logic, but c’mon, can journalists please stop stirring the pot? Their use of insincere language has reached my limit of tolerance.

I’m quite sure that I’m going to be preaching to the choir here, but I hope that enough of the choir will preach to their choirs and so on and so on until we reach the stirrers-of-the-pot and make them stop this insidious behaviour. Anyone who regurgitates the insincere gibberish of the so-called-journalists without serious research is also a pot-stirrer in my books.

Journalists, (I’m using the term loosely here) have ceased to perform their job and we need to call them to task. Misleading the public, (especially a COVID-numbed ingenuous public) is cause for outrage. These pot-stirrers want to enrage us, but I think it’s time we turned the tables. Let’s get enraged by their misbehaviour instead of letting them lead us down a slippery slope.

First, let me explain that I rarely seek news. It just leaks into my world. I could hide in a cave for a year and somehow I’d still get news. I do actively seek news on occasion, that I think is important to know about like COVID, unemployment, business closures, dangerous forest fires, America’s looming election, Russian and Chinese antics, etc. but the rest of it somehow burrows through like an unwanted worm. This is the only reason why I know about the Ellen issue.

I’ve never paid attention to celebrity news, in fact, I go out of my way to ignore it. The Ellen thing wouldn’t leave me alone. Everywhere I turned there it was. Exasperating, when much more important issues are plaguing our world.

Here’s my disclaimer. If there has been anything seriously evil done, I will be the first to cry out from the highest mountain top. There just may have been, but I can’t be sure. Why? Because I have yet to read anything that convinces me that real honest to goodness journalism has been done here. We cannot jump on a bandwagon of slander just because he said that she said. And especially not because he said that she said on Twitter!

My first reaction to the claim that Ellen isn’t as nice as she portrays herself to be was, “So what?”.

I have at least 4 personas; my me-when-I’m-alone-with-me, my family’s-me, my writing-me and my students’-me. I’m always, yes, always, nice to my students. They are adults, (’cause that needed explaining!). They pay me money. I go with the ‘customer’s always right’ philosophy to ensure I get paid. I am ‘nice’ for about 7 hours a day. Then when work is over, I can stop being nice.

“What?”, you say.

Yes, that’s right, I stop being nice because I can’t keep it up forever. I’m human. I don’t instantly turn mean but after a day of smiling, very politely correcting speaking errors, courteously laughing at bad jokes and kindly answering the same question that I answered yesterday, I become my me-when-I’m-alone-with-me.

I work at home, (online) and my daughter can hear my student-me voice through the door. Let’s say right after one of my classes she asked me if she could go to a rock concert. (She’s 13.) My family-me would give her a resounding, “NO!”. Now, remember, she would have just heard my sweet voice and now she’s getting a dose of the ‘mean’ voice. Naturally, being 13 and all, she would be a touch peeved.

“Why are you so nice to that person and so mean to me?”, she might easily ask. Because she’s 13, any disagreement between us is equated to “you’re so mean”. (What do you think? Would an employee who secretly idolized Ellen have similar sentiments?)

I wonder if anyone out there in fan-Ville thought that Ellen was the same person in every facet of her life? Were people genuinely shocked to learn this? If so what planet are they from?

Can we discuss the ‘who’? Who are the employees who are doing all this complaining? Underlings perhaps, or grovellers, idolizers? (Can I use those words?). Those kinds of people are the loudest injustice criers. Just as my daughter feels slighted when I’m nice to my students and ‘mean’ to her, these kinds of employees are probably quite put out when Ellen is nice to her guests and then turns around and tells her employees to go clean their rooms. (Do you find it slightly humorous that I’m comparing grown working adults to my 13-year-old?)

I’m not vindicating anyone’s behaviour here; just pointing out some observations about human nature. Maybe Ellen is mean in real life, (but again, so what?). When people watch Joe Pesci do they think he’s a gangster in real life, do they think Brad Pitt always looks like that, or that Beyonce is always that spunky? These are people with camera personas, work personas, home personas and more. I wonder how long anyone who is ‘outraged’ at Ellen could hold up their smiley-faced-out-of-home persona.

Yes, she ends every show with ‘be kind’. I highly doubt that she means ‘be kind’ for the rest of your waking life. I would assume that she means ‘be kind’ as much as you can muster. Some of us can muster more than others can. We simply need to practice it more often and yes, we definitely need to be reminded to do so, just as the uncountable articles written about this issue should do. But we have to forgive each other if there is a momentary lapse in kindness now and then.

Here’s a good one:

“That ‘be kind’ bullshit only happens when the cameras are on. It’s all for show,” a former employee told BuzzFeed.

But it IS a show, a TV SHOW where they SHOW stuff and the theme is ‘be kind’. It’s not real, it’s tv. Does this actually have to be said? The ‘be kind’ is part of the SHOW. No one can ‘be kind’ forever. Even Val Kilmer can’t be Batman forever.

Let’s look more closely at who is saying she’s mean. Every blog, vox article etc. that I have researched for this post all say the same thing,

“… that included stories from current and former Ellen employees who said they were mistreated during their tenure at the show. (They all asked to remain anonymous.)”.

Why? Why did they ask to remain anonymous? If you truly felt that you were being treated unfairly at work, wouldn’t you complain to a higher authority thereby ceasing to be anonymous?

People want to remain anonymous for two reasons: they feel threatened or they aren’t being entirely sincere.

Back to my daughter for a sec… After she has calmed down a bit from her initial outrage at not being allowed to go to the concert, I say, “Let’s ask daddy if he agrees with me or if he thinks I’m being mean”. And she predictably replies, “No, no, don’t bring him into it”. I’m no psychologist, but I know my daughter; she knows that sheer logic and reason will force her to admit that I’m right. It’s human nature; she subconsciously or perhaps even consciously knows she’s not being entirely sincere. She doesn’t want to have to retract her statement and admit that I’m not really being mean.

Hmmm..makes one wonder about all this anonymity.

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they do feel threatened and want to remain anonymous to protect….what? Surely not their lives, ah, must be their jobs. People who work on the Ellen show are afraid of losing their jobs if they talk out of school. Quite possible. But if I was uncomfortable in a work environment, I would find another job, wouldn’t you? They can’t use the argument that they will never find another job; working on the Ellen show isn’t exactly the same as working at Walmart. These employees make a lot more than minimum wage and could easily find similar work on another show. So why are they afraid of losing their jobs? Maybe because it’s a pretty sweet deal, aside from Ellen not smiling at them.

Either way, the anonymity is suspect.

I’m not just talking about the employees, though, but the journalists themselves. What kind of information are they digging up? I wonder if the authors of these articles have ever heard of confirmation bias? (Confirmation bias is a term social scientists use to describe looking for what you want to find instead of simply observing or in the journalists’ case, reporting.)

Do you think that perhaps the journalists are actively seeking to find employees who are willing to denounce Ellen? That would be pretty easy to find. In today’s current environment it’s pretty easy to find a few rats.

My other question about ‘who’ is how many whos are in Whoville? If you look back at the quote from Buzzfeed, it says “current and former employees”. Why can’t they tell us how many? Again sifting through the double-speak of dubious news sources, I would wager that it’s not many, like maybe 2; one former and one current. Then they can use a plural — employees — and make us think it’s way more.

“There have been Twitter allegations”

This quote can be found in every article about the Ellen issue, of course, but what doesn’t have a Twitter allegation these days. Is Twitter is some kind of authority for justice? Please find a better source. People claim to have seen aliens on Twitter, defame upstanding and respectable scientists on Twitter, slander everyone they can on Twitter, and let’s not get into the anti-vaxxers. Nope sorry, that platform has completely lost any validity they may have once had by the millions, yes millions, of trolls that plague it.

So where are the professional journalists in all of this? Who’s asking real questions instead of throwing around the current hot terms like ‘toxic work environment’, ‘racism’, ‘sexual harassment’, etc. without any single fact or interview that doesn’t start with ‘he said that she said’. Honestly, this sloppy style of journalism is going to turn around and bite us on the bum. If they keep crying wolf, (toxic, scandal, racist, pervert etc.) without any substantiation we’re all going to pay for it when there is a real honest to goodness wolf.

Anyway, I just hope this pandemic goes away soon so we can get back to being enraged about things that deserve our attention, but most of all I pray that we can go back to using a modicum of reason when reading this stuff if we do, in fact, read it.