If the ultimate moral of the Ellen DeGeneres story is written many years from now, it may include advice to be careful about mantras.
“Be friendly” may seem like an easy sentence to live by and a sure winner with the audience for talk shows during the day. In fact, it is an impossible bar for anyone to consistently meet if too big.
Think about it. When was the last time you had to be demonstratively friendly for an ongoing time in public? Can you be kind to anyone who hangs out with you on the worst day of your life? Can you smile and dance when you are dogged by rumors that you really are, to tease someone from a tweet that outshines the reputation of the talk show host of the day, “notorious one of the most people who live“?
None of this is said to empathize with the eponymous host of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” a woman who needs zero empathy from anyone else. I somehow have no emotional attachment to Ellen, and in court the case of public opinion of The People v. The Queen of Nice, I find in favor of her past and present co-workers who claim that DeGeneres’ “friendly” motto is just for show.
Rather, what fascination there is in this evolving story has to do with its status as a clash between the sector’s recent pressure to excite fluid, abused leadership from its ranks – which may even be be to see if everything is said and done – and a litmus test for the double standards with powerful women to deal with when a scandal lands on their doors.
Until a story from BuzzFeed News on July 16 and the sequel on July 31 led to bright reports showing DeGeneres’ workplace as a toxic pool of racism, sexism, sexual abuse and cruelty in garden diversity, there were rumors about the not-so-so kindness of the talk show host sometimes blips a person stumbling across on Twitter, one of those can-scrapers to be shared as party gossip.
Now, Ellen DeGeneres joins an illustrious line of women in Hollywood who are rumored to be difficult to work with if at all, monstrous at least. That she has been elevated to the level that she’s subject to an unknown number of quintessentially horror stories in Los Angeles puts her in competition with legendary Faye Dunaway, whose infamous rampages left such an impressive trail of terror in her wake that it seemed for a while that everyone knew someone who had survived one of the actress’ unpredictable mood swings.
But the ‘Mommie Dearest’ actor was not the boss in charge of a series involving dozens of producers, writers and assistants, or a lively, walking name brand with an estimated net profit of $ 330 million.
She has never built her empire on a foundation of cheerful dancing, charity, and demands for kindness, as DeGeneres does in her syndicate series aired since 2003.
And this is important, if DeGeneres actually deserves her badge of significance – and I have no proof that she does not – she has done a bang-up job of keeping her sick temper out of the public eye while Dunaway paradises it for the very unwashed with aplomb. Such toxicity is usually round entertainment, a hierarchical industry that rewards lucrative products and the people who create them with unnecessary tolerance of abusive behavior.
This is an extension of the age-old myth that genius and volatility go hand in hand; it probably speaks that such behavior in men is excused, even praised, while similar behavior in women raises the tone.
Save, that is, in extraordinary cases like that of DeGeneres and her syndicate show for Day. As my colleague Gary Levin pointed out in a recent USA Today story, “Ellen” is the no. 3 talk shows in syndication, averaging 2.4 million viewers per episode last season. It also runs in markets across the country in a variety of time slots and at stations connected to various networks.
Significantly, despite the inspiring suggestions for hosting under the #ReplaceEllen hashtag, ranging from the believer (James Corden, Aisha Tyler) to the entertaining ridiculous (Eric Andre, Space Ghost), DeGeneres probably won’t go anywhere until she decides she will to go.
On the flip side, there’s that impossible bar of “be kind” that has forced her to fail spectacularly, even if she may have been at her best behavior, if that can be. During the pandemic, DeGeneres hired a non-union tech company to record her show remotely from her palatial home while keeping her core staff in the dark about her work status and paying more than a month, according to a report in April in Variety . When the 30 or so employees finally heard from executives, almost all were told to expect a 60% reduction in pay.
Finding joy in fierce giants is one of the peculiar flaws of the human condition, even if we do not necessarily care about the size that is kneeled. But it is that mask of cheerful kindness and those years of dancing that makes DeGeneres a mature, charitable cause.
This was really long before she invited Kevin Hart to her show shortly after he bowed out of hosting the Oscar Academy Awards in 2019 due to controversy over a track record of homophobic tweets and jokes, talking about her support while voicing his criticism called “haters” and even contacted had the comedy to speak for him. The October 2019 photo that showed her being friendly at a football game with former President George W. Bush, a vocal supporter of banning gay marriage, was also no prospect.
That all would be forgiving if DeGeneres were otherwise true to the word she urged her audience to live by: sort of. Based on the numerous reports about the cunning way the host talk shows during the day and their producers treat their staff, including accusations of racism, sexism and sexual abuse, DeGeneres falls spectacularly too short to exercise her own advice. That much has been established.
While producing and distributing the Warner Bros. studio. of the show examines the claims of workplace misconduct revealed in BuzzFeed’s coverage, and one of its senior producers, executive producer Ed Glavin, is fired, there are no clear plans for DeGeneres itself to the show to leave, especially considering the two-year contract extension they signed last spring.
What about the toll of so-called (but actually impotent) “culture cancellation”? This is where the view becomes interesting. Although the number of former employees in the dozens with their accounts is rising, there is not much specific anecdotal reporting that the nastiness originated directly from DeGeneres himself, even though a few celebrities have said that was the case.
And yet. Here is a woman who survived one of the first and most obvious instances of cancellation in 1997, when she appeared on her ABC sitcom and was rewarded by becoming persona non-grata persona in the industry years later; also, here is a powerful woman. The closest, though incompletely equivalent, I can think of to DeGeneres’ situation is the fall of Martha Stewart in 2004, when she served a five-month prison sentence for lying to investigators about the ImClone stock trading case.
Stories about Stewart’s abusive, demanding behavior behind the scenes of her successful day on the series followed her like bad spirits until she was elected to prison – the only person associated with the case to serve time. But laid their punishment on the Feds. . . or to hate Martha Stewart?
“Like Tina Brown, of the filthy Talk magazine, and Carleton S. Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Mrs. Stewart, 60, has become a Rorschach test of fears for women and men about female success, explained a 2002 New York Times story. It starts from:
Her fans have known for a long time, and do not let her know, that Martha Stewart is a lot harder than she looks. But in the long run, this latest break from her image could be more detrimental to her reputation than complaints that she is an über-perfectionist who becomes cool and imperial when the kitchen door closes. The Martha Stewart media and marketing realm is intimate weaving around her persona. Greed as the misuse of privileged information, as evidenced, was never part of the package.
And the public punishes them for this. Martha Stewart Omnimedia, whose value declined in value on the day it went public in 1999, was “sold for shares” in 2015. “Now, one share of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is not worth the price of a Martha Stewart meat tenderizer as a small Martha Stewart food storage container at Macy’s, or even eight ounces of Martha Stewart garlic hot sauce on eBay,” said a Washington Post-call.
Stewart is not exactly hurting for cash today, after rebooting her image with a Snoop Dogg glow. A recent Instagram thirst trap she posted proves that she is still determined to live her best life. She is still very, very rich – just not as rich as she once was.
Brings us back to DeGeneres, who has her own lifestyle brand, Ellen’s ED, and a large audience that I bet, probably does not care much about behind-the-scenes reports of commonality in the Kingdom of the Queen of Kind . A share of viewers probably expect her to do some public mea culpa when her new season of her show debuts on September 9, but whatever sword she falls for will likely be the size of a cocktail pick.
In the world of entertainment, few fires are more painful than those resulting from spilled tea brewed from a bag of truth, and DeGeneres is currently addicted to just that kind of agony.
But she was not the handy person at the center of reports of Warner’s sexual abuse; that man has been fired. In the accusations of racism and managers dismissing people after they have taken medical leave, supervisors and managers accompanied those offenses, not the Queen herself. Is this exactly how a good oil toxic workplace works? Of course. The boss never beats her hands with the not-so-nice game. She has people for it.
But the new season of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” will not debut for another month – more than enough time for more dirt to come out, for damage control, and just as likely, for its millions of fans to forget about it.
DeGeneres gave a rare interview to the New York Times in 2018 to promote her Netflix stand-up special “Relatable,” a routine that revolves around topics such as the truth that living the image of her image is always exhausting. .
You could now view that particular and look for clues that betray the ‘real’ Ellen behind the mask of kindness, if you will. You might want to take an episode of “Ellen’s Game of Games” and search her face for flashes of sinister merriment while sending sentient participants writing vacuum tubes to places unknown.
You can read that opener from the New York Times piece that explains “Ellen DeGeneres has become ill from dancing, and can you really blame her?” and find an excuse for the intent that this may have burned a person out, collapsing while laying down the motto that made her a fortune and won her a place in millions of hearts.
Or you can read a little further, to the reporter who tells a moment in which the host is asked to make a cruel joke at the expense of a little girl singing for her father, and look at DeGeneres’ insight into why she hold back. Speaking about her show, DeGeneres said: “It’s escapism for what’s going on, one hour feels good … At its core it’s a comedy show. But if it’s not funny, at least it feels good.”
The people who do not feel good about Ellen DeGeneres these days will be too happy to come for them, and they will not be friendly. Left open is the question of whether she, when all this is blowing, feels the need to be.
In any case . . .
The new season of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” debuts on September 9th.
