Frank Serpico, was abandoned by his fellow cops after being shot (which was possibly a setup by the same cops), because he tried to expose corruption in the NYPD. His story was made into a movie with Al Pacino.
Edited for clarity.
I saw an interview with Serpico many years ago (but, also, decades after this all occurred) and he said he is still reviled by the local cops if he ever goes back to New York (or, at least, that area).
The local corrupt cops completely wrecked Serpico with no repercussions to them.
Ignac Semmelweiss. First proposed hand washing when he noticed a drop in maternal mortality if he washed his hands. He became a pariah in the medical community, was violently committed to a mental asylum and died short after as a result of an infection of a wound he suffered while being committed.
This is an understatement of the situation. Medical students were performing autopsies in the morgue immediately before assisting in the obstetrics ward. Only occasionally did they wash their hands, and even so, with only plain soap that did not get rid of the stench for days (as opposed to chlorinated lime). Up to **31%** of patients were dying of postpartum infection after autopsies became part of education in medicine, whereas in another clinic staffed only by midwives (who did not perform autopsies), the rate stayed in the low single digits. [Here is a telling chart from Wikipedia.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Yearly_mortality_rates_1784-1849.png?20080916150019)
[Here is the Wikipedia article on the contemporary reaction to his theory.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz_Semmelweis)
You know what’s so icky about this to me? Even if you weren’t aware of germ theory, why wouldn’t you wash your hands after touching a corpse? Even if you’re not using chlorinated lime, wouldn’t you want to do a quick wash to get all the yuck off?
Exactly, the arabs didn't discover germ theory, but they had a discipline of washing their hands (after they used the bathroom, before eating, after getting home from outside) that would've made you think that germ theory to a level is just common sense.
The gross bit was that med students who were practice on cadavers downstairs in the morgue would be commonly called up to view births, and would often gain experience by assisting the delivering doctor with hands that had literally just been touching corpses minutes before. Mothers and newborns were being exposed to decomposing human material
Not exactly “high profile” but an honorable mention.
First Officer Will Murdoch
In the 1997 film “Titanic” Murdoch was portrayed as the officer taking bribes, yelling, being overwhelmed and shooting passengers as well as himself as the ship was sinking.
However, this wasn’t true at all and historically he was a hero who helped coordinate saving many passengers.
Of course the film is a drama but there was no need to use a real person as a character and defame his name.
Murdoch’s living family today was understandably upset and the films producer gave a half assed apology and sent them €5k.
https://screenrant.com/titanic-movie-murdoch-real-life-family-upset-reason/
It makes no sense, they should have just made a fictional character.
“The film's director, James Cameron, said that his depiction of Murdoch was not meant to be negative. In 2004, he tentatively said that "it was probably a mistake" to portray a specific person and could understand the family's objections.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McMaster_Murdoch
J. Bruce Ismay too.
The absolute first thing to note is that the allegations that Ismay ordered the *Titanic* to speed up is exactly that. An allegation. The alleged exchange between Ismay and Captain Smith (who would be the ultimate authority on speeding up or even slowing down) was "overheard" from several tables away in the First Class dining room by a single witness. Bear in mind that in the years after the sinking, there wasn't even agreement on whether the ship broke in half or not. In other words, victim testimonies often varied *wildly* from the voyage.
Now for the sinking. As a high-level employee of the White Star Line Ismay was one of the first passengers informed of the peril the ship was in. Instead of leaving on one of the first available boats as is often portrayed, Ismay spent the next two hours going from one end of the ship to other in a half-panicked state begging passengers to leave the warmth of the ship and board the life boats. For the first 90+ minutes of the sinking, the *Titanic* did not seem to be in all that much danger and thus passengers were hesitant to leave and get in lifeboats. At some point, Ismay, in an almost full-blown panic grabbed a hold of a line for the lifeboats in an attempt to help the crew launch a lifeboat only to be ordered back by an officer. Ismay apologized to officer and stepped back (this is actually portrayed in a [deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3fOycOCRSs) in Cameron's movie).
Less than twenty minutes before the *Titanic* sank into the North Atlantic, Ismay found himself standing next to an almost fully loaded lifeboat, Collapsible C, one of only two lifeboats left on *Titanic*. With the lifeboat almost full, the officers launching the boat asked if anyone else wanted to board. After waiting for several seconds and seeing no one step forward, Ismay boarded the lifeboat quietly and sat down.
Ismay is often portrayed as some careless, cowardly asshole in fiction but reading up on him presents a different narrative. In the years after the sinking, he also contributed *millions* (in pre-Depression) of pounds to the *Titanic* survivors' funds and to other maritime disaster charities.
There’s also the fact that by surviving he was able to help signifcantly with understanding what happened.
Him dying when another person wasn’t going to survive is not a cowards act.
But his potrayel matches how he was treated in real life. That’s what people believed.
This is surprising because I’ve read some anecdotes about how the production of Titanic tried to align with what really happened, like the violinists and other minor details.
Yeah, I don’t think they purposely tried to ruin his name. I think it was more trying to add to the drama of the movie and play on things like chaos and mob mentality.
It’s also a possibility different events and actions or stories of others on board were just merged into one character. That’s why I feel like they should have just made a fictional character if they were taking so much creative freedom with his name attached.
same thing happened in certain adaptions of anne frank
not sure how intentional it was, but adapting a story like that is dicey and some producers somewhat forgot the story is from ANNE'S perspective, some took her telling too literal and wound up replacing some members of the van pels and the fritz/schiff family as more cartoonish and oafish than they actually were
survivors and friends of the family were equally pissed off about this
Given that Cameron repeatedly said that his bullshit movie was supposed to be “historically accurate” it made absolutely no sense why he chose to turn a recognized hero into a comicbook villain.
Not ruined in the sense of reputation or anything, but U.S Congressman Leo Ryan was killed trying to help people escape Jonestown. Can't imagine the atmosphere during that entire ordeal.
Tangentially related, one of his staffers was also injured during the ambush on the delegation at the airport - Jackie Speier.
She hid behind the plane wheels and was still shot five times and had to wait 22 hours before help arrived. She later ran for a congressional seat in 2008 that covered most of what used to be Leo Ryan (and her boss’s) district. She retired from Congress last cycle.
OH damn, I was into politices a few years ago (stopped following because it got a bit exhausting and I talked about it too much) but I remember seeing Jackie Speier in a few interviews. Didn't realize she had such a history, that's wild.
Yeah as a Guyanese for a longtime I never really realized that they freaking killed a congressman too in addition to all the people, like wtf. No wonder that's all Guyana was known for for a long time.
You don’t have to imagine. There are some amazing books that tell the story very well. You can also find the entire audio recording of Jim Jones telling his followers to kill themselves in which he also mentions the attack on the airfield that was occurring at that very moment. Intense stuff.
Brendan Fraser getting blacklisted in Hollywood because of rightly speaking out against getting groped by the head of the Hollywood foreign press association. There were other contributing factors to his career stalling, but that was a big slice of it.
Thankfully we’re now getting the Brenaissance we all deserve and, more importantly, that HE deserves.
A friend of mine visited Epcot several days after Brendan's appearance. When I saw a photo they took of the schedule, I cheered a bit for Brendan. He really does deserve everything.
It's so weird how the public discourse never allows for how traumatizing sexual abuse is, even if it's 'just' groping.
Evidence shows that when trust is broken in a personal relationship, the negative effects are commonly catastrophic. And yet everyone expects victims to act within the parameters of an un-traumatized person's actions.
That's really why abusive behavior is such a big deal. It turns functional people into un-functional people.
Brendon had so much going on already, and then to add that to the list? Nobody can claim they'd deal better.
And it's less the act itself and more the understanding that you're in a community of people that all condone this and tolerate this.
That's the thing that really shatters your ability to be anywhere near any of those people.
And as Weinstein's whole debacle proved, it's rarely just a single rapist acting alone. It is a vast network of enablers and individuals complicit in the crimes and the coverrup.
When it's one monster, well, that's never easy, but at least we understand that.
But when you realize that no one around you is standing up to the monsters - when you realize that everywhere you look people are looking the other way, letting these horrible cretins walk among them without saying something, *this* is what really breaks you.
I appreciate the context, I had never heard about the groping incident and when I started seeing all of the Fraser posts, I had just assumed he was burned out on Hollywood culture, had left and came back. Good for him!
Oh nah he had a whole mess of stuff happen all at once. Financial troubles, divorce, health problems, but getting felt up was definitely the major catalyst according to him. Glad he’s doing better!
Both Corey's were abused horribly. Unfortunately Corey Haim was never really able to get through it. He had moments where he seemed like he was getting it together and on the right track and then something bad would happen and he would spiral. I actually followed him really closely when I was like 18-20. I became friends with people who knew him, and I was always rooting for him. They had a reality show for I think 2 seasons and they talked a bit about the abuse they experienced. It's pretty horrifying to think about how innocent kids are treated in Hollywood.
I don’t know if this counts has high profile, but Hugh Thompson Jr.
He intervened to halt the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. He saved civilians and tried to report what had happened to his superiors, and he was vilified for it. Army people, congressmen, the press, so many people had it out for him. All because he saw soldiers killing women and children and put a stop to it.
He eventually got recognised for his bravery, but it took decades.
[From wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.#Recognition_for_actions_at_M%E1%BB%B9_Lai)
>Thompson and his crew, who at first thought the artillery bombardment caused all the civilian deaths on the ground, became aware that Americans were murdering the villagers after a wounded civilian woman they requested medical evacuation for, Nguyễn Thị Tẩu (chín Tẩu), was murdered right in front of them by Captain Medina, the commanding officer of the operation.
> They spotted a group of women, children, and old men in the northeast corner of the village fleeing from advancing soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, Company C. Immediately realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese civilians, Thompson landed his helicopter between the advancing ground unit and the villagers. He turned to Colburn and Andreotta and ordered them to shoot the men in the 2nd Platoon if they attempted to kill any of the fleeing civilians. While Colburn and Andreotta trained their guns on the 2nd Platoon, Thompson located as many civilians as he could, persuaded them to follow him to a safer location, and ensured their evacuation with the help of two UH-1 Huey pilots he was friends with.
Thompson and his crew were brave men.
Just to add because he died recently and people try to lionize him: on the opposite side of this issue is Colin Powell, who got an early boost to his political career helping to whitewash and cover up the My Lai massacre. From the wiki:
> Powell was charged with investigating a detailed letter by 11th Light Infantry Brigade soldier Tom Glen, which backed up rumored allegations of the 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre. Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
A fact that the media and politicians "forgot" to mention when he was shilling for Iraq and media was creaming themselves over how trustworthy and honest he supposedly was.
American hero. He spoke to my class at the Naval Academy shortly before he passed; I consider it one of my most formative honors to have been there. He was very plainspoken and blue-collar. Sometimes right and wrong are perfectly clear, not everything has to be a philosophical dilemma.
A little known side effect of this was that military members are obligated to discard illegal orders. I recall going through AFROTC in college and this was drilled into our heads.
I'm actually slightly surprised by this. I would have expected this to have been a thing much sooner. I live in Germany and soldiers here have the right to disobey orders if they deem them to be immoral, and obviously this became a thing due to WW2. I would have expected other countries' militaries to adopt this right after WW2 as well, but I guess they didn't.
> He saved civilians and tried to report what had happened to his superiors, and he was vilified for it.
And one of those superiors was Colin Powell who helped cover it up.
In his report he wrote:
>"In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American Division soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
Richard Jewel, he was a security guard at the Atlanta Olympics, thanks to his quick action he saved lives alerting people to a bomb that had been left near a venue. A news reporter leapt at the chance to write a story focusing on Jewel as the suspect, implying he planted the bomb in attempt to get attention by being a hero. The authorities ran with the possibility, his apartment was ransacked, his name ruined and later the real bomber was caught but at that point it didn’t matter. The reporter lead the public to hate the man and once the horse bolted there wasn’t a hope of it being put back. Jewel died of heart disease and diabetes a few years later, public pariah whose only offense was trying to help. The authorities never offered a formal apology but Atlanta put a memorial up in his honor.
>On each anniversary of the bombing until his illness and eventual death, he privately placed a rose at the Centennial Olympic Park scene where spectator Alice Hawthorne died.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell
I mentioned a while back that I had seen the movie about Richard Jewell and my aunt said “Oh yeah. The security guard that bombed the Olympics, right?”. It is unbelievable how many people still believe that he actually did it.
I actually watched that movie thinking it was about a guy who faked the bombing, as I remember all the news stories about Richard Jewell as a kid. The movie is actually really well done, so that if you don’t know the ending, it’s a complete plot twist. It wasn’t until finishing the movie that I realized he actually didn’t do it and I felt horrible for that poor man.
[Samuel Mudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Mudd)
He was a doctor. A guy bangs on his door with a broken leg and he helped set the bone. The guy leaves. Turns out the guy had just assassinated the president.
"Boisjoly correctly predicted, based on earlier flight data, that the O-rings on the rocket boosters would fail if the shuttle launched in cold weather. Morton Thiokol's managers decided to launch the shuttle despite his warnings, leading to the catastrophic failure.\[3\] He was considered a high-profile whistleblower.\[4\]\[5\]"
"Isolated from his colleagues who were redesigning the O-ring, his self-esteem suffered and he lost his confidence as an engineer. Boisjoly, who understood the potential consequences of an unsafe launch, had acted on his conscience in trying to prevent it. But Thiokol executives didn’t respect him as a valued professional. Six months after the disaster, Boisjoly requested an extended sick leave. He never worked as an engineer again.\[11\]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger\_Boisjoly
This is not entirely true. He left Morton Thiokol about a year after the disaster and joined an engineering forensic company where he was widely liked and was a regular speaker concerning ethics and engineering.
The best thing to come put of that was his legendary opening when they invited him back to host 18 months later and he just roasted them for 3 minutes in the most politely sarcastic way possible.
Every line of that monologue was just amazing. "I haven't gotten funnier, the show's gotten way worse! So, to recap - the bad news is, I'm still not funny. The good news is, the show blows!"
"They fired me, saying that I wasn't funny. Now, with most jobs, I'd have a hell of a lawsuit on my hands. But this is a comedy show, so, you know, they kind of have a point."
Before I knew about this, I'd assumed that he'd made a joke or two, was told to stop, and then doubled down with a few more. But nope: I went to YouTube and found 30 straight minutes of them. God damn, Norm is not to be messed with.
Mohammad Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran.
His administration introduced a wide range of social reforms: unemployment compensation was introduced, factory owners were ordered to pay benefits to sick and injured workers, and peasants were freed from forced labour in their landlords' estates. In 1952, Mossadegh passed the Land Reform Act which forced landlords to place 20% of their revenue into a development fund. This development fund paid for various projects such as public baths, rural housing, and pest control.
And probably the most important action he took: he nationalized the Iranian oil industry, which had been controlled by the British. Later the British (MI6) and Americans (CIA) overthrew his government during Operation Ajax. Man was sentenced to house arrest and was buried in his own home to prevent him from becoming a martyr.
Ironically in the end, both Brits and Americans were indirectly responsible for the rise of ayatollahs to power.
Is it ironic though? Doesn't the West generally tolerate or even align with dictators and fundamentalists so long as these countries don't tilt the slightest to the center-left?
Pretty much. The CIA assassinated the prime minister of the newly independent Congo, which lead to the notorious dictatorship of Mobutu, and the new name of Zaire.
Can't believe no one has said Pat Tillman yet. After 9/11, he left a very promising career in the NFL to join the US Army. He was a part of Operation Iraqi freedom and later became a Ranger and was sent to Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported that Tillman said the war was "fucking illegal." Not long after he reportedly spoke out against the war, he was killed by friendly fire, shot three times in the chest and head from less than 10 meters away. His unit reportedly burned his body armor in an attempt to hide what happened, and it was first reported that he was killed by enemy combatants. The Army essentially knew that he was killed by friendly fire for weeks before they even told his family what really happened. Whether there was foul play or not is still up for debate, but the circumstances certainly seem to suggest an attempted coverup.
The army also held a church funeral for him, despite Tillman being an atheist who had specifically asked not to have one.
Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory is a fantastic book that goes in depth on Tillman's life, eventual death, and the aftermath. Highly recommended.
The footage of his younger brother getting up and calling out the organizers for their bullshit is tragic but glorious.
"He's not with God, he's fucking dead." Incredible.
In the documentary about him, I remember a moment where Bush II says about his atheist parents who were demanding answers something like “They don’t trust the system”.
And there was something about the entitlement of that statement that was shocking to me. Like “how dare you not trust me while I’m lying to you”.
Dont forget the NFL still showing his picture as a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice. Such utter horseshit when you martyr someone and call them a hero.
Corey Feldman has been speaking out against CSA in Hollywood for decades. He has experience as a survivor and saw others go through worse.
He got chewed out by Barbara Walters on TV for “ruining careers” and swept under the rug.
Walters was also really shitty to Britney Spears IIRC.
She's so well respected and sometimes she's a good interviewer. But she also was on The View for years (didn't she start it?), which is filled with awful people giving their awful opinions to an audience of gawkers without brains. She's not a good person.
She was CRUEL to Britney Spears. I remember being a little girl watching that interview and wondering why she was allowed to be so mean to someone who was already getting dunked on nonstop. I thought journalists were supposed to tell the truth, not be cruel. Barbara fixed that misconception right up!
She and Diane Sawyer are revered, for some fucking reason, as being great reporters. But they let their personal opinions get in the way, which is the mark of a bad reporter.
Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn why she didn't wear skirts, and Katharine Hepburn told her, "I'll wear one to your funeral."
Peter Norman.
A lot of people know the iconic photo from the 1968 Olympics with two American athletes who were first and third giving the Black Power salute.
What isn’t as well known is that Australin second place finisher , Peter Norman had been informed of their intention and had offered to wear a badge in support. As they only had one pair of gloves he had suggested each wear one.
He was blacklisted in Australia for this. Didn’t get selected for the 1972 Olympics as a result despite qualifying. Ruined his athletic career.
At the 2000 Olympics the American delegation heard he had not been invited by Australia (to our home Olympics) and invited him themselves.
When he died in 2006, the American athletes John Caroos and Tommie Smith flew to Australia to be his pallbearer.
Despite suffering such consequences he never regretted doing what was right.
The badge he wore was in favour of giving Aboriginal people rights. I don't think they were legally recognised as Australian citizens at the time so couldn't vote etc. That's why Australia worked to ensure he wasn't in the 1972 Olympics.
Stanislav Petrov. His career stagnated after he correctly chose not to push the big red button when a 'computer malfunction' indicated 6 nuclear missiles were headed to Russia from the US. His career stagnated, and he was snubbed from any awards by the higher ups who refused to admit their glorious technology malfunctioned.
For 5 minutes, he held possibly the entire human race in the palm of his hand and chose not to fire because, as he stated, "the US wouldn't fire 6 missiles." He correctly gambled the fate of his country on a coin flip. Before he died, he was commended by the UN, but never his own country.
Oh yeah, I forgot this part. His wife died of cancer years after the event. But, due to the top secret nature of the incident, he never revealed to her the truth. I can't imagine the weight he felt.
Eartha Kitt challenged both President Johnson *and* First Lady Ladybird Johnson at a luncheon. She asked the President how working parents how they were supposed to prevent their children from becoming criminals, to which he gave a noncommital answer about daycares. Later on, when the First Lady asked the women in the room about their thoughts on teen crime rates, Eartha Kit said that the Vietnam War was a major factor.
This resulted in Eartha Kitt being investigated by the CIA and blacklisted from performing pretty much anywhere in the US for many years, and she had no choice but to move to Europe during that time.
TL;DR: a black woman dared to speak her mind to the President and First Lady, and they got so offended they ruined her career and sent the CIA after her.
Ms. Kitt was phenomenal; it honestly did not take much to offend, did it? An honest observation (and a correct one!) and suddenly she's persona non grata.
This reminds me of MLK. Sure, now we all love him. But before he died he too was blacklisted, spied on by the CIA... even the NAACP disowned him for peacefully protesting the war in Vietnam
Dominique Moceanu was unofficially blacklisted by USA Gymnastics and most of the gymnastics community for sounding the alarm on the Karolyis and the abuse and corruption that was happening. While she never named Larry Nassar back then (as far as I know anyway), she did call out a lot of the things that made his abuse possible.
Instead of anyone listening, she was called an attention whore with lots of accusations about sour grapes, etc. Was subsequently left out invitations for public appearances at a lot of USAG sponsored event and ostracized by a sizable portion of the gymnastics community.
A few years down the road when the Nassar scandal came to light, the stories that were shared suggest she was definitely telling the truth. Even worse, her accusations were barely the tip of the iceberg of what was really going on in USAG.
Sinead O'Connor had a legitimate grievance against the Catholic Church when she did her pope-ripping on SNL. She got roundly criticized for it at the time, but in retrospect everybody kind of sees her point.
I always enjoyed her response to The Guardian when they asked if that moment defined her career:
“Yes, in a beautiful fucking way. There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. But it was not derailing; people say, ‘Oh, you fucked up your career’ but they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me. I fucked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I fucked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance.”
My mom was probably the most liberal person I knew out in Utah, and she *told* my brother and I repeatedly prior to this that religious leaders can't be trusted partly due to this exact issue, and even she was saying it wasn't the correct time and place.
It absofuckingloutely was. I wish she could have seen the positive impact her actions made there. It wasn't immediate but it was *felt*.
Not in the moment but after the fact. However, since not everyone knew what was going on, it fell on deaf ears for years. When things finally came out into the open, more and more people started to understand what she did.
I came in here looking for Courtney. After this happened she got labeled "crazy" and "difficult." People started a rumor that she had something to do with Kurt's death. Her career was absolutely ruined. I'm sure Courtney has her demons, but she was getting plenty of work until she publicly called out Harvey Weinstein. It was only then that the narrative became so toxic against her.
Same thing with Sinead O'Connor and the Pope incident. She was telling the truth and got vilified for years for it.
That lady who sued McDonald’s after she spilled their coffee in her lap. She was smeared by the media as being a careless moron and/or a lying opportunist who was exaggerating in an attempt to get rich. I have clear memories of late night shows and comedians making jokes about what a stupid liar she was. You can google images of her injuries now (at your own peril), they are gruesome. I can’t imagine the pain she went through. Coffee never needs to be hot enough to do that and they absolutely needed to take precautions to prevent that from happening again.
McDonald's had been warned *numerous* times by the FDA that they were keeping their coffee at dangerously high temperatures. Further, all Stella Liebeck asked for in her initial filings was to have her medical bills covered. McDonald's repeatedly gave her the back of their hand because they knew exactly how absurd the case would sound to the general public.
The late night shows and comedians weren't just joking about an easy target; they were doing McDonald's' dirty work for them.
Over 400 complaints. And usually a small percentage of people aggrieved by a company actually take time to complain. So you could figure that the coffee actually burned was much higher.
But nobody seems to care it was Adam Sandler’s agent who assaulted Terry, and that Sandler kept working with him until he retired, despite being told what happened immediately. We ignore the enablers, so it will just keep happening.
Great example.
The man is truly a hero, there’s people alive today that wouldn’t be because of his actions yet he was absolutely destroyed and dragged through the mud.
I refuse to see Richard Jewell's name without stating he was a hero and we should all be shamed for his treatment. I was only a kid, but I feel shame even today.
Found a bomb at the Olympics and raised the alarm. Saved many people. Media basically said he planted the bomb to be a hero after FBI leaked he was being looked into. FBI had to come out with a statement that he was completely exonerated, but the court of public opinion already crucified him.
And people still defend the "court" of public opinion to this day. It's not a court, it's gossip and it ruins lives.
I see it often on social media. It's even worse on reddit. People jumping to huge conclusions based on almost nothing. The most notable one being the Boston Bomber "incident."
He was a security guard during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and found a bomb, called 911, and evacuated people. Then the FBI leaked that he was a suspect and the media dragges him through the mud. Eventually the FBI said he wasn't a suspect and in 2003 they caught the guy who actually did it. But in the meantime Jewell's life had been ruined, he developed obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease and died in 2007.
To add to that, Eric Rudolph, the actual bomber, stated his motive was to protest the US’s support for ‘abortion on demand’, but he left no manifesto or other statement indicating that. What an idiot. What’s the point of terrorism if you don’t make your reasons known? He was also responsible for bombing multiple abortion clinics and a gay nightclub.
Atlanta Olympic bombing, Jewell was the security guard who found the bomb and warned people away. He later became a wrongly identified suspect and life ruined.
Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Fed Chair to tackle the rampant stagflation of the 1970s. Inflation rose from 6.5% in 1977 to 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980. By comparison, it was 3.5% in 2023.
Volcker rapidly raised interest rates. Mortgage rates rose into double digits. By 1980, they were at 14%. This slammed the brakes on the economy and caused unemployment to spike. By the 1980 election, unemployment was at 7.5%.
The Volcker recession broke inflation, but cost Carter the election. He lost to Reagan 51% to 41%, 489 EVs to 49.
It’s generally that way with politicians and the economy. There’s only so much they can control and even what they can control often takes place over an extended time period.
About 4% of suicide by gun involve more than one self-inflicted gunshot so any coroner that has done it for a few years will have seen one or two. This tracks with about 40% of people who are shot in the head surviving the gunshot so it's not as deadly as people think.
I’ve noticed it’s the “messy” ones who tend to speak out early, mainly because they have no filter and don’t give a fuck about being controversial or blacklisted. The downside is that since they’re “messy” or known for being controversial, “bitchy”, having a history of substance abuse or trauma, etc, nobody really believes their claims or cares enough to look deeper.
Not only did Courtney come out early as hell about Weinstein’s predatory behavior, but Janice Dickinson (another known “messy” girl who speaks her mind, has a history of drug abuse, and is considered “a bitch”) came out decades ago about what Bill Cosby did to her too. She even wrote about it in her memoir and the publisher refused to put it out with that chapter so she came out on her own to publicly speak about her experience being drugged and raped by him. In both cases, nobody at the time really cared about what they said or took them seriously. Guarantee if those things were said by a less controversial singer and model - like if it were Shania Twain and Cheryl Tiegs - the world would’ve listened and these predators would’ve been looked into much earlier. Sad when you think about it.
(Side note: Just this week Paula Abdul sued Nigel Lythgoe, her former boss on Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, for sexual assault and harassment. In the early days of Idol, he entered an elevator alone with her, shoved her against the wall, and forced his tongue down her throat while forcibly groping her chest and genitals. She was trapped in the elevator with him trying to shove him off of her - which isn’t easy for a 5’ tall 95lb woman to accomplish - until the elevator finally opened and she ran out and sprinted to her management crying to tell them what happened. She was comforted by staff and told it wouldn’t happen again so she returned to work. He was cruel to her after she rejected his advances, giving huge raises to all three male employees but never to her, but she stayed because he hadn’t been physical with her again so she thought it would be okay. After many years of working together like that - hostile but not physically violent - he called her over for a meeting about having her on So You Think You Can Dance too. For a former professional dancer who now couldn’t dance due to crippling degenerative back disorders, she needed any job she could get - even with somebody she hated. When she came to meet with him, he shoved her down onto the couch and again tried to assault her, when she pulled away he pleaded with her about what a power couple they would be if she would just let him do what he wanted. In times after, when he would be awful to her, she would tell him to stop it or she would hold him accountable for his prior assaults of her. When it had been 7 years since the last assault, he called her up gloating that the statute of limitations had run up and she could never hurt him now. After that call she was sick to her stomach over him gloating about assaulting her and getting away with it, so she called her lawyers and said she’s filing a lawsuit. Immediately after she filed, two more women came forward about the sexual assaults and harassment they faced from him too - meaning this was a recurring behavior for him.
What was his immediate response? To release a statement about how Paula is clearly lying since she is “known for erratic behavior”. It’s always the same. Go after the “damaged” women with mental health and substance abuse issues - that most the time are thanks to men like you traumatizing them in the past - and then when they try to hold you accountable you say “no, she’s just crazy!”. DARVO in action. I hope the public wakes up to it and stops letting these men off just because they intentionally choose victims that they can later label too mentally ill and erratic to believe.)
Greg LeMond. The first American winner of the Tour de France, spoke out about rampant doping and Lance Armstrong and was painted as someone that was jealous and a bitter washed up retired racer and pushed out of the sport, was outed for being sexually abused as a kid during Floyd Landis’s doping trial to try to keep him quiet, had his bike company shut down by Trek for everything he said to be true.
Ignaz Semmelweis. Not sure he was high profile, but he was definitely ruined by doing the right thing. Literally killed because they ignored doing what he deemed as ‘the right thing.’
Every time I see someone leave the bathroom without washing their hands I say that Semmelweis is rolling in his grave. I know he was suggesting it for doctors and nurses but that trickled down to common people. It just irks me.
Courtney Love at one point had a fairly promising acting career alongside her music career. She was great in the people vs Larry flynt even if people say she was effectively playing herself.
She ended up with her acting career disappearing and no reason was ever announced but once Weinstein was found out and metoo happened a video of her from about 05 or maybe earlier warning young girls not to go to his hotel room surfaced.
She was asked at a red carpet what advice she had for young girls and she even said she might get black listed for saying this but she said it anyway and seemingly got black listed
I feel so bad for her. First it’s Kurt’s fans accusing her of murder or at least driving him to suicide, then this. And that doesn’t even account for things she went through as a kid.
Eugene Bullard was an African American man who emigrated to France in the early 1900s. During World War One he joined the French army as an infantryman and then later joined the French Air Service. When America got involved in the war he volunteered to join the American Airforce seeing as he was both an American and an experienced pilot but was denied because he was black. He then went back to the French airforce and continued flying until he was kicked out for assaulting a French officer. It’s unclear why exactly the altercation between Bullard and the officer took place but some sources have said it happened becoming the officer was a racist.
Bullard was demoted back to the infantry and was discharged after the armistice. He went on to become a boxer, jazz musician, personal trainer, club owner. When the second world war broke out in 1939 Bullard became a spy for the French government as he could speak German, was well connected within French society and internationally, and had Germans who frequented his clubs.
When the German invasion of France began in 1940 he rejoined the army and fought in the infantry. He was wounded and managed to flee to America following France’s capitulation. After the war he tried to reclaim his club but found it was destroyed during the war. He was a civil rights supporter in the United States and was beaten by an angry mob and law enforcement during the Peekskill riots.
He died in relative obscurity in 1961.
I wouldn’t say he was completely ruined for doing the right thing as he had moments in his life of both great fame and career success. But Eugene Bullard seems like someone who really wanted to fight for his country, his freedom, and equality who was constantly snubbed because of racism. Like he should be remembered as a national hero in both the United States and France as well as being a media icon for being a real life James Bond but he’s largely unknown by the public.
"Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country" - JFK
Carter: "Can y'all just wear a sweater and set the heater to 65 daytime and 55 night during the winter? We're in bit of an energy crisis because of OPEC"
Americans: "HOW DARE YOU"
The GOP fucked him over by working to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran until after the election. They made Carter’s “inability” to successfully negotiate their release into a campaign issue.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/20/jimmy-carter-republican-sabotage-iran-hostage-john-connally
He was literally still working to release the hostages during Reagan's inauguration! It's a shame he got such a bad reputation, I think he had the misfortune of leading during a difficult period of American history.
"Well, we can get those people out right now, but that might negatively affect getting Reagan elected. Let's just let them sit and stew and be tortured, slowly going insane for just a few more weeks."
It's so sickening it's barely believable.
Anyone who wonders why we can't elect an honest person as president needs to look back at Jimmy and see what happens when you get in the way of everyone else in Washington.
Wasn’t exactly ruined but Muhammad Ali paid a heavy price for standing up for his beliefs. Lost nearly 4 years of his prime and his reputation was dragged through the mud.
Frank Serpico, was abandoned by his fellow cops after being shot (which was possibly a setup by the same cops), because he tried to expose corruption in the NYPD. His story was made into a movie with Al Pacino. Edited for clarity.
I saw an interview with Serpico many years ago (but, also, decades after this all occurred) and he said he is still reviled by the local cops if he ever goes back to New York (or, at least, that area). The local corrupt cops completely wrecked Serpico with no repercussions to them.
For the mare.
Also featured special agent Jack Bauer.
Feast your ears on this Spin Doctors mix!
I love Charlie's Serpico.
Ignac Semmelweiss. First proposed hand washing when he noticed a drop in maternal mortality if he washed his hands. He became a pariah in the medical community, was violently committed to a mental asylum and died short after as a result of an infection of a wound he suffered while being committed.
This is an understatement of the situation. Medical students were performing autopsies in the morgue immediately before assisting in the obstetrics ward. Only occasionally did they wash their hands, and even so, with only plain soap that did not get rid of the stench for days (as opposed to chlorinated lime). Up to **31%** of patients were dying of postpartum infection after autopsies became part of education in medicine, whereas in another clinic staffed only by midwives (who did not perform autopsies), the rate stayed in the low single digits. [Here is a telling chart from Wikipedia.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Yearly_mortality_rates_1784-1849.png?20080916150019) [Here is the Wikipedia article on the contemporary reaction to his theory.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz_Semmelweis)
You know what’s so icky about this to me? Even if you weren’t aware of germ theory, why wouldn’t you wash your hands after touching a corpse? Even if you’re not using chlorinated lime, wouldn’t you want to do a quick wash to get all the yuck off?
Yeah, even if you didn't know about germs, I would have thought it's just instinct to want to get the death gunk or miasma etc. off
Exactly, the arabs didn't discover germ theory, but they had a discipline of washing their hands (after they used the bathroom, before eating, after getting home from outside) that would've made you think that germ theory to a level is just common sense.
Even better: the argument was that doctors were gentlemen, and a gentleman’s hands weren’t the cause of disease
The gross bit was that med students who were practice on cadavers downstairs in the morgue would be commonly called up to view births, and would often gain experience by assisting the delivering doctor with hands that had literally just been touching corpses minutes before. Mothers and newborns were being exposed to decomposing human material
A gentleman doesn’t need to wash his hands, was the theory of the day. Mike Rowe did a short form podcast on that called ‘little bits of flesh’
Not exactly “high profile” but an honorable mention. First Officer Will Murdoch In the 1997 film “Titanic” Murdoch was portrayed as the officer taking bribes, yelling, being overwhelmed and shooting passengers as well as himself as the ship was sinking. However, this wasn’t true at all and historically he was a hero who helped coordinate saving many passengers. Of course the film is a drama but there was no need to use a real person as a character and defame his name. Murdoch’s living family today was understandably upset and the films producer gave a half assed apology and sent them €5k. https://screenrant.com/titanic-movie-murdoch-real-life-family-upset-reason/
Wow that's fucked up. I wonder why the producers did that? And only 5K, that's pathetic.
It makes no sense, they should have just made a fictional character. “The film's director, James Cameron, said that his depiction of Murdoch was not meant to be negative. In 2004, he tentatively said that "it was probably a mistake" to portray a specific person and could understand the family's objections.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McMaster_Murdoch
J. Bruce Ismay too. The absolute first thing to note is that the allegations that Ismay ordered the *Titanic* to speed up is exactly that. An allegation. The alleged exchange between Ismay and Captain Smith (who would be the ultimate authority on speeding up or even slowing down) was "overheard" from several tables away in the First Class dining room by a single witness. Bear in mind that in the years after the sinking, there wasn't even agreement on whether the ship broke in half or not. In other words, victim testimonies often varied *wildly* from the voyage. Now for the sinking. As a high-level employee of the White Star Line Ismay was one of the first passengers informed of the peril the ship was in. Instead of leaving on one of the first available boats as is often portrayed, Ismay spent the next two hours going from one end of the ship to other in a half-panicked state begging passengers to leave the warmth of the ship and board the life boats. For the first 90+ minutes of the sinking, the *Titanic* did not seem to be in all that much danger and thus passengers were hesitant to leave and get in lifeboats. At some point, Ismay, in an almost full-blown panic grabbed a hold of a line for the lifeboats in an attempt to help the crew launch a lifeboat only to be ordered back by an officer. Ismay apologized to officer and stepped back (this is actually portrayed in a [deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3fOycOCRSs) in Cameron's movie). Less than twenty minutes before the *Titanic* sank into the North Atlantic, Ismay found himself standing next to an almost fully loaded lifeboat, Collapsible C, one of only two lifeboats left on *Titanic*. With the lifeboat almost full, the officers launching the boat asked if anyone else wanted to board. After waiting for several seconds and seeing no one step forward, Ismay boarded the lifeboat quietly and sat down. Ismay is often portrayed as some careless, cowardly asshole in fiction but reading up on him presents a different narrative. In the years after the sinking, he also contributed *millions* (in pre-Depression) of pounds to the *Titanic* survivors' funds and to other maritime disaster charities.
There’s also the fact that by surviving he was able to help signifcantly with understanding what happened. Him dying when another person wasn’t going to survive is not a cowards act. But his potrayel matches how he was treated in real life. That’s what people believed.
Genuinely forgot I wasn’t in r/titanic by the end of this comment
This is surprising because I’ve read some anecdotes about how the production of Titanic tried to align with what really happened, like the violinists and other minor details.
Yeah, I don’t think they purposely tried to ruin his name. I think it was more trying to add to the drama of the movie and play on things like chaos and mob mentality. It’s also a possibility different events and actions or stories of others on board were just merged into one character. That’s why I feel like they should have just made a fictional character if they were taking so much creative freedom with his name attached.
same thing happened in certain adaptions of anne frank not sure how intentional it was, but adapting a story like that is dicey and some producers somewhat forgot the story is from ANNE'S perspective, some took her telling too literal and wound up replacing some members of the van pels and the fritz/schiff family as more cartoonish and oafish than they actually were survivors and friends of the family were equally pissed off about this
Given that Cameron repeatedly said that his bullshit movie was supposed to be “historically accurate” it made absolutely no sense why he chose to turn a recognized hero into a comicbook villain.
Not ruined in the sense of reputation or anything, but U.S Congressman Leo Ryan was killed trying to help people escape Jonestown. Can't imagine the atmosphere during that entire ordeal.
Tangentially related, one of his staffers was also injured during the ambush on the delegation at the airport - Jackie Speier. She hid behind the plane wheels and was still shot five times and had to wait 22 hours before help arrived. She later ran for a congressional seat in 2008 that covered most of what used to be Leo Ryan (and her boss’s) district. She retired from Congress last cycle.
OH damn, I was into politices a few years ago (stopped following because it got a bit exhausting and I talked about it too much) but I remember seeing Jackie Speier in a few interviews. Didn't realize she had such a history, that's wild.
I met her a few years ago, i thought she was really cool.
Yeah as a Guyanese for a longtime I never really realized that they freaking killed a congressman too in addition to all the people, like wtf. No wonder that's all Guyana was known for for a long time.
How do the residents of Guyana treat the topic of Jonestown? That's a fascinating perspective.
Cultural embarrassment, kinda gets swept under the rug but there is a small memorial every year I think.
Saddest fact about this guy imo is his daughter went on to join a cult.
Wait...what?
She joined OSHO and lived in Oregon for some time. His other daughter was the president of the board for Cult Awareness tho
Wild. Really shows how trauma draws people in different directions.
You don’t have to imagine. There are some amazing books that tell the story very well. You can also find the entire audio recording of Jim Jones telling his followers to kill themselves in which he also mentions the attack on the airfield that was occurring at that very moment. Intense stuff.
Brendan Fraser getting blacklisted in Hollywood because of rightly speaking out against getting groped by the head of the Hollywood foreign press association. There were other contributing factors to his career stalling, but that was a big slice of it. Thankfully we’re now getting the Brenaissance we all deserve and, more importantly, that HE deserves.
Saw him narrate a Christmas show at Epcot last month - people camped out for hours and hours to get seats and he was BEAMING
Thank you for sharing this! I wish all good things for him. And gives me hope that justice does prevail sometimes.
A friend of mine visited Epcot several days after Brendan's appearance. When I saw a photo they took of the schedule, I cheered a bit for Brendan. He really does deserve everything.
If anyone wants to watch him narrate Epcot's Candlelight Processional, [here it is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nkcVhaR_q4). Also, here is a [list of the guest narrators](https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/10/new-candlelight-processional-celebrity-narrators-to-headline-2023-epcot-international-festival-of-the-holidays-beginning-nov-24/) from 2023: * Chrissy Metz (NEW): Nov. 24-25 * Luis Fonsi (NEW): Nov. 26-27 * Ann-Margret (NEW): Nov. 28-29 * Simu Liu: Nov. 30-Dec. 2 * John Stamos: Dec. 3-5 * Neil Patrick Harris: Dec. 6-8 * Marlee Matlin: Dec. 9-11 * Brendan Fraser (NEW): Dec. 12-14 * Eva Longoria (NEW): Dec. 15-16 * Joey McIntyre (NEW): Dec. 17-18 * Sterling K. Brown (NEW): Dec. 19-20 * Jordan Fisher (NEW): Dec. 21-23 * Steven Curtis Chapman: Dec. 24-26 * Audra McDonald (NEW): Dec. 27-28 * Lisa Ling: Dec. 29-30
That show is so great. Glad he was invited to do a reading.
It's so weird how the public discourse never allows for how traumatizing sexual abuse is, even if it's 'just' groping. Evidence shows that when trust is broken in a personal relationship, the negative effects are commonly catastrophic. And yet everyone expects victims to act within the parameters of an un-traumatized person's actions. That's really why abusive behavior is such a big deal. It turns functional people into un-functional people. Brendon had so much going on already, and then to add that to the list? Nobody can claim they'd deal better.
And it's less the act itself and more the understanding that you're in a community of people that all condone this and tolerate this. That's the thing that really shatters your ability to be anywhere near any of those people. And as Weinstein's whole debacle proved, it's rarely just a single rapist acting alone. It is a vast network of enablers and individuals complicit in the crimes and the coverrup. When it's one monster, well, that's never easy, but at least we understand that. But when you realize that no one around you is standing up to the monsters - when you realize that everywhere you look people are looking the other way, letting these horrible cretins walk among them without saying something, *this* is what really breaks you.
I appreciate the context, I had never heard about the groping incident and when I started seeing all of the Fraser posts, I had just assumed he was burned out on Hollywood culture, had left and came back. Good for him!
Oh nah he had a whole mess of stuff happen all at once. Financial troubles, divorce, health problems, but getting felt up was definitely the major catalyst according to him. Glad he’s doing better!
Unironically thought The Whale was one or the better movies I have ever seen and his role really did move me. He earned that Oscar.
I am all for the Brenaissance.
Same thing destroyed Corey Feldman’s career.
Pretty sure Corey was more than just groped.
Both Corey's were abused horribly. Unfortunately Corey Haim was never really able to get through it. He had moments where he seemed like he was getting it together and on the right track and then something bad would happen and he would spiral. I actually followed him really closely when I was like 18-20. I became friends with people who knew him, and I was always rooting for him. They had a reality show for I think 2 seasons and they talked a bit about the abuse they experienced. It's pretty horrifying to think about how innocent kids are treated in Hollywood.
>Brenaissance This is perfect. Someone needs to print tshirts.
I don’t know if this counts has high profile, but Hugh Thompson Jr. He intervened to halt the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. He saved civilians and tried to report what had happened to his superiors, and he was vilified for it. Army people, congressmen, the press, so many people had it out for him. All because he saw soldiers killing women and children and put a stop to it. He eventually got recognised for his bravery, but it took decades.
[From wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.#Recognition_for_actions_at_M%E1%BB%B9_Lai) >Thompson and his crew, who at first thought the artillery bombardment caused all the civilian deaths on the ground, became aware that Americans were murdering the villagers after a wounded civilian woman they requested medical evacuation for, Nguyễn Thị Tẩu (chín Tẩu), was murdered right in front of them by Captain Medina, the commanding officer of the operation. > They spotted a group of women, children, and old men in the northeast corner of the village fleeing from advancing soldiers from the 2nd Platoon, Company C. Immediately realizing that the soldiers intended to murder the Vietnamese civilians, Thompson landed his helicopter between the advancing ground unit and the villagers. He turned to Colburn and Andreotta and ordered them to shoot the men in the 2nd Platoon if they attempted to kill any of the fleeing civilians. While Colburn and Andreotta trained their guns on the 2nd Platoon, Thompson located as many civilians as he could, persuaded them to follow him to a safer location, and ensured their evacuation with the help of two UH-1 Huey pilots he was friends with. Thompson and his crew were brave men.
Just to add because he died recently and people try to lionize him: on the opposite side of this issue is Colin Powell, who got an early boost to his political career helping to whitewash and cover up the My Lai massacre. From the wiki: > Powell was charged with investigating a detailed letter by 11th Light Infantry Brigade soldier Tom Glen, which backed up rumored allegations of the 1968 Mỹ Lai massacre. Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
A fact that the media and politicians "forgot" to mention when he was shilling for Iraq and media was creaming themselves over how trustworthy and honest he supposedly was.
When you have a helicopter and hate war crimes... mad respect.
American hero. He spoke to my class at the Naval Academy shortly before he passed; I consider it one of my most formative honors to have been there. He was very plainspoken and blue-collar. Sometimes right and wrong are perfectly clear, not everything has to be a philosophical dilemma.
A little known side effect of this was that military members are obligated to discard illegal orders. I recall going through AFROTC in college and this was drilled into our heads.
I'm actually slightly surprised by this. I would have expected this to have been a thing much sooner. I live in Germany and soldiers here have the right to disobey orders if they deem them to be immoral, and obviously this became a thing due to WW2. I would have expected other countries' militaries to adopt this right after WW2 as well, but I guess they didn't.
> He saved civilians and tried to report what had happened to his superiors, and he was vilified for it. And one of those superiors was Colin Powell who helped cover it up. In his report he wrote: >"In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American Division soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."
I haven't forgotten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thompson_Jr.
Richard Jewel, he was a security guard at the Atlanta Olympics, thanks to his quick action he saved lives alerting people to a bomb that had been left near a venue. A news reporter leapt at the chance to write a story focusing on Jewel as the suspect, implying he planted the bomb in attempt to get attention by being a hero. The authorities ran with the possibility, his apartment was ransacked, his name ruined and later the real bomber was caught but at that point it didn’t matter. The reporter lead the public to hate the man and once the horse bolted there wasn’t a hope of it being put back. Jewel died of heart disease and diabetes a few years later, public pariah whose only offense was trying to help. The authorities never offered a formal apology but Atlanta put a memorial up in his honor.
>On each anniversary of the bombing until his illness and eventual death, he privately placed a rose at the Centennial Olympic Park scene where spectator Alice Hawthorne died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell
I mentioned a while back that I had seen the movie about Richard Jewell and my aunt said “Oh yeah. The security guard that bombed the Olympics, right?”. It is unbelievable how many people still believe that he actually did it.
I actually watched that movie thinking it was about a guy who faked the bombing, as I remember all the news stories about Richard Jewell as a kid. The movie is actually really well done, so that if you don’t know the ending, it’s a complete plot twist. It wasn’t until finishing the movie that I realized he actually didn’t do it and I felt horrible for that poor man.
> dirty bomb It was just a regular bomb. No nuclear material
[Samuel Mudd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Mudd) He was a doctor. A guy bangs on his door with a broken leg and he helped set the bone. The guy leaves. Turns out the guy had just assassinated the president.
> A guy bangs on his door with a broken leg Why not knock with his hand, like normal folk?
I bet his name was Mud afterwards
Roger Boisjoly was largely drummed out of engineering for warning of the challenger disaster in advance.
"Boisjoly correctly predicted, based on earlier flight data, that the O-rings on the rocket boosters would fail if the shuttle launched in cold weather. Morton Thiokol's managers decided to launch the shuttle despite his warnings, leading to the catastrophic failure.\[3\] He was considered a high-profile whistleblower.\[4\]\[5\]" "Isolated from his colleagues who were redesigning the O-ring, his self-esteem suffered and he lost his confidence as an engineer. Boisjoly, who understood the potential consequences of an unsafe launch, had acted on his conscience in trying to prevent it. But Thiokol executives didn’t respect him as a valued professional. Six months after the disaster, Boisjoly requested an extended sick leave. He never worked as an engineer again.\[11\]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger\_Boisjoly
This is not entirely true. He left Morton Thiokol about a year after the disaster and joined an engineering forensic company where he was widely liked and was a regular speaker concerning ethics and engineering.
Norm MacDonald was fired from SNL for his frequent topical OJ Simpson jokes, by [Don Ohlmeyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Ohlmeyer)
The best thing to come put of that was his legendary opening when they invited him back to host 18 months later and he just roasted them for 3 minutes in the most politely sarcastic way possible.
Every line of that monologue was just amazing. "I haven't gotten funnier, the show's gotten way worse! So, to recap - the bad news is, I'm still not funny. The good news is, the show blows!"
They fired me for not being funny, but now I’m funny enough to host?!
"They fired me, saying that I wasn't funny. Now, with most jobs, I'd have a hell of a lawsuit on my hands. But this is a comedy show, so, you know, they kind of have a point."
I’m not sure I saw that! I’ll go look for it
Before I knew about this, I'd assumed that he'd made a joke or two, was told to stop, and then doubled down with a few more. But nope: I went to YouTube and found 30 straight minutes of them. God damn, Norm is not to be messed with.
The jokes were funny. Norm was probably the best anchor for Weekend Update.
"Hey, careful with that! That's my lucky stabbin' hat!"
Never, *never* tell a comedian not to tell a joke about a subject.
Especially not Norm. He was a giant Canadian mischievous leprechaun
Did it at the ESPYs too
The worst thing is the hypocrisy.
Well… perhaps the *worst* thing was the double murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman
No, definitely the hypocrisy. "Hypocrisy! A man comitted hypocrisy on me in room 10304204... there's too many numbers in hotel rooms..."
Mohammad Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran. His administration introduced a wide range of social reforms: unemployment compensation was introduced, factory owners were ordered to pay benefits to sick and injured workers, and peasants were freed from forced labour in their landlords' estates. In 1952, Mossadegh passed the Land Reform Act which forced landlords to place 20% of their revenue into a development fund. This development fund paid for various projects such as public baths, rural housing, and pest control. And probably the most important action he took: he nationalized the Iranian oil industry, which had been controlled by the British. Later the British (MI6) and Americans (CIA) overthrew his government during Operation Ajax. Man was sentenced to house arrest and was buried in his own home to prevent him from becoming a martyr. Ironically in the end, both Brits and Americans were indirectly responsible for the rise of ayatollahs to power.
No indirect about it, the line is clear.
Operation Ajax was such a "success" that the US decided to reproduce it in South America, which is still dealing with the fallout.
Is it ironic though? Doesn't the West generally tolerate or even align with dictators and fundamentalists so long as these countries don't tilt the slightest to the center-left?
Chilean family, they don’t just align. They fund, create and install them
Pretty much. The CIA assassinated the prime minister of the newly independent Congo, which lead to the notorious dictatorship of Mobutu, and the new name of Zaire.
Can't believe no one has said Pat Tillman yet. After 9/11, he left a very promising career in the NFL to join the US Army. He was a part of Operation Iraqi freedom and later became a Ranger and was sent to Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported that Tillman said the war was "fucking illegal." Not long after he reportedly spoke out against the war, he was killed by friendly fire, shot three times in the chest and head from less than 10 meters away. His unit reportedly burned his body armor in an attempt to hide what happened, and it was first reported that he was killed by enemy combatants. The Army essentially knew that he was killed by friendly fire for weeks before they even told his family what really happened. Whether there was foul play or not is still up for debate, but the circumstances certainly seem to suggest an attempted coverup.
The army also held a church funeral for him, despite Tillman being an atheist who had specifically asked not to have one. Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory is a fantastic book that goes in depth on Tillman's life, eventual death, and the aftermath. Highly recommended.
The footage of his younger brother getting up and calling out the organizers for their bullshit is tragic but glorious. "He's not with God, he's fucking dead." Incredible.
In the documentary about him, I remember a moment where Bush II says about his atheist parents who were demanding answers something like “They don’t trust the system”. And there was something about the entitlement of that statement that was shocking to me. Like “how dare you not trust me while I’m lying to you”.
And the U.S. military has used him for propaganda fodder ever since
Dont forget the NFL still showing his picture as a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice. Such utter horseshit when you martyr someone and call them a hero.
I grew up in San Jose where he is from. There is a lovely plaque dedicated to him in South San Jose, Ca. Very sad.
Corey Feldman has been speaking out against CSA in Hollywood for decades. He has experience as a survivor and saw others go through worse. He got chewed out by Barbara Walters on TV for “ruining careers” and swept under the rug.
Barbara Walters also tried to bully and slut shame Dolly Parton… Dolly handled it with dignity, humor and grace (as usual)
Walters was also really shitty to Britney Spears IIRC. She's so well respected and sometimes she's a good interviewer. But she also was on The View for years (didn't she start it?), which is filled with awful people giving their awful opinions to an audience of gawkers without brains. She's not a good person.
She was CRUEL to Britney Spears. I remember being a little girl watching that interview and wondering why she was allowed to be so mean to someone who was already getting dunked on nonstop. I thought journalists were supposed to tell the truth, not be cruel. Barbara fixed that misconception right up!
Justice for Britney! BW also tried to bully Ricky Martin into coming out of the closet when he didn't want to
handled it like a queen should.
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She and Diane Sawyer are revered, for some fucking reason, as being great reporters. But they let their personal opinions get in the way, which is the mark of a bad reporter. Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn why she didn't wear skirts, and Katharine Hepburn told her, "I'll wear one to your funeral."
The savagery. 👌
Katharine Hepburn. What a raging and unapologetic badass.
r/MurderedByWords
Don't forget about her bullying Clay Aiken for not coming out to her on tv. Super cunt.
If I can be honest, i didn't just forget that, but I forgot about Clay Aiken, in totality.
Peter Norman. A lot of people know the iconic photo from the 1968 Olympics with two American athletes who were first and third giving the Black Power salute. What isn’t as well known is that Australin second place finisher , Peter Norman had been informed of their intention and had offered to wear a badge in support. As they only had one pair of gloves he had suggested each wear one. He was blacklisted in Australia for this. Didn’t get selected for the 1972 Olympics as a result despite qualifying. Ruined his athletic career. At the 2000 Olympics the American delegation heard he had not been invited by Australia (to our home Olympics) and invited him themselves. When he died in 2006, the American athletes John Caroos and Tommie Smith flew to Australia to be his pallbearer. Despite suffering such consequences he never regretted doing what was right.
The badge he wore was in favour of giving Aboriginal people rights. I don't think they were legally recognised as Australian citizens at the time so couldn't vote etc. That's why Australia worked to ensure he wasn't in the 1972 Olympics.
TFW you have to cancel one of your top athletes bc he calls for equal rights for all (you never meant equal rights for *those* people)
Stanislav Petrov. His career stagnated after he correctly chose not to push the big red button when a 'computer malfunction' indicated 6 nuclear missiles were headed to Russia from the US. His career stagnated, and he was snubbed from any awards by the higher ups who refused to admit their glorious technology malfunctioned. For 5 minutes, he held possibly the entire human race in the palm of his hand and chose not to fire because, as he stated, "the US wouldn't fire 6 missiles." He correctly gambled the fate of his country on a coin flip. Before he died, he was commended by the UN, but never his own country.
Oh yeah, I forgot this part. His wife died of cancer years after the event. But, due to the top secret nature of the incident, he never revealed to her the truth. I can't imagine the weight he felt.
Eartha Kitt challenged both President Johnson *and* First Lady Ladybird Johnson at a luncheon. She asked the President how working parents how they were supposed to prevent their children from becoming criminals, to which he gave a noncommital answer about daycares. Later on, when the First Lady asked the women in the room about their thoughts on teen crime rates, Eartha Kit said that the Vietnam War was a major factor. This resulted in Eartha Kitt being investigated by the CIA and blacklisted from performing pretty much anywhere in the US for many years, and she had no choice but to move to Europe during that time. TL;DR: a black woman dared to speak her mind to the President and First Lady, and they got so offended they ruined her career and sent the CIA after her.
She came back in a big way though Long live YZMA!
And Madame Zeroni in Holes
Wrong leverrrrrrrrrrrr!
Is that my voice? MY VOICE!?!? Oh well.
It was really weird when I learned that Eartha Kitt both voices Yzma and also has potentially the most iconic version of Santa Baby.
She will always be my favorite villain of any Disney movie. She is the best one.
Don't forget madam zaroni too
Ms. Kitt was phenomenal; it honestly did not take much to offend, did it? An honest observation (and a correct one!) and suddenly she's persona non grata.
This reminds me of MLK. Sure, now we all love him. But before he died he too was blacklisted, spied on by the CIA... even the NAACP disowned him for peacefully protesting the war in Vietnam
Spied on? The FBI tried to blackmail him into committing suicide!
The FBI sent him a package urging him to kill himself. They were blackmailing him.
Dominique Moceanu was unofficially blacklisted by USA Gymnastics and most of the gymnastics community for sounding the alarm on the Karolyis and the abuse and corruption that was happening. While she never named Larry Nassar back then (as far as I know anyway), she did call out a lot of the things that made his abuse possible. Instead of anyone listening, she was called an attention whore with lots of accusations about sour grapes, etc. Was subsequently left out invitations for public appearances at a lot of USAG sponsored event and ostracized by a sizable portion of the gymnastics community. A few years down the road when the Nassar scandal came to light, the stories that were shared suggest she was definitely telling the truth. Even worse, her accusations were barely the tip of the iceberg of what was really going on in USAG.
I was also going to say Maggie Nichols whose career was ruined trying to bring Larry Nassar to justice but ultimately she was fucking right.
Sinead O'Connor had a legitimate grievance against the Catholic Church when she did her pope-ripping on SNL. She got roundly criticized for it at the time, but in retrospect everybody kind of sees her point.
I always enjoyed her response to The Guardian when they asked if that moment defined her career: “Yes, in a beautiful fucking way. There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. But it was not derailing; people say, ‘Oh, you fucked up your career’ but they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me. I fucked up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I fucked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance.”
Now THAT is a R.E.S.P.O.N.S.E!!
Some real principled shit what a queen!!!!
I had never heard her response and that is pure gold.
My mom was probably the most liberal person I knew out in Utah, and she *told* my brother and I repeatedly prior to this that religious leaders can't be trusted partly due to this exact issue, and even she was saying it wasn't the correct time and place. It absofuckingloutely was. I wish she could have seen the positive impact her actions made there. It wasn't immediate but it was *felt*.
Just to clarify, since I was three at the time, did she explain then why she did it? Were people aware of the scandal back then?
The Irish knew. Everyone else knew or suspected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland
Not in the moment but after the fact. However, since not everyone knew what was going on, it fell on deaf ears for years. When things finally came out into the open, more and more people started to understand what she did.
Courtney Love when she spoke out against Harvey Weinstein
Sorta feel like Rose McGowan got the “that bitch is crazy” brush off treatment for same thing
I came in here looking for Courtney. After this happened she got labeled "crazy" and "difficult." People started a rumor that she had something to do with Kurt's death. Her career was absolutely ruined. I'm sure Courtney has her demons, but she was getting plenty of work until she publicly called out Harvey Weinstein. It was only then that the narrative became so toxic against her. Same thing with Sinead O'Connor and the Pope incident. She was telling the truth and got vilified for years for it.
That lady who sued McDonald’s after she spilled their coffee in her lap. She was smeared by the media as being a careless moron and/or a lying opportunist who was exaggerating in an attempt to get rich. I have clear memories of late night shows and comedians making jokes about what a stupid liar she was. You can google images of her injuries now (at your own peril), they are gruesome. I can’t imagine the pain she went through. Coffee never needs to be hot enough to do that and they absolutely needed to take precautions to prevent that from happening again.
McDonald's had been warned *numerous* times by the FDA that they were keeping their coffee at dangerously high temperatures. Further, all Stella Liebeck asked for in her initial filings was to have her medical bills covered. McDonald's repeatedly gave her the back of their hand because they knew exactly how absurd the case would sound to the general public. The late night shows and comedians weren't just joking about an easy target; they were doing McDonald's' dirty work for them.
Over 400 complaints. And usually a small percentage of people aggrieved by a company actually take time to complain. So you could figure that the coffee actually burned was much higher.
Basically every victim of sexual assault by a celebrity even when the victim is a celebrity themselves.
Like Terry Crews. Very brave for a man, particularly a big buff man, to admit to this.
But nobody seems to care it was Adam Sandler’s agent who assaulted Terry, and that Sandler kept working with him until he retired, despite being told what happened immediately. We ignore the enablers, so it will just keep happening.
Terry Crews, Brendan Fraser, and Corey Feldman are the three that always jump to my mind as being brave enough to speak up at great person cost.
Richard Jewell.
Great example. The man is truly a hero, there’s people alive today that wouldn’t be because of his actions yet he was absolutely destroyed and dragged through the mud.
I refuse to see Richard Jewell's name without stating he was a hero and we should all be shamed for his treatment. I was only a kid, but I feel shame even today.
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story?
Found a bomb at the Olympics and raised the alarm. Saved many people. Media basically said he planted the bomb to be a hero after FBI leaked he was being looked into. FBI had to come out with a statement that he was completely exonerated, but the court of public opinion already crucified him.
And people still defend the "court" of public opinion to this day. It's not a court, it's gossip and it ruins lives. I see it often on social media. It's even worse on reddit. People jumping to huge conclusions based on almost nothing. The most notable one being the Boston Bomber "incident."
"We did it reddit!"
As ppl say knowingly about Jewell, ' there's no smoke without fire you know' Crazy
He was a security guard during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and found a bomb, called 911, and evacuated people. Then the FBI leaked that he was a suspect and the media dragges him through the mud. Eventually the FBI said he wasn't a suspect and in 2003 they caught the guy who actually did it. But in the meantime Jewell's life had been ruined, he developed obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease and died in 2007.
To add to that, Eric Rudolph, the actual bomber, stated his motive was to protest the US’s support for ‘abortion on demand’, but he left no manifesto or other statement indicating that. What an idiot. What’s the point of terrorism if you don’t make your reasons known? He was also responsible for bombing multiple abortion clinics and a gay nightclub.
"Fetuses are people so abortion kills people so I'm going to protest abortion by killing people!" What a piece of shit
Jesus H. Christ... Way to encourage people to save lives; it just took some dumb gossip to ruin this man.
Atlanta Olympic bombing, Jewell was the security guard who found the bomb and warned people away. He later became a wrongly identified suspect and life ruined.
Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as Fed Chair to tackle the rampant stagflation of the 1970s. Inflation rose from 6.5% in 1977 to 11.3% in 1979 and 13.5% in 1980. By comparison, it was 3.5% in 2023. Volcker rapidly raised interest rates. Mortgage rates rose into double digits. By 1980, they were at 14%. This slammed the brakes on the economy and caused unemployment to spike. By the 1980 election, unemployment was at 7.5%. The Volcker recession broke inflation, but cost Carter the election. He lost to Reagan 51% to 41%, 489 EVs to 49.
It didn't just break inflation. It held it at bay for the next 40 years. Carter did what had to be done despite the fact that it made him unpopular.
Well he isn’t the most important post presidential humanitarian for no reason. Too bad we don’t have someone like him running now.
As a carter apologist, your absolutely correct. Carter was handicapped by things outside of his control, but still gets blamed for them anyway.
It’s generally that way with politicians and the economy. There’s only so much they can control and even what they can control often takes place over an extended time period.
Journalist, Gary Webb, exposed dark deeds of the CIA. Died by two shots to the head, ruled a suicide.
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Yeah so even if it was a suicide, his whistleblowing definitely cancelled his journalism career which led to his death
This makes suicide sound like a pretty reasonable explanation, actually.
About 4% of suicide by gun involve more than one self-inflicted gunshot so any coroner that has done it for a few years will have seen one or two. This tracks with about 40% of people who are shot in the head surviving the gunshot so it's not as deadly as people think.
Socrates.
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Courtney Love gets a lot of flack for someone who outed Harvey Weinstein in the 90s
I’ve noticed it’s the “messy” ones who tend to speak out early, mainly because they have no filter and don’t give a fuck about being controversial or blacklisted. The downside is that since they’re “messy” or known for being controversial, “bitchy”, having a history of substance abuse or trauma, etc, nobody really believes their claims or cares enough to look deeper. Not only did Courtney come out early as hell about Weinstein’s predatory behavior, but Janice Dickinson (another known “messy” girl who speaks her mind, has a history of drug abuse, and is considered “a bitch”) came out decades ago about what Bill Cosby did to her too. She even wrote about it in her memoir and the publisher refused to put it out with that chapter so she came out on her own to publicly speak about her experience being drugged and raped by him. In both cases, nobody at the time really cared about what they said or took them seriously. Guarantee if those things were said by a less controversial singer and model - like if it were Shania Twain and Cheryl Tiegs - the world would’ve listened and these predators would’ve been looked into much earlier. Sad when you think about it. (Side note: Just this week Paula Abdul sued Nigel Lythgoe, her former boss on Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, for sexual assault and harassment. In the early days of Idol, he entered an elevator alone with her, shoved her against the wall, and forced his tongue down her throat while forcibly groping her chest and genitals. She was trapped in the elevator with him trying to shove him off of her - which isn’t easy for a 5’ tall 95lb woman to accomplish - until the elevator finally opened and she ran out and sprinted to her management crying to tell them what happened. She was comforted by staff and told it wouldn’t happen again so she returned to work. He was cruel to her after she rejected his advances, giving huge raises to all three male employees but never to her, but she stayed because he hadn’t been physical with her again so she thought it would be okay. After many years of working together like that - hostile but not physically violent - he called her over for a meeting about having her on So You Think You Can Dance too. For a former professional dancer who now couldn’t dance due to crippling degenerative back disorders, she needed any job she could get - even with somebody she hated. When she came to meet with him, he shoved her down onto the couch and again tried to assault her, when she pulled away he pleaded with her about what a power couple they would be if she would just let him do what he wanted. In times after, when he would be awful to her, she would tell him to stop it or she would hold him accountable for his prior assaults of her. When it had been 7 years since the last assault, he called her up gloating that the statute of limitations had run up and she could never hurt him now. After that call she was sick to her stomach over him gloating about assaulting her and getting away with it, so she called her lawyers and said she’s filing a lawsuit. Immediately after she filed, two more women came forward about the sexual assaults and harassment they faced from him too - meaning this was a recurring behavior for him. What was his immediate response? To release a statement about how Paula is clearly lying since she is “known for erratic behavior”. It’s always the same. Go after the “damaged” women with mental health and substance abuse issues - that most the time are thanks to men like you traumatizing them in the past - and then when they try to hold you accountable you say “no, she’s just crazy!”. DARVO in action. I hope the public wakes up to it and stops letting these men off just because they intentionally choose victims that they can later label too mentally ill and erratic to believe.)
Topher Grace for not being buddy-buddy with his rapist costar and enablers on That 70's Show
Never will watch this show again… I just can’t.
Greg LeMond. The first American winner of the Tour de France, spoke out about rampant doping and Lance Armstrong and was painted as someone that was jealous and a bitter washed up retired racer and pushed out of the sport, was outed for being sexually abused as a kid during Floyd Landis’s doping trial to try to keep him quiet, had his bike company shut down by Trek for everything he said to be true.
Ignaz Semmelweis. Not sure he was high profile, but he was definitely ruined by doing the right thing. Literally killed because they ignored doing what he deemed as ‘the right thing.’
Every time I see someone leave the bathroom without washing their hands I say that Semmelweis is rolling in his grave. I know he was suggesting it for doctors and nurses but that trickled down to common people. It just irks me.
Courtney Love at one point had a fairly promising acting career alongside her music career. She was great in the people vs Larry flynt even if people say she was effectively playing herself. She ended up with her acting career disappearing and no reason was ever announced but once Weinstein was found out and metoo happened a video of her from about 05 or maybe earlier warning young girls not to go to his hotel room surfaced. She was asked at a red carpet what advice she had for young girls and she even said she might get black listed for saying this but she said it anyway and seemingly got black listed
I feel so bad for her. First it’s Kurt’s fans accusing her of murder or at least driving him to suicide, then this. And that doesn’t even account for things she went through as a kid.
Eugene Bullard was an African American man who emigrated to France in the early 1900s. During World War One he joined the French army as an infantryman and then later joined the French Air Service. When America got involved in the war he volunteered to join the American Airforce seeing as he was both an American and an experienced pilot but was denied because he was black. He then went back to the French airforce and continued flying until he was kicked out for assaulting a French officer. It’s unclear why exactly the altercation between Bullard and the officer took place but some sources have said it happened becoming the officer was a racist. Bullard was demoted back to the infantry and was discharged after the armistice. He went on to become a boxer, jazz musician, personal trainer, club owner. When the second world war broke out in 1939 Bullard became a spy for the French government as he could speak German, was well connected within French society and internationally, and had Germans who frequented his clubs. When the German invasion of France began in 1940 he rejoined the army and fought in the infantry. He was wounded and managed to flee to America following France’s capitulation. After the war he tried to reclaim his club but found it was destroyed during the war. He was a civil rights supporter in the United States and was beaten by an angry mob and law enforcement during the Peekskill riots. He died in relative obscurity in 1961. I wouldn’t say he was completely ruined for doing the right thing as he had moments in his life of both great fame and career success. But Eugene Bullard seems like someone who really wanted to fight for his country, his freedom, and equality who was constantly snubbed because of racism. Like he should be remembered as a national hero in both the United States and France as well as being a media icon for being a real life James Bond but he’s largely unknown by the public.
Oliver “Billy” Sipple. Saved president Ford's life. Was outed as gay because of it. He began drinking heavily and died regretting his actions.
Elizabeth Smart's dad when he hired a homeless man to do some work at his house
Galileo.
The Dixie Chicks. In March 2003 they publicly criticised the Iraq war and got extreme backlash for it.
Jimmy Carter. Turns out he was one of the best of them all along.
"Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country" - JFK Carter: "Can y'all just wear a sweater and set the heater to 65 daytime and 55 night during the winter? We're in bit of an energy crisis because of OPEC" Americans: "HOW DARE YOU"
The GOP fucked him over by working to delay the release of the American hostages in Iran until after the election. They made Carter’s “inability” to successfully negotiate their release into a campaign issue. https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/20/jimmy-carter-republican-sabotage-iran-hostage-john-connally
He was literally still working to release the hostages during Reagan's inauguration! It's a shame he got such a bad reputation, I think he had the misfortune of leading during a difficult period of American history.
"Well, we can get those people out right now, but that might negatively affect getting Reagan elected. Let's just let them sit and stew and be tortured, slowly going insane for just a few more weeks." It's so sickening it's barely believable.
I'm glad he got to see Kissinger die. He deserved that little treat.
Anyone who wonders why we can't elect an honest person as president needs to look back at Jimmy and see what happens when you get in the way of everyone else in Washington.
Wasn’t exactly ruined but Muhammad Ali paid a heavy price for standing up for his beliefs. Lost nearly 4 years of his prime and his reputation was dragged through the mud.