The Long Con – Why People are So Angry

When some guy or gal you wouldn’t trust to give change for a dollar is arrested for fraud or drug dealing, you shrug.

When some bad boy (or girl) actor is arrested for driving drunk or possession of drugs, or beating up their spouse, you did not expect better.

But when an icon, labelled “100% Wholesome”  is revealed as someone you would cross the street to avoid, the public feels used, tricked, played, and reacts with far more anger than the event might attract.

These are just a few Celebrities who proved that there was a 180o difference between the image and the person.

INGRID BERGMAN

She was a Swedish actress who starred in European and American films.  She was so good she won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, and the Tony Award for Best Actress.

She is best remembered for her roles in Casablanca (1942) and in Notorious (1946).

She was very popular, an icon, then, in 1950 it was learned that she was having an extramarital affair with Roberto Rossellini.

This affair caused a huge scandal in the United States. Ingrid Bergman was denounced on the floor of the United States Senate. Ed Sullivan chose not to have her on his show.

Bergman had, by her roles, playing a nun in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) and a virgin saint in Joan of Arc (1948) had the public develop a particular image of her, whom she was not.

She became box office poison and was not able to return to America for a few years.  The anger did die down and she returned to the screen in Anastasia (1956), for which she won her second Academy Award.

TIGER WOODS

Woods is an American professional golfer  among the most successful of all time.   He was conservative, boring, and the kind to be used to advertise top of the line products.

He first reached Number One in June 1997. Through the 2000s, Woods was Golf.

Then, it was learned he was unfaithful to his wife.  Not with some girlfriend, but Tiger Woods was the archetypical ‘Ho Daddy’.

The whole world realised that while he was playing Mr. Golf, for the T.V. camera he was getting down and dirty with anything in a skirt.

The pressure was so bad he left golf, claiming to focus on his marriage.  His wife divorced him and tabloids were front paging his very many affairs.

As a Con man, once his Con was exposed he lost his form. His rank went to Number 58.

Although he did get back in form in  2011, briefly, he continued to slip until in 2016 he was no longer in the top 500.

WHITNEY HOUSTON

She came onto the scene as a decent Christian young lady.   The public saw her as a sweet young thing.

The daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, a first cousin of singers Dionne Warwick and Dee Dee Warwick, and her honorary aunt, Aretha Franklin making it in the music industry was a lot easier for her than others.  But she did have talent.

She performed as a soloist in the junior gospel choir at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, at the age of eleven.

Her first album was released in February 1985, got fantastic ratings and sold well.

She won many awards, she was number One.

Romantically linked to an American football star Randall Cunningham and actor Eddie Murphy, she then met Bobby Brown.

This was a guy you wouldn’t want within 100 feet.  He was a foul mouthed rapper one wouldn’t expect to be seated at the same table as the ‘angel’ Whitney.

Yet, they married.

The public could not understand what a fine and decent girl like Whitney would see in such a guy.

She then went into the movies, appearing in The Bodyguard, (1992).  It was very successful.  The famous  “I Will Always Love You”, written and originally recorded by Dolly Parton, was performed there.

She appeared in other movies, and then… her drug use was exposed.

Her drug use and her true self, which had been hidden.   It wasn’t that she had decided to bottom feed with Bobby Brown, it was that that is where she was.

Various interviews done with her revealed a different persona than the one the public thought it knew.

Her voice failed and her last performance was more embarrassment than presentation.

In February 11, 2012  Houston was found unconscious in Suite 434 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, submerged in the bathtub.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office reported the cause of Houston’s death was drowning and the “effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use.”

The amount of cocaine found in her body indicated that she used the substance shortly before her death.  There were also the drugs: diphenhydramine, alprazolam, cannabis and cyclobenzaprine in her system.

Instead of being ‘The Preacher’s Wife’,  Whitney Houston belonged with Bobby Brown.

BILL COSBY

He came into public view as Mr. Nice Guy.  Where other Black comedians played the race card, he stayed with family, with growing up, with ideas that went across the board.

He appeared 1960s television show I Spy and won an award.   Everyone loved Bill Cosby.

He created, produced, and hosted the animated comedy television series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which ran from 1972 to 1985.

He starred in a number of films in the 70s.  Everything he touched was gold.   It was ‘G’ and loved by all races.

In the 1980s, he  produced and starred in a television sitcom, The Cosby Show, which aired from 1984 to 1992 and was rated as the number one show in America for five years.  Kids wanted Bill Cosby to be their Daddy.

Beginning in  2000 he was the subject of sexual assault allegations.  Sixty different woman have accused him of rape, drug facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct.

Some of the complaints go back to the mid-1960s.

He denied the allegations, and much of the public believed him.

But…. there are so many, and not everyone could be lying.   And then, the lawsuits.  His denials began to sound false.  The released allegations begin to make sense.   And the public begins to feel, he played them.

Bill Cosby surrendered to authorities on December 30, 2015, and was released on $1 million bail pending trial.

If

If Ms. Bergman hadn’t played nuns and virgins;   if Tiger Woods had the reputation of a 50c, if Whitney Houston had the image of a rough ghetto gal, and if Bill Cosby was known to play gangsters, the public wouldn’t feel so betrayed.