celebities

Not Unethical, Just…Ick. And Sad.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I don’t know how to categorize this. Perhaps the issue is how popular culture and show business make attention junkies out of people, making them do what former “Baywatch” (and “E.T.” !) actress Erika Eleniak is doing: making an exhibition of herself for sickos and fetishists, exchanging any shred of dignity for money.

I confess to always haveing a warm place in my heart for Erika. I first saw her as the girl Elliot kisses like John Wayne kissed Maureen O’Hara in “The Quiet Man” because he was psychically linked to E.T. who was watching the movie on TV. Next time I saw Erika she popped out of a cake naked in “Under Siege,” and then it was on to playing Ellie May Clampett in the movie version of “The Beverley Hillbillies,” then to “Baywatch.” Next came middle age and the fast slide to Hallmark films, then reality shows. Erika had some star power, but she wasn’t exactly Meryl Streep.

Now TMZ brings the depressing report that at 56, Elliot’s true love joined OnlyFans to let foot fetishists pay to see her apparently still-comely feet. Soon she was enticed into more daring peep shows. Erika is earning $10,000 a week, with 1,100 ill people who are eager to pay to gawk at an over-the-hill actress as she debases herself.

I wrote about this phenomenon in April in one of the “Confronting My Biases” posts. But then the OnlyFans sellout was Shannon Elizabeth, whose career, if you can call it that, makes Erika seem like Katherine Hepburn by comparison.

Today Erika has arms covered with tattoos, which, as I wrote recently, is often a symptom of someone coping with deep emotional pain. I can’t find anything exactly unethical in this scenario, except to think that if there weren’t an OnlyFans, someone like Erika would have to find a more promising, nurturing, productive way to find fulfillment in her post-celebrity existance. Now she’s at a dead end, a lucrative one, perhaps, but still perilously close to a life nadir.

In “Nightmare Alley,” Tyrone Power ends up as a carnival geek, biting the heads off of live chickens. That’s worse, certainly, but then his character only starts out as carnival barker who once said of the geek, “I can’t understand how anybody could get so low.”

I wonder what Erika Eleniak, when she was young and gorgeous with what seemed like a vibrant career ahead of her, would have said about women who expose themselves to creepy men, alone, through a video camera in their bedroom.

I’m really sorry, Erika.

So is Elliot.

Ethics Quiz: Oprah’s Surprise

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I did not see this coming at all. Obviously, neither did Oprah Winfrey.

On August 31, Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson united on their Instagram and TikTok accounts to promote their People’s Fund of Maui, which they had co-launched with a combined $10 million donation. The fund would support the victims of the Maui wildfires, and O joined with The Rock to call on the public for more contributions. The following accompanied their joint video, shot in Hawaii, naturally:

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Ashley Judd, Hillary Clinton, and Celebrity Malpractice

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Mount Rushmore

I had hoped to have my “Celebrity Code of Ethics” complete for this post, but it isn’t, so I’ll just allude to some of its likely provisions.

I like Ashley Judd, I really do. I’m not sure why she never became the reigning female light drama star of her generation; she’s every bit as good as Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts, and that voice! Now she’s routinely relegated to repetitious action movies and will be playing Jennifer Lawrence’s mother any day now—oh well, that’s show biz. Judd is also more articulate and intellectually curious than the average celebrity, so it was with great pain and disappointment that I learned that she had recently said this, in an interview with Larry King, about the presidential prospects of Hillary Clinton:

“I think she might be the most overqualified candidate we’ve had since – you know, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.”

Now, I don’t expect celebrities to be historians or experts on anything  other than their profession and areas of specialty. However, one tenet of celebrity ethics is the same as that of doctors: “First, do no harm.” That means, for someone like Judd, a celebrity has an ethical duty to recognize that a disturbing number of people think that because she is rich and famous, she is necessarily  informed, responsible and wise, as well as a role model, and therefore, unlike the usual drunk on a barstool, when that celebrity says something outrageously ignorant, stupid and misleading, hundreds of thousands of people believe it and align their own beliefs accordingly. That’s harmful, and doing it is unethical. Continue reading →