"Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!"
— Justine Sacco, IAC Communications Director, Shat Via Twitter on December 20, 2013
"I work in Public Relations," Joy said with a smile before tossing a kitten into a woodchipper, slapping a 98 year old great-grandmother in the face as hard as she could, and screaming at a baby until it cried and cried.
In front of the whole world.
Maybe, just maybe, it will come out that Ms. Mistake's Twitter account was hacked by a hacker. Probably not. Maybe it will be revealed that she has an previously unknown evil twin. That she was so bumblefucked on the plane or on the ground that her unforgettable regrettable instant of mass-communicated fail becomes put in some cringeworthy context. One that doesn't make what she tossed out okay but at least gives people something to wrap their brains around. Besides her being somebody with an impulse control problem and no filter who is definitely compensated to keep clients from sounding just like an unfiltered her for a living.
"Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!" And.... (click!) -Tweeted!
Never mind.
This little white-headed pimple of a story on a 24 hour news cycle only made the news because the lady in question works in PR. In Branding. We might want to think it was because of what she said being so offensive it outraged a digital nation. But no. Some idiot somewhere is always posting something just as stupid, offensive, or vile if not far more vicious and ugly on Twitter or on Facebook, but it doesn't ever really make the news. She's a Communications Director with a bigwig branding firm. When she shits the bed on Twitter it's news because of the con that elites are somehow elite for a good reason. Breaking that illusion hits the worker bees real hard.
"How does she have this kind of job?!?!" Jesus, she works in PR!?! For a living?!? WTF?"
All questions that boggle both the blue collar and the white collar worker bee mind here.
From Heck of a job, Brownie! to Big Tim Russert is gone too soon, Hey! Lil' Luke! Slap on your boat shoes and come inside! Jesus. What a curse to be born poor in the great age of failing up.
You barely make enough money to get by, and you are held to a brutally high standard. You stay late, uncompensated, to clean your station or store section or scrape the grill. No lates. No questioning working the holidays. Three un-paid sick days a year. No more. Three write-ups and you are fired. No method to appeal write-ups. No raises. Your pay comes every two-weeks to save the company money. You don't get paid the first week after hire, so, you essentially work a month full-time with no pay. No union talk. Ever. No write-up. You will just get fired. This is real for millions of people. Including those who would be happy to have it right now.
Okay here's a really funny story. It's about a guy who makes 5000 times your pay as a CEO doing the professional equivalent of putting his dick in a hot toaster. Why aren't you laughing?
Because the gaudy fuck-ups of the rich and famous or their peeps is like getting brain punched. Maybe Ms. Muffin is the exceptional exception. The self-made person who opened her first PR firm instead of a neighborhood lemonade stand on the curbside after helping her friend running for 8th grade class president. I will do her a solid and give her that break and assume it's possible. Royal fuck-ups and epic fails are not good for the OverClass or the corporate brand. A brand built on the little guy just accepting that some people are special. Elite. This screams 'these people aren't special, they aren't elite, they're hooked up, and I don't have any hook up'.
A lot of poors have bought in to the malignant myth that if you just polish the apple, access will be granted to the apple orchard. Eventually. If you behave. Do as you are told. Eventually.
The elite as total fuck-up makes even the most bamboozled narrow their eyes a bit to wonder.
I've been a working class person in a rich and powerful nation where somebody who was a legacy at an elite school who inherited his great-great-grandfather's pickled herring fortune can bitch and moan so very bitterly about the "takers" killing off the "makers". Where a rich yuppie family with mountains of manufacturing money to burn can don camo-and-flag-covered costumes from Bass Pro Shops grow themselves some major beards and adopt the mantle of America's first redneck royal family to play act on television. And people who actually are the very people who they are all merely pretend to be are some of their biggest cons, er, fans!
A great nation bamboozled by wealthy predators, idiots, and (bonus homophobic!) frauds.
Competence or decency or even a shred of brains doesn't necessarily have anything to do with why you are where you are in the Lucky Ducky world we live in. It's not just stupid little things or eye-rolling stories that eat up a slow news day. You can lie us into a war and get away with it. You can nearly destroy the economy of one of the greatest economies of the world and get away with it. This PR exec who epic failed will probably pay a far higher and more lasting price than any of those gotten scores of innocent people killed and maimed and ruined over the last ten to fifteen years. This is why I am not shocked when this kind of thing happens. I expect it.
That's how too many of us find out we are fucked for playing ball, not earning points.
The fuck ups. The disasters. The wrecks. That is when we find out that somebody's lucky sperm club luck has run out. Or how we find out in post-Reagan Revolution America that somebody probably failed too far up too fast. When it causes a disaster. Be it a big earthquake or just a fleeting tiny dirty shimmy. Even when a PR person goes on Twitter and says something guaranteed to leave a stain. George W. Bush is no longer President. But we are haunted by his legacy like a dim ghost. Everything that happened during the Bush years could happen all over again. Wars and all. A lot of failing upwards that has gone on over the last few decades.
Maybe I should thank you, Ms. Whatsamattayou. Even for this brief tic.
We live in a time when Ben Stein is identified as an economist, Louis Gohmert as a lawmaker, Paul Ryan is a man of numbers and policy substance, and a powerful person, say, a state Governor with an eye on the White House or his hired stooges who all think its okay to shut down the most busy bridge in the world for cheap political payback for not endorsing the big boss feel free to go beyond fantasy revenge spitballing and just do it. All tied up with a bow by the crushing travesty that you don't actually have to be competent or fair-minded or worthy to get ahead. You just have to be rich enough, connected enough, or able to bullshit enough.
Don't tell me what you know, tell me who you know. Step right up and buy some fine bullshit!
That is America doped up on Movement Conservatism in a nutshell. All else are royally fucked.
The sad tale of... I already forget her name, whoever's Communications Director, Tweeter of Dopey Twitter Epic Fail didn't make me angry. It made me laugh to cover my wanting to cry or just go break something. She is just likely another insensitive pampered winner who dwells among the insensitive pampered epic win power set who let her fingers get ahead of her brain. Hearing her story made me think even more about the million plus Americans who are about to get dropped off the unemployment safety net who have been left so high and dry. Well, so far. Why a Sen. Warren has to sell a law to ban credit checks from disqualifying job applicants.
Goodbye 24 hour news cycle fleeting human punchline who Tweeted a sad and vile Tweet.
You press on to your next corporate gig after an appropriately appropriate period of laying low for a while. The rest of us poor saps are just going to keep on keeping on while trying to keep our heads above all this muck and mire that many millions of us are marching through just trying to get ahead. Have an Appletini. I'm sure it's been a long day.