I hardly even know where to start.
I think this is one of the reason I loved The Good Place so much. Everything is just so sticky, and hard to pick apart, and nuanced.
When I was growing up, I think I loved to believe that there weren’t a million ethical quandaries in working in entertainment. But as I’ve gotten older, that’s clearly changed.
I think working in reality shows at all [the ones based on ‘real’ people, not already famous people, or people who have a ‘reality show persona’] in and of itself had a million ethical issues.
But now, with the rise of Trump – who came from reality TV (oof), I can imagine someone who worked on The Apprentice, AT THE TIME, thinking “mmm, not a great show, a little overly fake, this dude is a blowhard,” but it not seeming like the end of the world.
And now… a Trump show is on their resume. (I mean, maybe not. Maybe they’ve taken it off, unless they worked on it for many, many seasons so it’s a big part; or if they use it as an insane conversation starter.)
But like who would’ve POSSIBLY known the full extent to how bad Trump was? (Maybe a lot of people, and I’m naive. But, back pre-2015… I don’t think(?) we all knew? I didn’t know!)
So, working on The Dr. Oz show was kind of a dream. He was so nice when I was a guest on his show. Great when I worked on his show. He tried to keep people in the loop about their futures, as he was gonna give up the show. They paid good money. We had VERY reasonable work/life balance (or, at least my job did).
So it’s hard to work at such a cool place with such cool people, but it feel weird… I mean, I knew he was a peddler of things we were all reasonably sure didn’t work. But I didn’t feel that was too crazy, because it’s a daytime talk show. I sort of think that’s just part of the daytime talk/beauty/diet/etc industry that you expect people to tune out a bit (maybe?).
Plus, I mainly did the digital side. So, just editing yoga videos and stuff that just seemed like ‘whatever, how could this possibly be bad?’
But. Now that he’s gone SO red, SO vocally, SO fast… like… being against vaccines?! (And as a doctor, no less?!)
I feel like in some ways, it’s almost silly and funny to work for a ‘known charlatan’ but it’s a whole different thing when it’s like… a Trump surrogate. And now it’s like (eeeeeep… what are people gonna think when they see my IMDb page?)
And in this case, I worked with him CLOSE to him going and being a Trumper. So like… that’s probably worse than had it been 10 years later or something.
It’s a minefield out there (as The Good Place let us know – if only I could work on shows like that)!