Double Standards

            People will soon forget Roseanne Barr’s unforgivable and repugnant tweets aimed at Valerie Jarrett.  She is history.  But the issue of people in the pubic eye making inappropriate comments is not going away.  Certainly not as long as Donald Trump spends his early-morning hours tweeting.  But there’s another aspect of this uniquely American phenomenon that calls for an examination of the responsibility of people who are in the position of imposing so-called standards applicable to comments made on social media by public figures.

            One of these is Bob Iger, Chief Officer and CEO of Walt Disney Company. Iger’s is an all-American success story. When I met him in 1988, he was a rising star for ABC, having negotiated what turned out to be a very lucrative contract for ABC to cover the Calgary Winter Olympics. He was then seen a rising star who would eventually become one of the most powerful executives in the entertainment industry. His biggest cheerleader was his dad, Arthur Iger, a good friend who managed my account for a New York advertising agency. We often talked about Bob’s career and his beautiful family.

            But then something happened. Maybe Bob Iger’s meteoric success came at a price. I remember how Art was devastated when his son divorced and moved to the West Coast to pursue his career. He quickly rose to the top and has been there ever since.

            I mention this because Bob Iger has been in the news as the person who approved Roseanne Barr’s firing. He has also inexplicably approved the reinstatement of Keith Olbermann with ESPN, one of Disney’s properties. There’s no question that Ms. Barr deserved to be fired. But Olbermann himself was booted a few years ago when he delivered vile rants laced with multiple F bombs against President Trump.

            If I could meet Bob Iger again, I would ask him, “If your dad were alive today, what do you think he would say about your standards, Bob?”