Have you ever noticed how certain celebrities are able to recover from embarrassing, destructive scandals far better than others? Two celebs might get caught red-handed, but one is a career-killer; the other, a mere bump in the road. And the common denominator cannot be the crime/misdeed itself, because sometimes, the celeb with the worse transgression is the one who survives!
Wanna know why?
Audiences have an expectation of proportion. Whenever a punishment far exceeds the perceived misdeed, it violates our sense of fairness.
Take Muhammad Ali: When he refused induction into the Army (citing his religious beliefs), he was stripped of his heavyweight title. He was banned from fighting for 3.5 years. And all the while, he was just a Supreme Court decision away from getting locked up for a very, very long time. (The Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in 1971.)
I’m a boxing nerd and have seen every Ali documentary imaginable. Most of the commentators parrot the liberal talking points: “At first, the American people hated Ali for refusing the draft, but as the Vietnam War became increasingly unpopular, we realized he was right all along — and that’s why he became such a beloved figure during the second-half of his career.” This is the narrative that liberals believe.
Trouble is, it’s not true.
If Ali skirted military induction and continued to prizefight (while others his age were serving their country) the “Ali legend” would look very different. What saved his bacon and cemented his celebrity was his audience’s expectation of proportion: After 3.5 years of losing his livelihood and being threatened with prison, enough people concluded that Ali’s beliefs were probably sincere, and either way, he had already paid enough of a penalty.
Time to move on. And so we did.
“An eye for an eye” isn’t meant to be taken literally. (Otherwise, if a blind guy ran around knocking out eyeballs… how would you punish him? Y’know, someone really oughta add that question to the LSAT exam.) Instead, it’s a call for proportionality: It’s an eye for an eye, not a head for an eye.
Although this seems intuitive to us now, at the time, it represented a moral revolution: Before, the wounded party would demand its retribution in triplicate. “An eye for an eye” follows a much different standard — one that prioritizes proportionality over bloodlust. Today, it’s so ingrained in our Judeo-Christian psyche, it actually shapes public opinion.
And this brings us to the media’s latest one-two punch per the Epstein scandal, with People Magazine’s ridiculously misleading (and likely libelous) headline about Trump and “underage girls,” and the Wall Street Journal’s bizarre hit piece over a dirty picture.
Ain’t that a kick in the head: Right when MAGA Nation was about to go to war with itself, the mainstream media comes to our rescue!
Famously, Voltaire declared, “I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.” Voltaire and Trump must’ve made the same prayer: With enemies like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, AOC, Zohran Mamdani, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Harvard, MSNBC, and the rest of the mainstream media, Trump has been blessed with an abundance of riches.
He couldn’t have gotten to where he is today without their help!
That’s the PR danger in overplaying your hand: It ultimately boomerangs on the messenger. You end up building sympathy for the person you’re attacking.
The PR danger in underplaying your hand is very different: Without enough oxygen, your story could wither and die on the vine. But honestly? That wasn’t an issue with the Epstein story. It was truckin’ along just fine without any extra juice.
But the media couldn’t resist. They got greedy and overplayed their hand.
And now they’ve lost the story.
The People Magazine headline was absurdly misleading: Liberals know that far more folks read the headline than ever read the article, so the headline itself is Ground Zero for bias. In this case, the headline was “Ex-Casino Boss Claims Trump and ‘Best Friend’ Jeffrey Epstein Were Once Caught Bringing Underage Girls to Casino Floor.”
“Underage girls,” eh? Question for the readers: When you hear the phrase “underage girls,” what enters your mind?
I’m guessing you’re imagining a girl who’s 17 or under. Maybe 16, 15, or 14. Or possibly even younger than that.
And if you work in media, you know that People Magazine — and others in the mainstream media — follow something called the AP format, a.k.a. the Associated Press style. It sets the rules for capitalizations, abbreviations, and more… including the cut-off point for referring to a female as a girl versus a woman.
From the AP Stylebook: “AP style tip: Girl is applicable until a subject’s 18th birthday. Use woman or young woman afterward.” [emphasis added]
So why did People Magazine refer to a 19-year-old tennis celebrity as an “underage girl” in its headline?
If you hold your nose and actually read the story, somewhere around the fourth paragraph the truth is revealed: Thirty or so years ago, Trump gave a V.I.P. tour of his hotel/casino to a 19-year-old tennis superstar who was ranked third in the world. She wasn’t even one-on-one with Trump; she was accompanied by two of her friends (none of whom were “underage”), plus, possibly, Jeffrey Epstein.
That’s it. That’s the whole “scandal.”
There’s no allegation these women gambled. No allegation they spent the night with either man. It was simply a V.I.P. tour for the #3 ranked tennis pro on the planet — which is exactly what you’d expect a casino owner to do when a celebrity visited his property!
Casinos rely on perception, image, and celebrity buzz. (Full disclosure: I’ve done PR for at least half a dozen gaming/gambling brands.) I’ll betcha ANY amount of money, Trump would’ve given a personal V.I.P. tour to the #3 male player in the world, because having celebrities frequent your casino is good for business.
So that was nothing burger number one.
But the Wall Street Journal’s overreach was far more egregious, because the expectations were different. We know People Magazine is low-tier celebrity drivel; most people only read that rag when they’re stuck in the doctor’s waiting room and the Wi-Fi sucks. (Along with Highlights magazine: “Fun with a purpose!”)
We expected more from the Wall Street Journal.
When the WSJ’s big exposé was a weirdly-scribbled picture of a naked woman — that Trump denied ever signing, seeing, drawing, or writing — you could almost feel the ground shift: MAGA Nation was coalescing, to decry the audacious stupidity of the mainstream media’s latest lame-brained attempt to destroy Donald Trump.
Nothin’ like a common enemy to bring a movement back together again.
The language purported by the WSJ sounds nothing like Trump. Even the hints and innuendo seem a little too much on the nose (“May every day be another wonderful secret”?).
But even if that was Trump’s scribbling… so what?
Nine years ago, right before the 2016 election, a story broke about Trump saying “Grab ‘em by the [female body part].” A few days later, he was elected president.
We already know Trump partied with beautiful women. We already know he’s used bawdy language. And we already know he stopped being friends with Epstein and banned him from Mar-a-Lago. None of this is news.
But for the MAGA movement, it was a call-to-arms — and it came right when we needed it the most.
The Iran bombing outraged the isolationist wing of MAGA. There was nastiness, name-calling, and vicious personal attacks. Then, when the Epstein scandal spiraled out of control, there was a genuine risk that these fractures would spiderweb and grow. The smartest move for liberals would’ve been to pull back, so the only story was the MAGA-versus-MAGA civil war.
But they just couldn’t resist, could they?
And now, once again, the MAGA movement is reuniting. And once again, Voltaire’s prayer was answered by the Almighty.
“Amen!”
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