What Happens in Vegas Doesn't Stay in Vegas

Everywhere I look lately I see celebrities, politicians and other well-known figures behaving badly. In the past week alone, tennis-champion Serena Williams was in the news for her profane outburst at the U.S. Open and before that Congressman Joe Wilson made headlines for his “You Lie” outburst during President Obama’s address to Congress, not to mention Kanye’s latest tantrum.
A caller on a local morning show this week was irate at the very suggestion that the station should stop playing Kanye’s music. The fact that he has frequent – and obviously inappropriate, as she was quick to admit – outbursts has nothing to do with the fact that he is one of the best-selling hip-hop artists of all time.

Maybe that’s what it all boils down to: Can you separate “the person” of a public figure from “the brand?” Absolutely not! We are all brands. And now, thanks to social networking platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, these brands are always on, always on public display. And for celebrities, politicians or other public figures, this relationship is exacerbated due to the obsession the public has with dissecting every detail of their lives. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with any well-known figure that you can think about without associating his or her brand with his or her person. Because the two are inseparable…one and the same. We are all brands, whether we like it or not.

So when I hear people say we should excuse celebrities behaving badly, it pisses me off. We no longer live in a world of, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” Nothing is off limits for any of us. If a company repeatedly made bad decisions in terms of product claims, advertising, corporate responsibility or anything else, we would WRITE THEM OFF. Let’s do the same for celebrities behaving badly: No excuses just because they’re celebrities – they should know better.