That Story Must Die
“It was always too easy for me to scrub away the faces of actual human beings.”
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When a celebrity “melts down” in public: Whose story is that to tell? To comment on? What motivates a public expression of concern? Does motivation matter if that public expression is helpful? Helpful in what sense? Helpful to whom? When a well known figure struggles with what looks like a substance use disorder, a mental health issue, there’s often a rush to opine on What It Means. In today’s reboot, A.J. considers his own impulse to write about celebrities in apparent crisis: the extent to which that impulse comes from a genuine desire to understand, explain, give context; the extent to which that impulse is necessarily tainted by the desire to tell a Bigger Story in which the celebrity is less a human individual and more a useful exemplar, a case in point.
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Wellness Checks
Originally published August 16, 2022
Last year, I pitched a story to a magazine about Kanye West’s deteriorating mental health, intending to talk to several music writers about how this could influence their coverage of all his future projects and outbursts.
My thesis: Kanye’s bipolar. When he’s off his meds, he does things that bipolar people do when they are off their medication. Given what we know about his illness, should his audaciousness be given proper context? His genius?
If not, it should be. Because I can pretty much guess how Kanye’s next year will go — there will be sirens coming for him from somewhere. He will probably lose his children. The arc of his story will dip, crater, rebound, and redeem.
But then what? What if he drops his most ambitious, extraordinary album while he’s dangerously unstable? “We Need to Talk About Kanye,” or something like that. Something like this, mostly.
But my story wasn’t just about Kanye. The past ten years were littered with stories about celebrities spectacularly downward — spiraling in public without the proper context — all the Spears and all the Lohans. Charlie Sheen! That crew.
I would examine how the media has historically maintained that celebrities make bad choices not because they are sick but because they are: Entitled. Enabled. Hostile. Narcissistic.
And many would be sent away to fancy, far-flung resorts to recover from “exhaustion.” Then they’d bounce back … until something bad happened again.
That decade between then and now — and all the so-called mental health awareness we now celebrate — has not made any of the coverage less primal.
So Kanye was a sitting duck, I thought. Someone should write about it. I could write about it!
The magazine dug it, so I was gonna give it a shot.
I kicked the tires but got queasy about pursuing it. The slog of reporting out a 5,000-word cover story was no longer appealing. Plus, the story was beaten.
But mostly, I was skittish about writing a story like that. Without the protection of The Small Bow’s tiny, vacuum-sealed audience, how would my writing that story possibly be received by civilians who think I’m fetid trash? My throat-clearing backstory about my own gossip-mongering history at Gawker alone would eat up 3,000 words.
I am simply incapable of writing that story. That story must die. From now on, I can only write about ME.
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I hadn’t watched the Charlie Sheen interview since it came out, but I feel like I watched it 11 million times when it did. What a phenomenon. And I thought his notorious interview spree — him spouting nonsense about WINNING and his tiger blood — was done with a bunch of cesspool outlets. But, no — the truly repulsive one came courtesy of “Good Morning America.”
“Are you bipolar?” the reporter asks.
“I’m bi-winning!” he says, duh.
The reporter then tried earnestly to report to the American public that, despite his bedraggled, crazed, over-stimulated appearance, Sheen claims he is both clean and sane.
She also reports that he passed a urine test, and no drugs were in his system.
This was 2011. And in 2011, even though I was editor of Deadspin — a “sports site” — I still wanted in on the Charlie Sheen pageview bonanza. My contribution to the spectacle was to stage a “public intervention,” so I posted his phone number.
I got the number from another public figure prone to relapses and disgrace. I promised him that the next time he screwed up that I’d go easy on him. He screwed up a lot, so he didn’t hesitate to give me the phone number, even if he still considered Charlie Sheen a “very close friend.”
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When I was editor of Gawker in 2012, a writer pitched me a story idea about the gruesome atrocities of “Celebrity Rehab.” If you remember the premise, struggling addicts who happen to be famous were admitted to a clinical rehab facility fully paid for by a TV network. They would be monitored by celebrity physician Dr. Drew Pinksy and counseled by junkie-whisperer extraordinaire Bob Forrest. All their vulnerabilities would be caught on camera. Then the show’s producers would compile 22 minutes of the most dramatic or pathetic moments each week, hoping for a meltdown, an overdose, or a foiled escape.
Throughout its six seasons, there were plenty of public opinions about the show’s exploitative nature. Most of them focused on the evil Dr. Drew, whom many claimed was only interested in elevating his own celebrity status.
But this story was about how the most dangerous drug on “Celebrity Rehab” was–dunh-dah!–Celebrity. A little Who will guard the guards themselves? sort of thing.
They never wrote it. I wasn’t willing to pony up the money necessary for travel, expenses, and time to do it properly.
And I couldn’t write it myself. Not with all the celebrity chaos I’d manufactured and financially benefitted from. Hypocrisy was the greater sin, I thought. Let the story die.
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While reckoning with my qualifications for the Kanye story, I remembered this other semi-relevant incident that gave me pause. Around 2013, a magazine editor called me up about a writer I used to work with. They wanted to hire them, but first, the editor needed to know something before the paperwork got sent: “Are they good crazy or bad crazy?”
I had an answer to that question, so I answered it. He was pleased and grateful for my honesty. We both left the conversation satisfied, like two loathsome slugs.
Now I look back and understand the subtext of that question: Will this person be disruptive to our award-winning magazine’s newsroom? Or actually: Will this person make me look bad?
Neither one of us considered the well-being of the person we were discussing. It was more about our own comfort and careers.
I thought about how those conversations easily could have been made about me: Was I good crazy or bad crazy then?
Am I good crazy or bad crazy now?
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I have tried to maintain a strict “no news” policy here. Sharing my opinion about current events feels like a slip back into my former life. It was always too easy for me to scrub away the faces of actual human beings and instead focus on the story — the Bigger Story. Or, at least, the story I wanted to tell.
I was going to write about everything happening with Ezra Miller, but I couldn’t think of anything to say — nothing intelligent, empathic, or enlightening. I also still feel unqualified and hypocritical.
But I feel very connected to the idea that this newsletter should be solution-based as much as possible. Maybe the solution is not to write about it until there’s a proper context, a moral truth, and some oversight into what’s happening in that situation. Maybe the solution is writing nothing and hoping for the best for everyone involved.
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ALL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDITH ZIMMERMAN
MORE NOSTALGIA FOR FUCK-UPS
All Too Human for Sesame Street
ALSO!
Remember to share your own experiences with meds with us!
ZOOM MEETING SCHEDULE
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Saturday: Mental Health Focus (Peer support for bipolar/anxiety/depression) 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET
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This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.
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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:
The Forms of Love
by George Oppen
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Parked in the fields
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
A lake beside us
When the moon rose.
I remember
Leaving that ancient car
Together. I remember
Standing in the white grass
Beside it. We groped
Our way together
Down-hill in the bright
Incredible light
Beginning to wonder
Whether it could be lake
Or fog
We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars. We walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water.
— Poetry, May 1964
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