In an report from Variety on Thursday, Crew members from The Ellen Degeneres Show spoke out about their treatment during the quarantine.
Their biggest complaint seemed to be with the lack of communication they had received from the show's producers, with little information given on whether they would keep their jobs and what would happen to their pay. For two weeks, from late March through early April, there was seemingly no contact at all, as production company Telepictures sorted out how they were going to resume operations given current restrictions—which included hiring an outside, non-union firm to perform various functions, many of which existing, unionized crew members could have handled from home.
All the while the show's staff of more than 30 employees was reaching out for answers. When they finally heard back, they found out that they were keeping their jobs, but their hours—and pay—would be reduced by more than half. While it's pretty standard for faceless corporations to make dispassionate, even cruel cuts whenever possible, there was a very obvious option to avoid the cuts in this case: Ellen could have stepped up.
Ellen makes more than $50 million each year through her talk show alone, all while preaching the message to "be kind." It's previously been reported that she can often be rude, touchy, and ill-tempered, but we all have moods and being occasionally (or even frequently) unpleasant does not preclude kindness. What does preclude kindness, and reopen questions of DeGeneres' hypocrisy, is sitting on a hoarded wealth of hundreds-of-millions of dollars and not even bothering to sell one of several six-figure Rolexes to make sure your employees are fully paid through this crisis. Jimmy Kimmel managed to pay his crew out of his own pocket, and he doesn't make half what Ellen does (and is hardly a paragon of virtue himself).
Perhaps even more galling is the fact that Ellen was making a show of her desperate need to talk to people on the phone—calling celebrities, friends, family members—all while the people who work for her were reaching out for some clarification and reassurance in a time of fear and uncertainty.
When The Ellen DeGeneres Show came back on the air on April 7th, after its brief hiatus, Ellen expressed how glad she was to be back, and cited her crew as a major motivation for returning, saying, "My staff and crew. I love them, I miss them, the best thing I can do to support them is to keep the show on the air." While there is some measure of truth blended into that statement, it is overwhelmed by the realization of her neglect. These people she supposedly misses and loves depend on her for their livelihoods, and she has failed to provide them even the bare minimum of support and compassion.
The Ellen Degeneres motto: "Be Kind to One Another."
The 61-year-old comedian and talk show host was widely criticized when she seemed to meet that standard by defending her friendship with George W. Bush. When the two were pictured sitting together in the owner's suite at a Dallas Cowboys game, many questioned what the former Republican president and "a gay Hollywood liberal" could have in common. Degeneres used her monologue on The Ellen Show to describe their friendship: "In fact, I'm friends with a lot of people who don't share the same beliefs that I have. We're all different, and I think we've forgotten that that's OK that we're all different," she said. "Just because I don't agree with someone on everything doesn't mean that I am not going to be friends with them. When I say 'Be kind to one another,' I don't mean only the people that think the same way you do. I mean be kind to everyone." Interestingly, many celebrities, like Reese Witherspoon and Jameela Jamil, initially supported the statement; but, after reflecting on GWB's politics and legacy of war crimes, they deleted or publicly retracted their agreement.
In particular, British actress Jameela Jamil admitted that she was previously unaware of Bush's policies, tweeting, "Ooooof learning today about the full extent of Bush's heinous presidency... we weren't taught much about him at school, we just heard he was stupid...(we were dealing with our own epic nightmare of a prime minister back then). What a monstrous leader. I now understand the rage.." When she was criticized, she shared the hashtag #progressnotperfection to express the necessity of education and effort to improve oneself in response to ignorance—not fear, hatred, or bullying. "I love learning and growth and massively applaud anyone who says they don't/didn't know the answer and seeks it out," she wrote. "I personally think that's cool and hope that we all feel safe to do that, so we can all evolve together. #progressnotperfection ❤️❤️❤️❤️."
In that spirit of education, we can examine Ellen Degeneres' personal ideology—around which she's built a reportedly $450 million brand—a little more closely. As Page Six reported (days after Ellen defended her friendship), the host has outright banned multiple people from appearing on her show. If the list of celebrities and the reasons for their bans is even somewhat accurate, then the easiest way to be denied a public platform on The Ellen Show is to express anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. Caitlyn Jenner, Kim Burrell, and Sherri Shepherd were all reportedly banned due to their outspoken stances against gay marriage. Vince Vaughn was allegedly given a temporary ban after a line in his 2011 comedy, The Dilemma, called electric cars "gay...not homosexual, but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance-gay."
The contradiction, of course, lies in GWB's strong anti-gay legacy. In 2004 he even called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. His two conservative appointees to the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, still hold their seats today and continue to contest federal protections for LGBTQ+ workers. Yet, Ellen has invited her friend and former president to appear on her show at least twice.
As vocal critics point out about Degeneres' friendship with GWB, "Kindness is not enough" when practicing the Golden Rule means not holding individuals accountable for actions that condemn whole groups of people to lives of oppression or result in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Degeneres and Bush both enjoy a social status that can afford to put kindness before justice or true activism; their clout puts them above reproach or the claws of oppression. With that being said, yes, Ellen absolutely faced massive fallout for her progressive decision to publicly come out years before bigotry and stigma were called out the way they thankfully are today; but the insular world of celebrity and Hollywood has always been out of touch with the realities of oppression. Fame, for all of its pitfalls, is a shield.
Ellen Degeneres and George W. Bush's friendship isn't based on "kindness"; it's based on the privileges of being white, wealthy, western public figures who can afford to sit in the owner's suite at a Dallas Cowboys game.
There are few people as successful as she is who deserve success as much as she does. Her talent and charm are perhaps only matched by the bravery she demonstrated in coming out as a gay woman at a time when that seemed likely to tank her career—and did, in fact, derailed it considerably. Her popularity as a public figure is both a testament to how far our culture has progressed in a relatively short time and undoubtedly a contributing factor in that progress.
Is it any wonder then that, when Ellen came under attack for just being pleasant to a fellow human being, people practically fell over each other to defend and support her? Since issuing her response on Tuesday, she's been hailed as an icon of civility and a too-rare source of hope for the future of our divided nation. Maybe she is those things, and as a general rule, she deserves our support—but she is also absolutely wrong about George W. Bush. Namely, she's ignoring the man's true legacy.
"I'm friends with George Bush. In fact, I'm friends with a lot of people who don't share the same beliefs that I have. We're all different, and I think that we've forgotten that that's okay that we're all different."
Who could argue with that? Differences of belief and opinion are not just a part of friendship; for some people they're the whole basis. And as a morning talk show host, Ellen's job is pretty much to be friends with everyone. While she makes no secret about being generally progressive, she treads lightly when it comes to politics—which is not just smart, but probably necessary for national sanity. Instead of diving into that mess, she thrives in all things cute, silly, and inoffensive.
Her show specializes in harmless pranks, surprises, adorable animals, and child prodigies who make us all feel stupid. It's a world of low-stakes fun, and it's not hard to see how the 2019 version of George W. Bush fits into that world. He's a goofy old man who hasn't been culturally relevant in a decade, and he spends his retirement creating charmingly amateurish paintings of pets, world leaders, and himself bathing. He isn't abrasive and belligerent like Trump. He actually seems pretty humble and sweet, socially.
If I were to meet him without context, I'm sure I would want to be his friend, too, regardless of his personal beliefs. Personal beliefs are a personal matter, and if it were only a matter of beliefs—or even of the social agenda Bush promoted when he was president: pushing for a federal amendment to outlaw gay marriage—then it would be up to each individual to forgive and accept him or not.
This seems to be the frame that Ellen was working from when she paired herself with Bush as "a gay Hollywood liberal sitting next to a conservative Republican president." And in that respect, she no doubt has a lot of practice with forgiveness. After all, 15 years ago, 60% of the country opposed gay marriage, and today more than 60% approve. Should we hold a grudge against that 30% that have changed their minds?
More importantly, should we bother to rehash old issues when a supreme court ruling has rendered them moot? Gay marriage is legal in all 50 states! Portia and Ellen are as married as anyone else. If they don't want to hold onto old resentments over the fight to get there, who are we to tell them otherwise? The problem is: George W. Bush's legacy extends much further than domestic policy. He was once the most powerful man on earth, and the way he wielded that power continues to shape the world for the worse.
George W. Bush is a war criminal.
I'll leave aside waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, and Abu Ghraib, because there is far too much to talk about in one article, and none of those topics are as cut and dry as the Iraq War.
George W. Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein was an evil man, and Bush had inherited a grudge from his father—along with an oil lust from his Vice President. But the world has no shortage of evil men, so he needed a stronger justification to send the country into a massive war.
In that respect, 9/11 justified the inevitable. It got the whole country so fired up for a fight that there was enough energy for more than one. So George W. Bush and his administration lied. They drew vague, imaginary connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, then they manufactured evidence of a weapons program that was even more of a fantasy. They manipulated the media, coerced false testimony, ignored voices of reason, and lied, and lied.
They got the country on board through any means necessary, and thrust us into a multi-trillion-dollar war without a plan for the fallout. As a result of that war, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have died, millions have been driven from their homes, the entire region has been destabilized, and ISIS formed and flourished in the vacuum of power. We are living in the world that George W. Bush's war created, and we are far worse for it, regardless of his "beliefs."
Is it even possible for someone with such a toxic legacy to earn our forgiveness? Someone who has caused so much misery and turmoil? We may never know… because George W. Bush has never apologized. Maybe all that pain he caused was the result of some mistaken beliefs on his part. Maybe his beliefs have evolved, and he regrets what he did. As of yet, he's given us no reason to suspect that he sees anything in his legacy that would require an apology. It seems unlikely that he will ever give the world that opportunity to forgive him, yet so many of us are already eager to forget what he's done. Will we do the same for Trump and his child concentration camps in another decade?
In a just world, we would leave aside any question of beliefs and put George W. Bush on trial for his crimes. But we don't live in a just world. We live in a world where powerful men rarely face real consequences for their crimes.
Luckily, there is a model for responding to this kind of injustice. if there's one lesson we can draw from the #metoo movement (apart from the basic reality of pervasive sexual assault…), it's that we don't have to wait around for a justice system that isn't on our side. The court of public opinion is fickle and dangerous, but sometimes it's the only tool we have to punish people who are otherwise untouchable. George W. Bush will never be tried at the Hague. The least we can do is shun and shame him. The least we can do is remember.
In her response, Ellen admonishes us to "be kind to everyone'' and accuses the world of forgetting that difference is okay. Has she truly forgotten that war crimes are not?