Some people deserve a little public shame

There’s a book called So You’ve Been Publically Shamed and I read an interview where the author implies that people are too hard on public figures who have transgressed. I sort of agree. I think people who commit Tweet Crimes — posting something dumb on Twitter — sometimes don’t deserve outrage to the point of hysteria. However, I do think someone like Brian Williams deserves some shame. Williams’ fall from grace was not the fault of some overzealous social media witch hunt; it was the fault of a man working in a profession that places a premium on trust who lied his face off for years while parlaying his fame into smirking guest spots on every comedy show on NBC.

Anyhoo, there are a few people in the public eye who I think deserve a soupcon of shame. One of these is the Australian food blogger (maybe I can sound more impressive if I brand myself “American TV recap and comics trivia blogger”) Belle Gibson. She falsely claimed to have cancer that her healthy eating had cured and made some money in apps and a cookbook based on her healthy eating.

There’s an interview with Gibson in Australia Women’s Weekly. In it, she says, "I don't want forgiveness. I just think [speaking out] was the responsible thing to do. Above anything, I would like people to say, 'Okay, she's human.'" No, the responsible thing to do would be not pretending to have cancer and profiting off that in the first place. She’s human but she’s also a lying asshole.

The headline of this interview reads “My Life-Long Struggle With the Truth,” which is what really pissed me off. I don’t know if the magazine or Gibson is framing her story as a struggle but this is not some disease of honesty this woman was beset with. She is GD liar who made money off faking a horrible disease. This kind of hoax just bothers me because plenty of otherwise rational people, vulnerable and desperate to do anything to cure their cancer, probably believed this woman’s nonsense about beating brain cancer through avoiding gluten and dairy.

It seems like there are a lot of these people selling snake oil. You can see the red flags when health experts talk about “toxins” without being specific as to what these toxins are. My kidneys are working so I think I’ll skip your miracle clam juice and barley cleanse, thanks. My favorite is the Food Babe, who rails against any chemical (did you know there is cyanide in apple seeds?!) and seems like a person who would be on the streets protesting against the presence of dihydrogen monoxide in baby food. This is the person who was appalled that they don’t use 100 percent oxygen in airplane cabins. There’s some nitrogen in there! (I’d add a “GASP!” but I don’t want to breathe in anything that’s not pure oxygen.) This is the person people are taking health advice from.

By the way, buy my new book, How My Gluten-Free Paleo/Vegan Diet Helped Me Look Younger and Cured My Sickle Cell Anemia.