CEO Shaming

There’s a pervasive and somewhat disturbing trend sweeping our society today. It’s called shaming. Nearly anyone is fair game: fat people, skinny people, bad spouses, even pets that have accidents on upholstery.

I’m not sure what the purpose of this is. Sometimes, I admit, it’s done in jest. Other times, it’s clearly being done to be mean and hurtful. With all the social media outlets today, shaming someone is quick and easy and very public.

If someone is overweight, will shaming them change their behavior? Isn’t someone’s weight between that person and their physician?

Even sillier is the shaming of pets. Can they read those shaming signs? Do you know of any dogs on Twitter? How are dogs to know the difference between grass and carpet? Yet I have to admit, some of the shaming pet photos I’ve seen are pretty hilarious.

If we are going to shame a group of people, why not shame those truly worthy of scorn? Like CEOs, specifically those head honchoes who lay off thousands of workers while pulling down seven-figure salaries. Or those whose companies were bailed out by taxpayers yet still rake in million-dollar bonuses.

Something like this:

“I’d laid off 2,000 workers yet I still get paid $7 million a year. What a country!”

“Taxpayers bailed out my flailing company. I kept my job and got a bonus of $5 million!”

“My firm went bankrupt. Do I care? Nah, I got a multi-million-dollar golden parachute.”

You get my drift. Perhaps the most absurd incantation of this “Let them eat cake” mindset was the CEO who argued that rich people were in danger of being attacked by the lowly masses stirred up by the Occupy Wall Street movement. He even went so far as to compare his plight to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

He was, of course, rightly slammed for his views. Let’s put aside the distasteful and reprehensible comparison to the Holocaust, which isn’t even worthy of comment, but how can he be afraid of the rather toothless Occupy Wall Street gang? That movement was started by privileged white kids upset because they couldn’t get a six-figure job right out of college and Daddy turned off the cash funnel. Haven’t heard much from that crowd lately have we? Well, it’s probably because with the stock market doing a bit better, those spoiled toffs have gotten their big fat paychecks and urban lofts. They never really cared about the millions of long-term unemployed or those struggling to make ends meet on ever-shrinking wages.

So if we are going to shame people, let’s call out those who are behaving in truly appalling ways. But how can you shame someone who has no sense of shame?