A douchebag-rich environment

Last week there was some sweet, sweet news coming from the ad agency world.

A Big Wig, a Mucketty Muck, a gasbag of a man who shrouded himself in black, lounged gleefully at $1000 a night hotels and took home more money in a year than 100 ad agency employees who actually work in the business take home in 10, found himself getting pounded by the big, thorny, ugly stick of justice.

The LoveMark™ man, Kevin Roberts, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, was quoted in an interview,

"...the fucking debate over gender equality in this industry is over."

With that you could hear the collective inhalation of a million XX chromosome-bearing media planners, art directors, and account supervisors, collectively stopping in their tracks,

"Oh no you din't."

I live in a home full of women. My dog is an old lady. I have two daughters. And my wife has three sisters. Sometimes, there's so much estrogen in the house I think I'm getting a contact high and growing man boobs.

So I know what it's like to incur wrath of the feminine variety. But in Kevin's case the fallout was unusually fast. And it was furious.

The Chairman of Publicis, Maurice Levy, had no love for the LoveMark™ man and put him on leave within hours. But an obscenely paid suspension would not be enough for the torches and pitchfork crowd, who took to social media and made it clear that Kev had to fill out his last creatively imagined timesheet.

And so, the man who had given so much to advertising and cemented his legacy with such stellar work as...I'm trying to remember what he did...I can't find his name on any campaign...I've now looked through 20 annuals and One Show Books...someone help me out here...

Well, he's gone.

All this, on the recent heels of the Gustavo Martinez scandal.

Surely you haven't forgotten about this Jew-hating CEO of J. Walter Thompson, who was also brought down by his jokes about rape and a pending lawsuit from a woman who could no longer work in a hostile environment.

Clearly, I am taking great delight in the demise of these two colossal douchebags.

Frankly, it's nice to see tone-deaf, ignorant, Peter-Principled money grubbing C-Suiters get their due.

It would have been even nicer had the Karma Train been somewhere in the vicinity of my career when I was a staff guy. Because, and I'm not naming names (see Official RoundSeveneteen Policy #38) I have been in the company of head honchos and agency poobahs who have said worse and done worse.

Much, much worse.

In fact, if I were to do a comparison -- and I have no reason not to -- the can't-keep-their-pants-on-clowns I worked with, and grudgingly worked for, make the minor league antics of Kevin Roberts and Gustavo Martinez seem like a bunch of tea-totaling, Mensa-qualifying, Eagle Scout eunuchs.