How Showbiz Makes Monsters
How Showbiz Makes MonstersDiddy is the latest worst-case example. But our business continues to fawn over the powerful who make on-screen terror look amateur
The monsters keep coming. This month, we’ve got hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, 54, on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution in federal court. His, shall we say, volatile personality has been on public display for years now, most recently captured on resurfaced security-cam footage attacking his girlfriend Cassie in a hotel corridor. Yet, he was treated as a captain of the industry, time and again, by its leaders. From Variety in 2019, as told by lawyer Ben Meiselas, whose father Kenny Meiselas represented Diddy for 20 years through music/Hollywood powerhouse Grubman, Shire, Meiselas & Sacks (the firm recently dropped Diddy):
Variety, ever intrepid, even solicited an ad from Diddy to congratulate Kenny Meiselas on his “Power of Law” honor. We know this because Kenny’s wife, publicist Beth Katz Meiselas, posted it on her social media, which is flooded with laudatory posts mentioning Diddy.
It didn’t exactly take an internet sleuth to know that Puffy wasn’t exactly the 9-to-5 type. He was arrested in 1999 following a disturbing nightclub gun incident with Jennifer Lopez. His long history of troubles include allegedly threatening his business partner with a baseball bat, failure to pay child support, and an alleged assault on a UCLA coach who cut his son from the team — and going further back, overseeing an event that resulted in a stampede that resulted in nine deaths (he was not criminally charged though civil lawsuits followed). What then do we make of WME’s intern program with client Diddy? ... Subscribe to The Ankler. to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of The Ankler. to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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