When some movie and TV stars pleaded with people to not look at photos hacked from their personal email I thought, you doth protest too much. What are you, a famous person, doing uploading naked pictures to the cloud? The cloud is for storing and for sharing. The cloud is not safe. It’s as thin as a cloud.Â
After an embarrassing incident many, many years ago when I sent a disparaging email TO the person I was being disparaging about, I began to treat all emails as public. Oh I break that soft rule from time to time but only with certain people I’d trust with my life. Otherwise, you can end up like the bloated, overpaid and arrogant executives at Sony Entertainment, whose emails were hacked last week. The hacking is reportedly in retaliation for the upcoming film, The Interview, a comedy in which journalists played by Seth Rogan and James Franco are picked to assassinate Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The unstable dictator has called the movie an act of war, and claims this hacking is the first salvo. Well played, brush-cut nutbar, well played.
I won’t repeat the racist remarks about President Obama that Sony executive Amy Pascal exchanged with producer Scott Rudin, but both have apologized. A photo went viral of Angelina Jolie confronting Pascal, after it was revealed that Pascal had written the actress was a “spoiled brat”. But the BEST leaks come from the stars themselves. Â Who knew that George Clooney was so insecure? Â He apologized for the failure of his movie, The Monuments Men, said he hadn’t slept in 30 hours and admitted that he had “lost touch” with what audiences want. One executive called comedian Kevin Hart a whore. And they considered taking legal action against Bill Murray for his refusal to do another Ghostbusters movie. They complain about each other to each other, about Steven Spielberg, Aaron Sorkin, Adam Sandler and the list goes on and on. These aren’t just juicy revelations about Hollywood. Â They’re a peek inside a multi-billion dollar corporation, to the backward, mean-spirited and petty behavior of those in power. They make and break careers and they’re just awful people. I hope it scares others in their ivory towers to clean up their acts. It’s despicable.