She's got it. By Jove she's got it! Putting scapegoating into the same classification as bullying is a genius solution. I say that because 40 years ago I was scapegoated right out of the only job I ever really enjoyed and only recently have I fully understood why it happened. Newsrooms are enormously inbred institutions and I slipped out of what was at one time a very good newsroom by forces that managed to ruin it by politicization. Only a clever wife who read the defense clearly and made me confront the fact that I was one and the folks who wanted my scalp were many and more adept at playing the emotion cards that seemed to make me a pariah.
This isn't a sob story. As I'm sure Nathalie Martinek understands, getting out of the toxic environment was by far the best thing that ever happened to me. Here I am, 80 years old and having the time of my life doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in the early 1980s. Two other journalists of a similar persuasion to mine didn't fare nearly as easily. One was suspended for six months for an imaginary infraction. He died of a heart attack before the suspension had run his course. The other took a demotion and died within a year of another heart attack. Both of them were in their forties.
Like I say, I am lucky. I was forewarned by another staffer that a new regime had announced to their faithful that I was their first target in a newsroom cleanout. I genially ducked the axe once, then slipped off the chopping block long enough to help my wife launch a career that made far more than either one of us would have earned alone. Win-Win. It was so cool, really. I have even lost my desire to sit down with the corporate power players who thought they were really jabbing me in the ass. That's cheap shit. I don't need it any more.
So thank you, Nathalie, for giving the world a new vocabulary to describe the things that can happen to what I will call "edge workers," those who don't fit within the boundaries of the cookie-cutter. We won't fit comfortably anywhere that puts an institution's interests above those of human beings.
PS to herself: I learned what composes the fourth leg of the Dark Triad and finding it answered several other questions I had. THX
She's got it. By Jove she's got it! Putting scapegoating into the same classification as bullying is a genius solution. I say that because 40 years ago I was scapegoated right out of the only job I ever really enjoyed and only recently have I fully understood why it happened. Newsrooms are enormously inbred institutions and I slipped out of what was at one time a very good newsroom by forces that managed to ruin it by politicization. Only a clever wife who read the defense clearly and made me confront the fact that I was one and the folks who wanted my scalp were many and more adept at playing the emotion cards that seemed to make me a pariah.
This isn't a sob story. As I'm sure Nathalie Martinek understands, getting out of the toxic environment was by far the best thing that ever happened to me. Here I am, 80 years old and having the time of my life doing exactly what I wanted to be doing in the early 1980s. Two other journalists of a similar persuasion to mine didn't fare nearly as easily. One was suspended for six months for an imaginary infraction. He died of a heart attack before the suspension had run his course. The other took a demotion and died within a year of another heart attack. Both of them were in their forties.
Like I say, I am lucky. I was forewarned by another staffer that a new regime had announced to their faithful that I was their first target in a newsroom cleanout. I genially ducked the axe once, then slipped off the chopping block long enough to help my wife launch a career that made far more than either one of us would have earned alone. Win-Win. It was so cool, really. I have even lost my desire to sit down with the corporate power players who thought they were really jabbing me in the ass. That's cheap shit. I don't need it any more.
So thank you, Nathalie, for giving the world a new vocabulary to describe the things that can happen to what I will call "edge workers," those who don't fit within the boundaries of the cookie-cutter. We won't fit comfortably anywhere that puts an institution's interests above those of human beings.
PS to herself: I learned what composes the fourth leg of the Dark Triad and finding it answered several other questions I had. THX
Such an accurate summary of the scapegoat experience.
Love this article and excellent interview! You are doing tremendous work to help people heal from and understand scapegoating.