At this point, there’s pretty much nothing that would surprise me when it comes to people of status or man-children who filled their diapers all the way to the Oval Office committing heinous acts. In this desperately needed wave of revelations, we’ve seen so many awful people go down in flames that it’s hard not to act like we’ll all just be learning about a new monster each and every day from here on out.
But I will say this: if we ever find out Tom Hanks is a sexual deviant or a dog butcher or has been secretly paying Pizzagate truthers, I will instantly lose control of my bowels, forget everything I know, and instinctively run to the nearest forest to begin a new, simpler life as a feral creature, free from constant agony we as a society have constructed for ourselves.
I’ll tell you right now – I just wouldn’t be able to handle it. With these other celebrities who have been outed as monsters – Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Charlie Sheen…Steven Seagal…and on and on and on – it never took extensive mental gymnastics to wrap my head around it once the news broke. Deep down, it made horrific sense. I wasn’t straining to see them for the garbage they were.
But if I wake up one day to read that Tom Hanks has been groping people for thirty years, that would be like waking up to read that my own butthole was running for governor. It would never…could never…compute. I, like so many people, see Tom Hanks in such a non-threatening light that, without being hyperbolic about it, his downfall would shatter the very stability of humanity as a whole. I’m not saying the guy is a saint because I have seen The Circle, but is it too much to ask that he simply respects other people? If we can’t expect Tom Hanks to do it, what hope do the rest of us have?
So look, if we do one day find out that Tom Hanks has been a white supremacist this whole time, don’t fight the feeling. Join me in the woods where we’ll live free, nestled in the bosom of nature’s beautiful bounty. That is, until we begin putting squirrels on a pedestal and it’s eventually revealed that everyone’s favorite squirrel in the forest has been molesting all the other squirrels freely for years because he held all of the nuts, berries, and power.
Then we’ll all just have to become C.H.U.D.s.