Some people are pointing to
photos of this celebrity or that celebrity
with Harry Weinstein
as proof that celebrity was okay
with his actions.
In an ideal world,
that might be the case
but this isn’t the ideal world.
In the REAL world,
we have to associate with the terrible people
in our industries
if we want to be successful.
We have to attend the industry party
a person we detest is also attending.
If they approach us,
we have to be ‘professional.’
If we aren’t professional,
that will likely be
the last industry party we attend.
We’ll be labeled difficult.
We are sometimes forced
to work with people
whose business practices we suspect
are shady.
If the only distributor to a big account
is ethics-challenged,
for example,
than we either work with that distributor
or we can kiss that big account good-bye.
We also sometimes voluntarily associate
with people we don’t yet realize are unethical.
Everyone makes mistakes.
This doesn’t mean we have to approve
of this other person’s/business’ actions.
This doesn’t mean we have to duplicate
these actions.
And when we become successful enough,
we can imprint OUR ethics onto our industry,
change our part of the world for the better.
Until then,
we WILL, unfortunately, have to deal
with some bad people/businesses.