I’ve had my small share of public humiliation, most of it coming my way in middle school and high school. I’ve gotten red in the face. I’ve walked away from a group of “friends” while trembling violently. But my “public” has always been restricted to about 50 or 75 people at the very, very most. I’ve never faced the scrutiny of thousands or millions. Certainly not of the entire world.
Nurse Jacintha Saldanha did face the laughter of the planet. And three days later she took her own life.
It was she who answered the British hospital’s telephone when a couple of goofball radio personalities from Australia called last week. They were pretending to be Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip checking up on Kate Middleton, the pregnant and under-the-weather Duchess of Cambridge. It was she who fell for the ruse, passing along the call to another nurse who provided the DJs with a few details about Kate’s condition—which they broadcast.
And the world laughed.
Jacintha did not, apparently.
We know little about exactly why Jacintha, a wife and mother of two teenagers, ended her life. But as reported by examiner.com, her family says she “died of shame.” A friend says she was, according to the New York Daily News, “devastated by the embarrassment.” And the timing of her actions does indeed hint at the very real possibility that her public humiliation had something to do with it.
Why?
Because the maelstrom of celebrity sensationalism that swirls around the royals in Britain and the rest of the world has reached a crescendo. It is inescapable. It is pervasive. And if one gets caught in it edgewise, it leaves very little room for maneuvering.
The now infamous prank call, of course, was inspired by that maelstrom. Without the storm of attention Kate Middleton’s pregnancy generated, there would be no need for such a call.
Nurse Saldanha’s suicide was likely a casualty of that attention, too. Surely the result would not have been the same if she had merely misconstrued a simple ordinary phone call from, say, a patient’s grandmother, and had routed it to the wrong wing or floor. No, this story is not about making a mistake. And it’s not even about what we all might think about shock jocks punking people over the phone. It’s about a culture that is obsessed with fame to the point of disease. With fortune to the point of craven covetousness. With celebrity of all sorts, be it royal or cinematic or athletic.
Some of us can glide through the maelstrom, even relishing it at times. Most of us enjoy brushing against celebrity. We tune in to see the seemingly endless vista of news trucks and photographers’ lights outside Kate’s rooms. We pile into stadiums to be a part of the Broncos’ Super Bowl bid. We plunk down stacks of cash to watch Taylor Swift in concert. The worst that seems to happen to us is that we get a head full of silly love songs and a stomach full of stadium snacks.
Others, though, can be horribly damaged by it, caught right in the middle of the ferment, as Jacintha was.
Writes Kent Sepkowitz for The Daily Beast:
This is not … yet another story about media hypocrisy as articulated by the media, but rather a scary reminder of just how unpredictable human behavior can be. By any account, Ms. Saldanha seemed a sturdy person. She had grown up in India and had worked as a nurse in London for 10 years or so with her husband, who also worked at the hospital.
So imagine for just a moment how you might feel if the entire world was pointing at you, laughing at you for falling for a practical joke. For making a mistake. For just trying to do your job.
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