r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 12h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/mirromirromirro 10h ago

It’s crazy to me as an American how clean his reputation was before he died. He just looks like an unsavory, lascivious character.

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u/Parish87 10h ago

People knew, which compounded the issue of Saville even further. The cover up was massive.

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u/meteda1080 8h ago

The BBC and the British government helped cover up his crimes. John Rotten from the Sex Pistols called out Saville in an pre-recorded interview that was censored and he was blacklisted by the media and banned from BBC.

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u/Typical_logistics 6h ago

The government was paying Savile to front major public safety campaigns at the exact time the BBC blacklisted Lydon. The state propped him up as a civic role model while silencing the punk scene for pointing out the rumors.

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u/MGD109 1h ago

The BBC never blacklisted Lydon, he was on his radio show with the very week after the interview. He wasn't fired till years later, and that was entirely down to his own antics.

Lydon never called out Saville, you can listen to the interview its on youtube, he makes absolutely no accusations, and moments earlier he was talking about how he would love to kill Mick Jagger.

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u/jsting 5h ago

Margaret Thatcher doesn't get enough hate.

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u/negativeyoda 2h ago

Johnny Rotten Also fits this prompt. Anti establishment, pioneering punk front man who has the balls to say this knowing what would happen and now he's a MAGA bootlicker who celebrated Thatcher when she died

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u/MGD109 1h ago

Nah, Lydon is a 24 karat fraud. He never called out Saville, he just lied about it years later to cover up for his own controversies.

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u/Annath0901 1h ago

How on Earth does one shit on Jimmy Saville while praising Thatcher?

Saville was literally her accomplice. She used him to politically launder defunding public works by having him do "fundraisers", to get private enterprise to pay for what the government no longer did (while he skimmed richly off the top).

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u/MGD109 1h ago

John Rotten from the Sex Pistols called out Saville in an pre-recorded interview that was censored and he was blacklisted by the media and banned from BBC.

No he didn't, he just claimed he was. He was back on his show the very next week without interruption and did regular pieces with the BBC over the years.

Lydon never called out Saville, he just lied about it and people soak it up, even though the so called interview is on Youtube for all to hear.

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u/castle_lager_lover 3h ago

Was Lydon not Rotten.

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u/HelloMegaphone 2h ago

They're.....the same person

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u/narsfweasels 8h ago

One name: Esther Rantzen.

And what was worse? She was known as an absolute tyrant at the BBC.

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u/Plastic_Truth3053 7h ago

Jenny Murray was awful to work with apparently, yet all that never came out

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u/Sad-Artichoke-2174 9h ago

That's awful

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u/dongeckoj 9h ago

Yep the entire monarchy is basically a pedophile protection racket at this point, but you can’t really criticize it without being attacked by the far-right monarchist press, so…

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u/7tindar 9h ago

This explains a lot of the Andrew-formerly-known-as-prince's attitude during his scandal. He was raised to look up to men like lord Mountbatten, so we was flabbergasted when he got in trouble. That's not how this is supposed to work, he's supposed to be protected!

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u/dustycanuck 9h ago

Is Randy Andy oblivious to the fact that Lord Mountbatten did, in fact, get into trouble?

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u/7tindar 9h ago

Troubles, if you will.

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u/Atlientt 8h ago

13 gone but not forgotten, we got 18 and Mountbatten.

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u/TearOpenTheVault 7h ago

* And an unrelated crewmember, an in-law, and Mountbatten’s grandson.

They leave that bit out the rhyme for some reason.

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u/Atlientt 5h ago

Doesn’t have the same ring to it, ya know?

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u/minidazzler1 7h ago

One of my favourite rhymes.

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u/Tabulldog98 7h ago

Remember Kincora!!!

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u/No-Inspector8315 8h ago

Yeah Andrew is an idiot who thought that he could do whatever he liked because he was Mummy’s special boy

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u/NorthernSpankMonkey 2h ago

Mummy’s special boy

Imotep?

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u/Arbiter_89 7h ago edited 4h ago

It wasn't just the monarchy. Thatcher loved him because he made Thatcherism seem viable.

Thatcher wanted to reduce government spending on healthcare, and suggested that people who valued it would donate to cover the difference. Saville led MANY multi-million pound donation events to save british hospitals, which would have been seen as very noble if he didn't also have an apartment in one of the mental hospitals where he regularly assaulted vulerable people.

There's no way people at that hospital didn't know what was happening in Saville's apartment that was literally in the hospital.

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u/P-Rickles 7h ago

Good thing we don’t have to deal with anything like that here in America! /s

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u/letuswatchtvinpeace 5h ago

Well, they are in on it as well and people should stop giving them money so they exist, they should be shut down

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u/Kozeyekan_ 7h ago

I'd be OK with letting the hammer fall on all who knew and did nothing. If they enabled his heinous acts, they're partly responsible for them too.

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u/video-kid 8h ago

He always came across as creepy to a lot of people, there's a lot of stories about people almost instinctively protecting their kids and getting bad vibes when they met him. He was that level of creepy where it was too easy to pass off as eccentric.

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u/This_Charmless_Man 8h ago

Mum grew up near Broadmoor and it was known that you steered clear of Saville and that he was doing rotten stuff at the asylum.

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u/sundance464 6h ago

My foreign friend worked in a restaurant when he just came strolling into the kitchen

The foreigners all immediately went "who the fuck is this pervert, fuck off" while the British folks fawned over him which says something

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u/Conscious_Pipe_605 7h ago

There's a reason modern propoganda classes still teach the techniques of Goebbels and the Nazis propaganda dept. They were able to sell absolute horrible things to 1/3 of their masses (and several other international citizens) with a few film clips spread in masse. And a lot of terrible people learned from the Nazis have used to those techniques to get the public on their side.

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u/Aidian 5h ago

That “1/3 turned into supporters of atrocity and another 1/3 turned apathetic/defeatist enough to not engage” pattern sure does seem prevalent.

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u/BLT_Trade_r 1h ago

People are diverse in all things, including emotional intelligence and what attracts them. Kenneth Copeland is another example. The guy creeps me out, and I find him phony and cringe. I cannot imagine how anyone is crazy or stupid enough to believe in him, yet he is one of the most popular preachers in the USA. People donate so much money to him that he is obscenely rich.

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u/OldClothes9618 50m ago

Even in the Bible, the false prophets of the old testament were always popular with the people while the prophets warning of judgement were killed and imprisoned

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u/BLT_Trade_r 25m ago

That's another trope in religion, the belief that you are always the one who is smarter and the victim/underdog, you see the truth others do not. It's just another manipulation, in part because all new religions start small, and they need an explanation for why you should believe them and not the established players. How do you justify that you are not the cult? Easily, you tell them that some deity said you are not, and they will do all these predictable things to stop you. When they do those predictable things, it feels like the religion is true because they predicted it would happen. The real beauty of the manipulation is that it works so well on humans, for instance, even in the US, where the majority is white Christian, they still believe they are victims being repressed by some mysterious, super-powerful, evil people. They often say, well, they are not true Christians to groups such as Hispanics or Africans, who are far more Christian than the average American. Those ones are lawbreakers or believe in wrong stuff!

Just to put it in perspective, even when Christians stopped being the minority and were a well-established majority with all the power and money, they were still babbling about the false prophets and used that to their economic advantage to destroy other groups. They called them "heretics"

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u/Weed_O_Whirler 1h ago

I worked with a guy who gave me "he's slightly off" vibes. But whenever a woman worked with him, they'd come out and say "there's something wrong with that guy." I wrote it off as "he's an awkward engineer" until one week he didn't come to work, or call in sick. We finally went to his house to see if he was OK. His wife answered the door. Let us know he was caught in an FBI child porn sting.

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u/Kelsiersdaggers 8h ago

Uh, his reputation was far from “clean”. Christ Louis Theroux even asked him if he was a nonce to his face.

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u/Charlie_Warlie 4h ago

True, I never knew him when he was alive but watched a documentary on him recently, and one of his most common jokes during interviews was about spending the night with young ladies, and angering their fathers. It was always a cheeky joke though, or attempted to play off that way.

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u/Kelsiersdaggers 4h ago

Yeah. It was part of his schtick to muddy the waters I think. But it was definitely known before his death.

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u/thebeardedcats 2h ago

Didn’t stop hospitals from giving him his own room in the young girls ward though

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u/Kelsiersdaggers 2h ago

No, no it didn’t. BUT staff did speak out about and were reprimanded. So there’s that.

He was also put in charge of his own mental hospital at one point. So that’s nice.

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u/FaxCelestis 3h ago

Louis Theroux is fearless

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u/Kelsiersdaggers 2h ago

To be fair, this was one of his rare failures. Self admitted. He was taken in by saville and didn’t press him hard enough. Even posted a tribute when he died.

After everything started coming out he released a follow up that was quite critical of how he’d handled it.

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u/rgiggs11 9h ago

The most famous biography of him is called "In Plain Sight"

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u/BriefausdemGeist 8h ago

The Penn State coach scandal is the most directly comparable, I think

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u/artnelson90 7h ago

Or Larry Nassar

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u/TeacherPatti 8h ago

I'm so embarrassed to say that I had no idea who he was until the 28 Years Later movie. I looked him up and EW. What a freakshow.

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u/Coffee_And_Bikes 8h ago

Listen to the “Behind the Bastards” podcast episodes about him for even more “EW”. “Disgusting” doesn’t even begin to describe him.

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u/confused_ape 7h ago

I met him once on a cliff top near Bridlington, he was a creepy little fuck. Anyone who claims they didn't know is either lying or never spoke to him.

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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy 9h ago

Yeah I always thought he was like a Mr Rogers kind of character but he looks like a discount English Ric Flair.

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u/donald_trub 5h ago

I mean, Michael Jackson is probably a good parallel to draw here. You also have a known pedo sitting in the white house.

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u/ohyouretough 5h ago

Has MJ even been proven to be a pedophile? Last I heard I thought the few accusers he had were a bit dodgy and seemed to only want money? Also with the scale of jimmy I’d say it’s more trump.

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u/daftcockneytwat 6h ago

His reputation wasn't clean. It's baffling how he got away with so much considering people knew he was dodgy, not that people had any idea how dodgy.

When he died you could go look at his coffin like the queen.

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u/kerc 5h ago

Behind the Bastards did a really good short series on him.

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u/Hefty_Tip7383 7h ago

He wasn’t clean in most eyes - he was just ‘honoured’ by a part of the establishment because:
It’s what they thought people wanted/ they should do
It would be a way if pushing the rumours under the rug

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u/Brassens71 6h ago

Exactly. I only saw him a couple of times on Have I Got News For You (I like news quiz shows), and he seemed like a complete scumbag from beginning to end.

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u/ShiroHachiRoku 5h ago

Thatcher knew but said nothing.

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u/heartisallwehave 3h ago

I had never heard of Jimmy Saville until the doc came out, and watching him speak in interviews… he was constantly alluding or admitting to his crimes with that smug look on his face. Reminds me of Trump tbh. It’s no fun getting away with all that stuff if no one knows you’re getting away with it.

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u/StonedLonerIrl 3h ago

To be fair that's how most elderly British men look though.

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u/addamee 2h ago

Every time I see his picture I’m reminded of the unhinged dude in The Bodyguard who they originally suspected was stalking Rachel

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u/ztomiczombie 2h ago

As someone who was born just a bit to late to see him on TV and only know him form clips that would be shown on other show, most often the kid who when to the holy land, he always looked really creepy to me too.

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u/Valentinee105 2h ago

It was the Harvey Weinstein problem, they knew but turned a blind eye. And people that spoke out were made to look crazy.

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u/hikam1 2h ago

Mate it's ridiculous, my mum and siblings all wrote to him. My nan STILL TO THIS DAY believes it was a bunch of lies sent in by women years later. Honestly baffles me sometimes.

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u/alexjaness 1h ago

There were stories of people handwaving it away as him liking them young as early as the '50s. Do you know how fucking wild you had to be to get that kind of reputation in the 50's?

That would be like getting a reputation in 1860 in the Antebellum South as being a bit racist.

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u/Snoo_97207 1h ago

It's honestly insane to me as a younger brit, he looked like a pedophile

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u/benneladoo 9h ago

Wait till you read how BBC suppressed the presence of "asian grooming gangs" for decades because they didn't want to look "racists" while 1000s of girls suffered 

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 9h ago

You are projecting your knowledge onto his looks. No one at the time thought he looked like an "unsavory, lascivious character", whatever that means. We judge people by their character, not by their looks.

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u/parnaoia 9h ago

you gotta be kidding or not know anything about his public perception during his life. His looks and public persona were a carefully built cover of "lovable weirdo" or "funny horndog" that distracted from the odious acts he was commiting on children.

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 8h ago

And what has that to do with his looks?

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u/NarrativeNode 8h ago

There are two different kinds of "looks". The ones you can't do anything about, which we shouldn't be judging, and the ones you absolutely can. The dude couldn't have tried any harder to look like what he was inside.

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 7h ago

Is your claim that anyone with unkempt hair is a pedophile? Or that anyone who is a pedophile has unkempt hair?

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u/NarrativeNode 7h ago

Chill out there, Socrates.

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u/fj2612 9h ago edited 7h ago

There are archives of his shows where he actually gropes underage girls. Looking at it from abroad, it's astonishing how people acted like he wasn't a creep.

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 8h ago

Can you explain how that is related to his looks?

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u/Moosiemookmook 8h ago

Everyone thought he bonked his mother's corpse after he sat vigil with her when she died. He was obsessed with her and was alone with her corpse for days. Kept her room a shrine. Openly spoke about it. He was a dirty codger and yeah we all knew he was a pervy old man.

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 8h ago

And did you glean this information by his looks?

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u/Moosiemookmook 8h ago

Uh yeah. Have you seen his head? He looked weird and his hair was often unkept. The vile gold teeth, the way he held his mouth etc. He looked creepy and the rumours stemmed from it and were believable BECAUSE we already found his looks creepy and dirty.

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 8h ago

Is your claim that anyone who is weird or has unkept hair is a pedophile? Or that all pedophiles look ugly? I am baffled by this nonsense response.

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u/Moosiemookmook 8h ago

Would you like me to grab your soapbox to help you down from your high horse?

You know what I said. Stop being so obtuse. Doth protest too much and all that.

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u/BharatiyaNagarik 7h ago

I have no idea what you said. Please try to be coherent.

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u/Moosiemookmook 7h ago

Sorry I dont speak relentless-wanker. This is getting both awkward and boring.

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u/DoctorMittensPHD 8h ago

Right and Saville fails in that metric as well soooooo

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u/youhavenosoul 8h ago

And we can see that it led you astray. His character was worse than his looks, what are you saying??