Has Johnny Depp’s Public Persecution Taught us Nothing?
By: Robert Turner
Tags: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, Culture, Society, Women

Has Johnny Depp’s Public Persecution Taught us Nothing?

Amber Heard is the next victim of the public’s moral outrage

Image0Johan Shmidt/JSP/CC

Johnny Depp nearly had his life and his career destroyed because of lies. Lies that Amber Heard knowingly, with forethought and malice chose to create. A fiction that nearly destroyed a life and that we, the public, bought into.

Now the roles are reversed. The truth, as it has an uncomfortable way of doing, will out. Its emergence in this instance has been orchestrated, skillfully and with unyielding and relentless effort, by Depp’s attorney, Adam Waldman.

Heard is guilty. Her own actions and words have painted her as a disturbed individual, a pathological and manipulative liar whose desire for fame and its trappings may have provided her with motive. Who knows, deep down inside, what really drives us?

Crucially, now that Heard has been exposed for the world to see, we need to take a step back. Allow the wheels of justice to run their course. If not, then we’ve learned nothing and continue to perpetuate the disgusting and morally reprehensible actions of those that condemned Johnny Depp.

If we do not take a step back now, then it is no longer about seeking justice. Then it becomes about shaming, about joining the throng of village idiots and picking up a stone to pelt the harlot.

There is safety in numbers and it takes a willful act of courage and principle to step back, to drop the stone, and to move on.

Personally, the saga of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has come to a close for me. Although I may still from time to time attempt to chronicle events in the life of Mr Depp, I believe no further good can come from pursuing this particular matter in the court of public opinion. In fact, exactly the opposite.

It’s is my sincere hope that Depp’s followers choose to emulate this. They have proven themselves loyal and worthy representatives of Johnny Depp. To engage now in further public persecution would be disrespectful to both the man and themselves. He doesn’t strike me as the vindictive type.

The Deppheads, as his supporters are popularly known, are better than this. I know many personally and have developed friendships with some over the course of the last few months. They are better than their enemies and now, as a final act of humanity and support for Depp, it is my hope they choose to exercise restraint.

Their efforts to secure justice and expose the truth have been heroic and they have done both Depp and themselves proud. Now it is time to celebrate his future and allow the past to die a well deserved death.

Leave the work of decimating the wounded to the professional vultures. Allow the press to pick the meat from the bones. It is what they specialize in.

In Heard’s case they’ve waited, for various reasons, political and otherwise but the mood has shifted. Gradually, imperceptibly, it has been nudged, by both Depp’s supporters and Waldman.

In terms of the media, they have no moral watchdog other than their own questionable ethics and the pursuit and public destruction of people they identify as easy targets and as we all know, vultures operate in flocks.

Amber Heard is now one of these targets and as she is abandoned by her protective wall of powerful and influential friends, the press will assume they have carte blanche.

They don’t, it’s a human life, but that’s never stood in their way before.

As a footnote, to any journalists that happen upon this, a parting thought. There isn’t of late much discernible difference between your articles and the often baseless and emotive driven drivel to be found on social media.

From a distance, one would be forgiven for thinking you’d both been birthed by the same mother.

You know of course the founding principles of journalism – yes, you have a creed, google it – are to report only the facts. Not to embellish on these, provide personal opinion or engage in rumor mongering.

A little compassion for your fellow human being never goes amiss either.