5 Beloved Childhood Celebs Who Are Secretly Awful
Nostalgia controls us all. We're tempted to worship celebs we watched as kids, just because they seemed cool back when our skulls were still fusing together. But it's time to smash those idols. Those favorite celebs of yours are trash, just like every other celeb.
Peyton Manning Was Accused Of Plopping His Balls On A Woman's Face
Peyton Manning is considered to be one of the best quarterbacks of all time, having spent a legendary 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts. But back in 1996, he was just a junior playing college ball for the University of Tennessee. He'd go on to tell a story about how one day back in the locker room at UT, he pulled down his pants to moon a teammate, Malcolm Saxon. He didn’t realize that a team doctor, Jamie Ann Naughright, was close enough to see his bare ass.
Don't Miss
Ha ha, funny story. But that's just the story the way Manning told it, and he was telling it when asked about an old lawsuit Naughright had filed against the university. According to Naughright, Manning instead pulled down his pants and sat on her face while she was trying to examine his foot. Backing her up is Malcolm Saxon, who said Manning never mooned him at all, and she went into detail about exactly what parts of the body he slammed on her face: "the gluteus maximus, the rectum" (we're guessing "anus" is the word she was looking for) "the testicles, and the area in between the testicles."
Huh, suddenly this sounds less like "mooning" and more like "sexual assault." Which is why Naughright didn't just throw this accusation out there with a bunch of other workplace grievances (like Manning would later claim) but filed a report with the city's Sexual Assault Crisis Center. The university ended up paying her a settlement, for that and other complaints, and they allegedly made her sign an NDA.
We probably never would have heard about any of this. But Manning went and wrote about the incident in his autobiography, calling it "mostly exaggerated" and saying Naughright should have expected this sort of thing since she had a "vulgar mouth." It was enough that Naughright sued for defamation, a judge said she had a case, and Manning agreed to settle. Other than that, though, Manning got away with it, and he went on to one of the most successful careers in NFL history. So, pretty standard path for an athletes accused of sexual misconduct.
Sign up for the Cracked Newsletter
Get the best of Cracked sent directly to your inbox!
Raven-Symoné's Racist Ramblings
Singer-songwriter and actress Raven-Symoné is a childhood favorite among many. Having starred in the immensely popular Disney Channel show That’s So Raven, Raven made a name for herself back in the early 2000s and has become something of a gay icon too. She also did a stint cohosting The View. One topic that came up there was racial biases towards ethnic-sounding names, and Raven said that she couldn’t hire a person named “Watermelondrea.”
After receiving backlash, Raven explained that, no, no one had misunderstood her: She was saying it's perfectly fine to discriminate against “ghetto sounding” names. It’s already bad that racists like to dunk on Black-sounding names, and that job applicants with ethnic-sounding names are far less likely to get employed. But Raven's comments came off as extra weird because (in case you didn't know, even after seeing the above photo) Raven herself is Black.
It doesn’t stop there though, as Raven went on to say a Black girl brutalized by a white cop was to blame and that Black kids should simply learn to obey the police. The department suspended that cop without pay, so even they thought what he did was wrong. But what do you expect from a celeb who spent a quarter of their life with the evil entity known as the Walt Disney Corporation?
Emma Roberts Was Arrested For Beating Her Boyfriend
Back in the day, Nickelodeon had a bunch of TV shows featuring child stars who would range from completely forgettable to Drake. It was an era of, as the kids might say, "hella cringe." Exhibit A: Emma Roberts. The main star of canceled show Unfabulous, Emma Roberts made a niche spot for herself in Hollywood but, outside of a few box office bombs and being the niece of Julia Roberts, didn’t amount to much else—besides being a shitty, abusive girlfriend.
In 2013, Emma Roberts was arrested, apparently for beating the shit out of her boyfriend at the time, Evan Peters. The incident took place at a hotel in Montreal, after neighbors reported a disturbance. Emma was taken into custody on the spot.
AMC
Peters didn't file charges, and the two ended up getting engaged and only broke up years later. They spoke together about the incident, calling it a domestic dispute that got out of control, and people got the impression that it must have been more of a two-way fight, and police just arrested her because Peters was the one with visible injuries. But given how, during these encounters, police generally assume the guy's the threat, you have to imagine the injuries had to pretty one-sided indeed for them to arrest her and not him. Especially since, again, this was a movie star and Julia Roberts' niece we're talking about here.
Mario Lopez's Comments On Trans Children
If you grew up in the '90s, you know Mario Lopez from his role as Slater on Saved By The Bell, and if you're growing up now, you might instead know him from his role as Coach Slater on the rebooted Saved By The Bell. You also might have caught a video of him sharing some transphobic views, which is even worse than his long track record of offending the world with those baby dimples.
In 2019, Mario Lopez did an interview with Candace Owens, and argued that when a trans kid says they're a girl or a boy, parents who support them are doing something dangerous. "I worry about the repercussions later on," he said (actually, it looks like doing the opposite has worse repercussions). "You don't know anything about sexuality, you're just a kid," he said (actually, gender identity is a whole separate thing from sexuality). They just seemed to be talking about gender expression rather than more permanent and controversial stuff like puberty blockers ... which, as it turns out, also do more good than harm; instead of causing depression like Owens suggests, they reduce chances of both mental health problems and suicide.
Lopez later called these comments of his "ignorant and insensitive," saying, "I now have a deeper understanding of how hurtful they were." But he has yet to apologize for those dimples, so he'd better not act like all is forgiven.
Shia LaBeouf Was Sued For Sexual Battery And More
Depending on how old you are, you might have grown up with Shia LaBeouf thanks to the Disney Channel show Even Stevens, or maybe you got to know him from the Transformers series. But did you happen to catch the news about him that came out in December 2020, with an ex suing him for all kinds of abuse? Maybe you didn't—it was a pretty stressful month for us all.
The milder of the incidents outlined by his ex-girlfriend, FKA Twigs, included a time she said he drove at crazy fast speeds down Los Angeles with her in the car, threatening to kill them both unless she agreed to love him. She begged him the entire time to stop the car, but LaBeouf continued to be a maniac. Other incidents had him choking her in the middle of the night, knowingly giving her an STD, and forcing her to sleep naked in his bed at gunpoint.
Shia denied the allegations, while also admitting mysteriously that "I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years." This is pretty cold indifference from a dude who was sexually assaulted at his own art gallery once, but victims can be abusers too.
A previous ex-girlfriend, Karolyn Pho, recounted similar incidents, such as when Shia once beat her and kept her pinned to her bed. Yikes. LaBeouf is no stranger to asshole behavior, as he had been arrested multiple times before in the past for various things, like assault, disorderly conduct, and more, with even video footage of him abusing ex-girlfriend Mia Goth in public. Shia is about as good at being an extremely weird artist as he is an immensely abusive shitstain.
Top image: Nickelodeon
