John Skipper, former ESPN pres was/is coke-head, resigned over extortion by random dealer

quote:

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Skipper: They threatened me, and I understood immediately that threat put me and my family at risk, and this exposure would put my professional life at risk as well. I foreclosed that possibility by disclosing the details to my family, and then when I discussed it with Bob, he and I agreed that I had placed the company in an untenable position and as a result, I should resign.

JAM: Did you agree to resign because you understood that Bob couldn’t allow the company, by extension, to be threatened by whoever was extorting you?

Skipper: I did understand that.

JAM: Were you also concerned that the company might wind up being in a position of having to defend your actions, or any behavior that accompanied or resulted from your drug use?

Skipper: That did occur to me. Look, it was inappropriate for the president of ESPN and an officer of The Walt Disney Co. to be associated in any way with any of this. I do want to make it clear, however, that anything I did in this regard, and anything else resulting from this, was a personal problem. My drug use never had any professional repercussions, but I still have profound regret. I accept that the consequences of my actions are my responsibility and have been appropriate. I also have to accept that I used very poor judgment.

JAM: Poor judgment, meaning that it sounds like on a particular night, you couldn’t rely on the secret world you had created and threw caution out the window by buying from a strange source.

Skipper: That, and of course the usage itself.


JAM: I guess this also explains why you had never before thought about resigning.

Skipper: I acted very foolishly. It made me want to seek help and get this out of my life.

JAM: Forgive me, John, but I can’t help thinking now about when someone was attempting to extort David Letterman with information that he had had an affair with a staff member. Dave took the step of going on the air and disclosing that it was indeed true, adding that in doing so he was hoping to protect his job. When you found out you were being threatened, was there a part of you that wanted to go to Bob and say, “Look, I’m being threatened concerning a purchase of cocaine. I’m going to tell you right now, I did buy cocaine. I do not use it at work, I’ve never been affected by it at work, and this has forced me to admit I have a problem. I love my job, this company, and its employees, and I respectfully ask for a leave to seek treatment and I will return as soon as possible.”

Skipper: I wish that had been the outcome. I didn’t ask for that outcome, though. I was overwhelmed by the circumstance. I simply just disclosed the facts, and it became clear in my conversation with Bob what I needed to do. Everything happened very quickly.


JAM: Let’s deconstruct this a bit more, please. Because you never used at work, because people at work didn’t see any of the vestiges of this issue, were you able to then further compartmentalize your behavior? As opposed to if it had manifested itself at work, then you might have had to adopt a totally different approach to it. Like, you had somehow been able to separate and rationalize the usage because you still felt like you were doing your job?

Skipper: (Laughs.) That, my friend, is an astute question, and the answer is yes. In order to do what I did you have to be a master of compartmentalization. Which is why people are going, “I don’t understand this.” Because they have the belief that they can recognize someone who has a problem. Because it “has to” manifest itself. And I did a very good job of not letting it manifest itself, with the exception — and this part is another piece of the part that I let myself down and I did not hold myself to the standard I should have, which is, in order to compartmentalize you have to deceive yourself and deceive other people. And that’s not who I want to be, and I think that has to be part of my rehabilitation.

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