Or at least, you know, treated more fairly and respectfully?

Unless you subscribe to the extreme view that Robert DeNiro is an unreliable or unhinged narrator (which I doubt), there seemed to be an element of doubt or suspicion in that month-old financial grievance lawsuit with former employee Graham Chase Robinson. On the plaintiff’s part, I mean.

I’m presuming that DeNiro treated Robinson with insufficient respect or a lack of sensitivity from time to time, but many bosses are guilty of this. Not all but many. But you take your lumps and move on.

The term “abuse” or “abusive behavior” is thrown about fairly liberally these days. By today’s Millennial or Zoomer snowflake standards, it’s a very rare exception to the rule when a wealthy boss (celebrated or otherwise) doesn’t treat his or her veteran assistant with a certain degree of disregard or callousness. It’s not a desirable state of affairs, but it does seem to go with the rough and tumble.

By typical wokester sensitivity standards I, Jeffrey Wells, have been abused my whole life in one way or another, starting with my ostensibly brutal parents (when I was young I used to carry on internal debates about which one, mom or dad, was worse) and brusque grade school teachers and moving on from there. I’m not being facetious. I have been. I have the emotional scars and bruises to prove it.

On the other hand once you adopt the Everly Bros. or Linda Ronstadt attitude of “I’ve been cheated, been mistreated…I’ve been put down, I’ve been turned ‘round,” there’s no end to it.

Life is often abusive or hurtful in one way or another, at least to some degree. Do I wish that “abuse” was never visited upon poor poor pitiful me? Yes, I do wish that, but what else is new?