People don’t matter to the entitled

What is it that causes guys like Bill O’Reilly and Bill Cosby, ostensibly bright and overly blessed with fame and fortune, to not just fall from grace, but crash to earth through scandalous behavior that leaves their lives in smoking ruins?

These are not stupid people, yet wounds mortal to their careers have all been self-inflicted.

To what can that be attributed? Surely, in these days of heightened sensitivities they had to have known it would be playing with fire to let desires subdue common sense.

Were their libidos simply beyond control?

Please. With their wealth they never had to be alone. What’s more, they probably didn’t even have to reach for their wallets to satisfy any appetite.

“When you’re famous in this country you become a status symbol for other people,” a frequent Boston headliner explains.

“It’s amazing. Women will give up their bodies just to be seen with you; if the men they’re with are special, that makes them special, too.

“Men play that game, too, only their way of doing it is to pick up the tab so they can tell friends they were drinking with you last night.”

No, the guessing here is that the thinking which doomed O’Reilly and Cosby probably went more like this: “I want what I want, and who I want, when I want it, because I’m me.”

It was a toxic sense of entitlement, nothing more.

This sounds like chump change now, but back in 1972 when the newly formed World Hockey Association was raiding NHL rosters, the WHA’s Philadelphia Blazers wooed Bruins star Derek Sanderson with a package worth $2.65 million.

“It was ridiculous,” Sanderson said at the time.

“I was a phenomenon, that’s all. I was no Bobby Orr, no Hall of Famer, yet here’s this contract saying I’d have a car and a driver and a two-room suite on the road, and no one could be traded without my permission.

“It was crazy, but I felt I had to show it to Mr. Adams.”

Weston W. Adams Sr., the owner of the Bruins, shook his head in dismay, then looked at Sanderson.

“You have to take it, Derek,” he said.

“But I’m afraid it will destroy you. People won’t matter to you anymore because you’ll be able to buy anything you want.”

All these years later that line still echoes here: “People won’t matter to you anymore.”

Oh, was Adams right, which is the real reason O’Reilly and Cosby are in hot water today.