Ellen DeGeneres' Ego Gets Wrecked After TV Return Rumors Ignite An Online Firestorm

As the legendary "Real Housewives of Orange County" fancy pants Heather Dubrow once waxed poetic, "if everyone says you're dead, it's time to lie down." Sadly, it appears that controversial comedian and television personality Ellen DeGeneres is learning that particular sentiment the hard way. On September 11, the National Enquirer reported that DeGeneres is finally facing the music that her career as an entertainer is really dunzo.

A source exclusively told the tabloid news outlet that DeGeneres had been burning the midnight oil at her U.K. home, devising a plan to revive her old career. "The whole point of Ellen going to the U.K. was to let the dust settle on the bullying scandal. Her goal has always been to make a comeback. She's just been waiting for enough time to pass," the source claimed about the real reason behind DeGeneres' jarring U.K. transformation. 

According to the source, DeGeneres was initially "feeling quietly confident" about her foray back into the public eye. But that all came crashing down once a former staffer of hers came forward with all-new claims of workplace bullying. "This has ignited the whole scandal again and it's hit Ellen like a ton of bricks. She's smart enough to know it's a huge turnoff for anyone wanting to hire her. Ellen's now facing the harsh reality that she's never going to rebuild her reputation. Someone always seems to come crawling out the woodwork to dredge up the past," the source revealed.

In August, a former cameraman for Ellen DeGeneres' famous talk show came forward to the Daily Mail and gave his own anonymous, firsthand account of Ellen DeGeneres' workplace bullying, including her distaste for male employees and a general lack of regard for any of her staff. "We went through a lot of male employees just in general,' the source told the British tabloid. "We had a feeling she really didn't like guys,' he added. But that's not all. The former DeGeneres staffer even went as far as to suggest that DeGeneres' marriage to Portia de Rossi was toxic behind closed doors and that it spilled over into the workplace. The staffer claimed that DeGeneres had a tendency to get angry if employees were "caught in conversation with Portia" when she visited on set. He added, "You just hoped and prayed you weren't seated by her wife, so you didn't get her attention."

Perhaps the most egregious allegation, however, was that DeGeneres asked a producer to reschedule their ailing child's medical procedure. "The kid had a major surgery — like a bone marrow transplant," the source said. "It was asked of this particular person if the kid's 'thing' — that's what they referred to it as — was the same week as the Christmas holiday week." In the end, DeGeneres got her way. "They were there on the day of the taping that week ... It was all loyalty to the show, but no loyalty to staff," the former staffer recalled.