Why are we so willing to forgive celebrities? Is it simply because they’re famous? We always seem to give them a level of benefit of a doubt that normal people don’t get.
Swear to God, I was at the gym last night, bopping and flailing along on the elliptical machine, and I was flipping through TV channels. Normally I watch Jeopardy!, but I worked a little late yesterday and sadly missed the new Jeopardy! episode. Anyway, I was flipping through the channels and E! News was yelling “BREAKING NEWS!” So, naturally, I stopped.
It continued. “BREAKING NEWS! Justin Bieber goes indoor skydiving in Vegas and is banned for life after not posting a positive review on social media. He and his entourage all got free entrance, in exchange for the promised posting.” Then the host starts speculating. “Well, maybe he has a dedicated social media person in his entourage that usually reminds him to do these types of things, and maybe he just wasn’t there that day.”
Seriously? Several things come to mind at this point:
1. E! News needs to learn what “BREAKING NEWS!” means. This was neither breaking nor particularly news.
2. No one over about 15 cares about Justin Bieber.
3. Why were they giving him this benefit of the doubt? Maybe he has someone to tell him to post to social media in exchange for free stuff? Come on. Was it someone ELSE saying “Yes, give me free stuff, sure I’ll post something, no prob.”
Why can’t the news be more like “BREAKING NEWS! Bradley Cooper did something he said he would do and seems like a decent guy. Stay tuned for more people who hold themselves accountable. In other news, Justin Bieber continues to act like a normal 19-year-old and is pissing off his parents and neighbors. When asked for a comment, he responded, ‘Whatever! I’m a grown up and you can’t tell me what to DO!’”
Although, on the other end of the spectrum, while we may be too forgiving for a lot of celebrities, I know we see the other side of that coin, too.
Right now there is an old, white southern woman who is being castigated in the media and shamed by the public because she shockingly admitted to having said some racist things in the past.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with anything she said or think it is okay, but have you ever met anyone older in the South? They’re from a different generation, which does NOT BY ANY MEANS make it right, but does give some explanation.
People in older generations used to use negative racial language much more openly than people who still use it do today, and it's not okay, but it's part of the social learning curve that we all get as we and society ages and changes. A good example of this is the gay rights movement in this generation.
When I’m 70 years old, I hope that calling something “gay” in a negative way is not happening anymore, and that younger generations look back on the history of it and laugh at how opposed so many people were to gay rights. Just like we look back and see how many people were on the wrong side of history in the civil rights movement, opposing equality then, I truly hope that this new equality movement shows the same thing.
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| I love you, The Oatmeal. |
I’ve never cared much about Justin Bieber or Paula Deen, though I do have a secret love of tabloid magazines, so I am at least relatively informed about what’s going on in the celebrity fishbowl.
Not, like, every single day. Maybe once every other week or so, when I buy a tabloid mag at the drugstore.
I feel like we all get so offended by everything these days. Like, I can’t even say “I hate stupid people.” without people being all up in arms about it. Stupid people wouldn’t protest, because most of the time, they don’t realize they’re that stupid, but other people would start screaming “What if they can’t help being stupid?! What if it’s a DISEASE?” And then suddenly the Stupidity Association of America would be suing me for slander and defamation and internet trolls might release my personal information online and now I’m suddenly getting death threats and scared to leave my house and I have to get a bodyguard and a huge stupid-people-scaring dog.
And I just don’t have the money for all that, PLUS I don’t think my apartment is big enough for a giant stupidity-detecting dog. And I would want the Sherlock of slobbery four-legged friends.
*Sigh.*
I’m so blog-famous now, I just know that because I wrote the phrase “I hate stupid people” that all these terrible things are going to happen and I am going to end up with some huge hulking bouncer-bodyguard all up in my private bubble of space and all my food will be tasted by someone who would most certainly be my poison-tester, and I’ll have to get a huge furry dog, which I’ll insist on naming Dragon the dog, who will probably insist on sleeping in my bed, which will force Boyfriend and I to get a bigger bed, which will cost a lot of money, which I won’t have because I’ll be using it all to pay for my lawyers for defending me in the lawsuit that was filed by the Stupidity Association of American Stupid-heads, which will tie me up in court for years and years, and then Boyfriend will get sick of the bodyguard and the dog and the lack of privacy and will probably make me move away from it all, and then I’ll have to get my passport renewed so that we can go live on a deserted island somewhere far away, and I really super hate standing in line at the dumb post office to get my passport renewed.
Either that, or all those rabid humorless Justin Bieber fans will attack me on the streets. Oh, well!
P.S. Throughout this entire post, I apparently misspelled it as "Beiber." I didn't know the difference, but spellcheck does. Lol!
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