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When "It's The Thought That Counts" Seems Like a Big Damn Lie

By Courtney Enlow | Posted Under Celebrities Are Better than You | Comments (18)

snooki2.jpg

Because when I think “People Who Can Stop the Bullying of Gay Teens” I think orange skanks whose catchphrase is “No homo.”

The wonderful slew of new websites aimed at speaking out against bullying really makes me happy. I hate the fact that it took the deaths of children to make people start talking, but I’m very pleased that stars are addressing this important issue, especially stars admired by those who might be at risk.

This does not include Snooki and J-Woww.

Much like “Well, at least they’re reading” doesn’t work for me anymore, neither does, “Well, at least they’re helping.”

Two pretend Italians (neither of them are Italian, and as an Italian girl, let me say thank Christ for that) who routinely beat people senseless and refer to fat chicks as “grenades” despite the fact that the Snooki one is, well, not un-grenadely, should not be allowed anywhere near this movement. They are not helping. They know what it’s like to be discriminated against? I’m so sorry, but it’s probably because you’re awful people. Like that Mr. Show sketch where Odenkirk is kicked out of the band and he thinks it’s because he has one arm, but David keeps insisting it’s because he’s a shitty drummer who happens to have one arm, I’m sure people were rude to these two, but not in a discriminatory way. It was probably because they were shrill lame Oompah Loompahs.

Everyone should make an effort to fight bullying, but it starts with you. If you’re making ridiculous sums of money (and they are. They really are.) then it’s incredibly disingenuous.

Also, why the shit are there two ‘w’s at the end of “J-Woww”? I think one would suffice. Also, why is Snooki and why do they keep letting it happen?

By the way, I’m sorry for having two Snooki posts in as many weeks. But the last one lead to a lovely discussion about literature, so I have to assume this one will lead to the cure for cancer.

Also, yes, I realize I referenced that Mr. Show sketch on Twitter last night, too, in reference to Hoarders. It’s always topical.

Follow Courtney Enlow on Twitter, and read her other stuff at HoboTrashcan.com.









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Comments

You are ruining my efforts to forget that these people exist. Damn you, Courtney.

Damn you.

Posted by: TK at October 12, 2010 1:43 PM

So lemme get this straight, the short greasy fat one has the audacity to go around calling other people fat?

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 12, 2010 1:46 PM

the short greasy fat one

Werent you JUST haranguing Yvonne Strahovski for being too tall, skinny, white and leggy?

JUST WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO PLEASE YOU!?

Posted by: Lennon at October 12, 2010 2:01 PM

JUST WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO PLEASE YOU!?
Posted by: Lennon at October 12, 2010 2:01 PM


---------------------------------------

Polly Walker.

It's called sticking by your standards, sir.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at October 12, 2010 2:16 PM

JUST WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO PLEASE YOU!?

Considering his choice of pseudonym, I'd say either a) Beating Hermes Conrad in a Limbo Championship, b) Stealing Hermes Conrad's wife, LaBarbara, or c) All of the Above.

You want a cure for cancer, Courtney? Here's one: Don't do anything that's any amount of fun forever.

There. Problem solved. A little earlier in the comment thread, though. Sorry 'bout that.

Posted by: RobP at October 12, 2010 2:18 PM

Uncle JR: There's your Boobs' Off. Are you happy now? I'm sick.

Posted by: BWeaves at October 12, 2010 2:23 PM

I get the eye-rolling cynicism and the feeling that people you don't respect- who really do seem to be shallow, awful people- don't belong anywhere near a cause that you believe in and support, but I still have to disagree.

Just like I disagree with you on "well, at least they're reading" (it is a good thing), seeing unlikable reality show "celebrities" getting behind this cause actually is a good thing because it is is significant indication of how mainstream the cause is becoming. I'm in complete agreement if you want to denigrate Katherine Heigl, Gorge Lopez, Paris Hilton, or Oprah for all the things they do with their personal and public lives but lending their support to a cause like this is important. Don't forget that 80% of the world has no idea who Dan Savage is and wouldn't understand a Sassy Gay Friend video even if they did stumble onto one because Youtube overestimated their intelligence when recommending related videos.

The idea that gay kids should be accepted and supported by their peers and families is way too important for anyone to be selective about who does and who does not communicate the message. By any means necessary this concept needs to gain more traction and more acceptance in popular culture (and my god, just look how far it has advanced in just the last 10 years or so). Someday soon it needs be as unacceptable and out-of-place to attack people for their (perceived) sexuality as it is to attack them for their race. It will never be completely eliminated but we need to flip the normal, majority perspective from intolerance to tolerance. That only happens when you get people like the Jersey Shore cast speaking out to support gay kids.

I agree that they are unlikable people and much more likely to be bullies than bullied, but the fact that support this movement is the default position (even for these guys) makes me too happy to get hung up on the particulars.

Posted by: Yossarian at October 12, 2010 2:46 PM

I have to disagree, Yossarian. You have your cause represented by bozos, and it detracts from it. Even people who watch Jersey Shore don't respect the stars, and wouldn't be likely to take advice from them.

It is possible to turn something into a joke by dumbing it down into oblivion.

Posted by: Wednesday at October 12, 2010 2:50 PM

Wednesday, you are wrong. This isn't a cool band or a popular underground club that you don't want too many people to know about because it cheapens it.

This is a message that it is unacceptable and wrong to bully kids for their sexuality. Guess what, you don't have to preach this message to the average Pajiba reader. We already know it and it breaks our hearts to know that this stuff happens. If we knew of a kid going through this we would hug them until their ribs hurt and take them out for fajitas to unequivocally reassure them that it gets better.

But we don't need the message and we don't have many such opportunities. Most/all of our gay friends are out, happy, and have wonderful support groups.

The people who need this message are the bozo's, the idiots, the people we scorn for thier taste in music and movies, the people who don't read, the people who live insulated lives, the people who don't have any gay friends and everything they know about gay people comes from TV and cruel jokes. This message needs to reach the other 80%, it needs to reach the mainstream, Transformers watching, Two and a Half Men watching, Xbox 360 playing majority.

Essentially, it needs to be dumbed down. And that is totally fine, that's good. Dumb it away. Make it so basic and un-nuanced that people don't even need to tax their brains. Just make it assumed: being gay is ok.

Posted by: Yossarian at October 12, 2010 3:06 PM

I agree with Yossarian. While the folks on this website probably don't respect or take their behavioral cues from the Jersey Shore cast, there are plenty of people out there who do. If it takes J-Woww to convince some kid that bullying gays isn't cool (or whatever the kids are calling it these days), then so be it.

She may be insincere and her fans may sense that insincerity but at least they all are getting the message that treating gays with respect (at least outwardly) is, as Yosarrian put it, the default, majority position in this country.

As a black woman I can tell that at a real basic level, I don't care what you think about me. I care what you say or do to me. We might not be changing hearts and minds here yet but changing behaviour is a very good first step.

Posted by: Abby at October 12, 2010 3:58 PM

If we knew of a kid going through this we would hug them until their ribs hurt and take them out for fajitas to unequivocally reassure them that it gets better.

Somehow, I got terribly confused in here and thought you were saying we'd take them out for mojitos. I was really wondering about the legality of this approach, though I don't doubt that a few good mojitos would make it seem better.

Posted by: Gabs at October 12, 2010 4:33 PM

Cheap Mexican food was the go-to after school eating option for most high school kids back when I was one and I wanted to sprinkle a little color into my hypothetical intervention.

Mojitos would definitely be good, too, if you can get around the illegality and somehow rationalize the impropriety of a grown adult plying a troubled and wayward youth with booze...

Posted by: Yossarian at October 12, 2010 5:25 PM

Sorry, I just don't find your arguments compelling. I wasn't really thinking that the audience the Jersey Shore stars were aiming for was the average Pajiba reader. I was thinking more of my teenager and her reality-TV-loving friends.

Now, maybe my kid has a superior class of friends. I'd like to think so, but, I've met enough of them to discount that as a universal quality. I've yet to meet any of them that would take the endorsement of Snooki or The Situation as some sort of plus. The appeal of those "stars" is their train-wreck quality. Nobody wants to be J-Woww. They might want her fame and her money, but they don't give a rat's ass about her opinions. She is not an arbiter of cool.

You want to convince me that Lady Gaga -- who I admit has a widespread appeal even though it's not my cup of tea -- makes a good spokesperson for anti-bullying? I'm on board. Insane Clown Posse? OK, not a problem. In their own circles, big or small, they have clout and influence with their admirers. Shit, convince Charlie Sheen to make a "The More You Know" segment on the topic, and I'll even agree that it may have value.

But the Jersey Shore level of celebrity? It's a double-edged sword. For the tiny, tiny number of oxygen thieves who might take away something of value from what they say, there's a far bigger number who will do the opposite on the assumption that anything those assholes say is wrong. More people wanted to see Snooki get punched in the face than wanted to see Snooki.

Posted by: Wednesday at October 12, 2010 5:34 PM

I'm not saying that the Jersey Shore cast are influential trendsetters or that their leadership on this issue is going to directly influence anyone to reconsider their position.

It's more like... you know how advertising just kinda works, and even though we all think we are above the influence of cheap attempts at branding and manipulation we all subconscious are effected by it? And even if we don't have time for TV and skip past the commercials when we do watch our favorite shows on a DVR you still, somehow pick up on the details of the new Toyota marketing campaign and you still know who the new Progressive Insurance spokesperson is and you are still aware of the latest fast food sandwich innovation from KFC? It all kind of seeps into our consciousness through our media-saturated society. We absorb it and, even though you, personally, would never buy that sandwich and you don't feel compelled to change your insurance and if you bought a car you would do all the research online before making your decision... well, advertising still works and it is a multi-billion dollar industry because it works?

Society can be influenced. Social norms are malleable and change over time. It's not one thing it's a million tiny things. I'm not going to argue that Snooki speaking out against bullying is some kind of tipping point but it is a step along the way toward a tipping point where acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality become the norm and fear, hate, and bigotry becomes the exception. It's a good thing.

Your kid may not respect the Jersey Shore cast but she is growing up in a world where everyone from Lady Gaga to the Situation to the President of the United States are speaking out that being gay is acceptable. I was a teenager not too long ago and that idea was far lees mainstream than it is today. It makes a big difference. It makes it easier to talk about, and easier to accept. It eliminates fear and shame and secrecy and other obstacles to acceptance and tolerance.

And this is not the kind of idea that is going to be uncool because the Jersey Shore gang supports it. They aren't going to drive potential supporters fleeing back to homophobia just to be contrary to J-Woww. All this does is make it that much more accepted, that much more mainstream, that much more assumed that being gay is ok.

Generation Y is the tipping point, and MTV, for everything else I hate about MTV, is a significant barometer of that change.

Posted by: Yossarian at October 12, 2010 6:18 PM

You're on Twitter? Such a disappointment.

Posted by: superasente at October 12, 2010 8:17 PM

That J-Woww lady is set to earn 15 grand making an apperance at the worst professional wrestling program of all time, possibly the worst prime time television show ever, TNA iMPACT, let me tell you, if you though they were trashy before, they've finally topped themselves.

Posted by: Devil Child at October 12, 2010 11:12 PM

I agree that advertising can make a message culturally pervasive, even very bad advertising. If the message is repeated often enough, it takes on the characteristics of a universal truth. It's why brand advertising works.

I also don't think that anyone will go out there and do the opposite of what Snooki says out of some perverse desire to "show Snooki".

What I'm considering is that even if awareness becomes pervasive, with such a simplistic message, it gets tuned out and nobody cares. Remember the "this is your brain on drugs" ads? Those did more harm than good. The message was too obvious, it was repeated too frequently, and the whole thing became a joke. That is the LAST thing you want to happen.

Coincidentally, I happen to work in advertising, and I work with several non-profit groups. People have very short attention spans when it comes to altruistic messages. You have to make it *extremely* personal (as in, if you're soliciting donations for a children's charity -- talk about one child, no more than that) and you constantly have to change things up to avoid message fatigue. There's a lot of fascinating research on this topic.

Posted by: Wednesday at October 13, 2010 7:29 AM

"Remember the "this is your brain on drugs" ads? Those did more harm than good. The message was too obvious, it was repeated too frequently, and the whole thing became a joke."

I disagree, and I think the disagreement sits squarely in the same area as your complaint with Yossarian's approach. What he's saying (as I read it) is that hearing a message from a lot of people, as often as possible, does something positive. You offered up the Your Brain On Drugs message, but I think Yossarian's idea still holds water even if it does become a joke.

For instance, at work we provide First Aid/CPR/AED training. This year, we had a trainer come in who was...basically a human cartoon character. Really animated, loved the catchphrases, totally fed into the dopiest of those horrible videos they show you. For weeks, people who had taken that training would walk into various areas, freeze, and say "STOP! SURVEY THE SCENE! YOU, DIAL 911!," then burst out laughing. If fellow trainees were in there, they'd continue the skit, with fake running, "SIR, ARE YOU OKAY?," the whole thing. It was a TOTAL joke, and after a while, even people who didn't take the training were in on it.

About a month and a half after the training, one of our employees was faint, clammy and had heart palpitations. One of the trainees asked her if she was okay, cleared the scene, had her sit down, designated a 911 caller, and stayed with the sick person until emergency personnel arrived. It was effing TEXTBOOK. I talked with the first responder later, and she actually said, "you know, I made fun of that crap, but when I needed it, making fun of it got shit done."

Even if it's a joke, knowing the information you're supposed to matters. When shit goes down, it doesn't matter if you know it because of a joke or because it was a bar trivia question or because you studied it. If you know, you know, and that's why having as many different people saying it as loudly as possible is great. I also think that saying people don't want to emulate the Jersey Short kids is unrealistic wishful thinking.

Posted by: TheOutlawJosie at October 13, 2010 9:36 PM