Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | September 24, 2026
Issa Rae received the Entertainment Entrepreneur of the Year Award at Variety’s L.A. Power of Women event on Wednesday. It’s one of those not-real awards you get in exchange for turning up to a party and hanging out with the right people. Hey, someone has to do it. I will happily accept the award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. For Rae, the writer, producer, actress, and President of Barbie-world, she’s certainly a woman worth celebrating. But there’s a lot going on right now, so she’s also got a few things to say about it.
She opened her acceptance speech by joking that she hadn’t written anything inspiring for the audience because “It is hard to feel like a powerful moment when men keep f**king everything up.” Specifically, all of the disasters happening right now, from “the industry [eating] itself” to AI to climate terror: “This is all men’s fault. Rich, white men to be specific.”
Is she wrong?!
Rae took a serious turn by admitting that “it’s hard to feel inspired when you feel helpless and useless.” How do you combat that? For Rae, it’s about using her platform wisely. “I can use the power I do have to pour into my little community to make sure whatever success I’m lucky enough to have doesn’t stop with me.” She shared that “even when I’m tired, pissed off or deeply uninspired by what’s happening around me, I can honestly say that nothing can stop me from trying to figure out where I can be useful. Because as discouraged as I may get, I’m never going to stop trying.”
Again, she isn’t wrong. It’s a terrible time right now, and it’s easy to feel disempowered in the face of abject evil from the richest people alive. David Ellison is tearing Hollywood to shreds (with help from Gavin Newsom), AI is stealing our lives, the government hates its citizens, the weather is a nightmare… Nihilism feels very tempting right now, yes? I’m not a fatalist by nature. I’d call myself a hopeful sceptic, mostly because I find the smarm that often accompanies online cynicism to be tedious and unhelpful. Still, the desire to put your head in the sand and go la-la-la is real. So, I appreciate Rae saying that one way to combat the malaise is you find out where you can be helpful and how you can keep making community. Kindness in the face of endless cruelty is an increasingly radical act. I’ll always take that over giving up.
