There are many kinds of bravery - all of which require personal sacrifice and risk on some level.
As for me, I cannot seem to find that fine line between bravery and stupidity. 😂
I have spoken truth to power and fought for the underdog and bullied since I was a child - IF - it was on behalf of others or the issue was bigger than me.
Yes, that often made me become the new target - sometimes with the person originally bullied who I was standing up for hopping on the bully bandwagon, so happy the heat's off them - but I would do it again, because it's the right thing to do!
Unfortunately, power abuse is human nature.
Because we're all still a bunch of monkeys, after all - proving it daily especially on social media.
Not all humans, but most, unfortunately.
For example, the CEO abuses power with a manager, who takes it out/abuses it on an employee, who takes it out/abuses power with their spouse, who takes it out/abuses their child.
That doesn't mean we won't go apesh*t on someone for harming others, it just means it doesn't make us feel superior or better about ourselves to "punch down" on others.
HOWEVER, the caveat to that is, speaking up for myself, that's a different story.
I may do it - but I will stammer and visibly shake when doing so.
The reasons for that have to do with my personal history - bad things happened if I spoke up for myself.
So typically, the issue has to be someone else or bigger than just me to truly speak up and take that risk.
I'm often like that kid, pointing out how the emperors or empresses aren't wearing any clothes.
But that fable doesn't finish the story - it doesn't tell you what happened to that kid who pointed it out later.
Ya know what happened to that kid who pointed out the emperor wasn't wearing clothes?
The people who didn't want to see truth - out of fear or because they benefited from going along or just didn't want to - either gaslighted the sh*t out of that kid or took him out back and kicked the sh*t out of him to silence him! 😂
They did it so much that the kid started to believe he was crazy versus everybody else and that he deserved it and should never speak up again .
That's what happened to that kid - and I speak from personal experience.
Now, imagine that kid is Stephen Colbert, whom I wrote a post on immediately after it was announced.
Who will step up?
Because what that kid needs most right now is support - other people saying "I see it, too, they're buck naked."
Unfortunately, dysfunctional leadership of dysfunctional groups require enabling/support. Since the enablers are benefitting from the leadership - or at least believe they are or will benefit - they say nothing.
Even those only in semi denial - the ones who somewhat know their leadership is scapegoats others, they still benefit from going along with it - and they definitely don't want to end up like that kid for speaking up.
So who will step up to support Stephen Colbert, who just publicly said the emperor isn't wearing clothes?
Jimmy Kimmel, there's one.
Jamie Lee Curtis for two.
But we'll get to what she said in a moment.
First, how much do we love Jamie Lee Curtis?
She speaks very bluntly and toughly, but she also has an extremely big heart for other people.
Jamie is brave enough to tell it like it is, very bluntly - but she's also brave enough to share her own vulnerabilities and mistakes, as well as show compassion and empathy for struggling others.
She has always spoken her mind and been real with us - always.
I remember way back when she was in True Lies, her showing us what her body ordinarily and really looks like, behind the Hollywood magic and when she's exercising for several hours a day for months for a role, as women do not have the time to do that and she knows it.
I thought it was an extremely brave thing to do, encouraging women not to aspire to look like she does in movies because it's not reality.
She also revealed that she once had plastic surgery on her eyes over a comment made to her by someone in the business, which she regretted and now refuses to get any plastic surgery, she just ages the way she's gonna age, while being as healthy as she can.
She's also been very open about her prior alcoholism and Vicodin addictions.
Most recently, she's used her own Oscar-winning success to help others with second chances - doing projects with women who have been mercilessly targeted and skewered by the press, like Jamie Lee Curtis and now, Lindsay Lohan.
As you may recall, Lindsay Lohan got skewered at the same time Britney Spears got skewered, in the mid-to-late 2000s, when social media was exploding, and I watched people - conservatives and liberals alike - skewer them both.
Again, social media is essentially just more daily proof that we're all still just a bunch of monkeys 😂
When Britney Spears showed up on the VMAs completely out of it, out of shape and dancing like she didn't even know where she was, people had a field day with it - but I didn't.
Though never really a fan of Britney, I still thought it was extremely sad - and it mad me mad that the same people that made so money off of her put her on that stage, knowing she was out of her mind, as a joke.
It wasn't funny - it was horribly cruel and sad - so I turned it off.
No, I didn't go all "Leave Britney alone" on anyone, I just didn't participate in the Lord of the Flies bashing party.
Then we all saw a picture of an unconscious Lindsey Lohan in a car, with a shot straight up her skirt, not wearing underwear.
In fact, the most disgusting thing about that isn't that she's passed out in a car, it's the fact that paparazzi took advantage of her an unconscious state and took a picture up her skirt of her bare vagina!
But of course, no one said a word about that - it was Lindsey's fault that someone did that because she was blackout drunk.
Again, NOT funny, cruel - and misogynistic.
And women were even more merciless than men about it.
(Ladies, we need to stop doing that to make ourselves feel superior, all right?)
I know a lot of fellow very vocal liberals out there that went along with the LOTF parties on social media who'll now deny they did this until doomsday, or still try to claim she deserved it, but they absolutely did go along with the cruelty and misogyny of it all.
And men get wasted and do crazy sh*t in public all the time in Hollywood - do we see shots of their private parts while unconscious?
No, we do not.
In fact, former alcoholic/drug-addict Colin Farrell was passing out publicly and seducing young girls in Hollywood, pretending he wanted a relationship with them, but actually due to some sort of "hit list" he'd made, at exactly the same time as Britney and Lindsey - Lindsey being one of his conquests, in fact - but no one said an effing word - they just quietly stopped hiring him in Hollywood.
In fact, the only way we found out how crazy and out of control Colin was publicly is because he admitted it himself when he got sober and made a comeback, apologizing to the women he'd hurt and for his prior behavior.
That's rare - other men do this every day without remorse, and we don't hold them accountable.
Some say it's his sobriety that changed him, some say it's his son, who has autism, taught him empathy. Maybe a combination of both.
Or worse, what about Alec Baldwin, who during the same exact time, punched paparazzi and left a verbally abusive voicemail for his daughter, Ireland, calling her a "Little Pig?"
Nope - Britney Spears shaving her head and spaced out dancing on the VMA - and Lindsey Lohan unconscious in the back of a car with paparazzi taking a shot up her skirt exposing her vagina - are somehow worse?
Regardless, I didn't think the targeting of Britney and Lindsey was funny - I thought these women are really struggling and need help - but all anyone can do is make themselves feel superior by skewering them.
Enter Jamie Lee Curtis again, willing to work with Lindsey on a Freaky Friday reboot - with her own history of substance abuse and being given second chances later in life, now with an Oscar in her hand, happy to use her cred to help other women up, who have struggled in Hollywood.
So I read this quote from Jamie about what happened with Stephen Colbert ...
"It's ... bad. He's a great, great guy. They also cut the funding to NPR and PBS. They're trying to silence us. It won't work. It won't work, we'll just get louder."
When I went looking for the video of it, I found it, plus a compilation of other celebrities giving their thoughts as well.
Rosie O'Donnell, who I have mixed opinions on, also said something I found inspiring.
She said "Be Brave ... be Stephen Colbert."
Now you may say "Well, these people are rich already, they can afford to lose their jobs, they'll be fine."
And that's true.
However as I said - and DID - in THIS post from February - which I actually stated in my resignation letter :
"Lastly, since I've been so bold already, may I just say that we can watch sensitivity videos all day and sign off on them, vote against this stuff, like memes all day, but if we don't live it ...1
.... if we don't even notice it's happening" ...
... if we don't make sacrifices to ourselves and even our own jobs to help ...
"Then nothing will ever change."
No worries - I'm with a new company now for the last 3 months and I am overwhelmingly happy - I feel like I've won the job lottery - especially at my age?
"It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it. It is up to all of us to fix this ... the citizen, the ordinary person who says: No, that’s not right.”
Think about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.