Celebrity Feuds

Oh, so he's a general asshole on an everyday basis as well as being a rapist? The hell?!

Snarryfan wrote:I knew he was a terrible person but not for the rape allegations.  Every person I've met who've worked at a theatre he has appeared in or have been at a hotel he has stayed always say he is the worst person ever. He is super mean to staff and anyone "beneath him." My uncle once saw him berating hotel staff in the lobby for no reason beyond not showing him proper deference.  I always found it weird that the actors who were kids on the show still call him Mr. Cosby--even though they are in their 30s/40s.

They used to have to call him DOCTOR Cosby, despite the fact that people in non-medical fields usually don't use Doctor in informal settings.

I always thought it was hypocritical of Cos being such a prig when he was Mushmouth. I mean you are going to criticize grammar when you invented Mushmouth?!

Needless to say, the rape allegations kick this into a whole nother level.

Lena Dunham vs. columnist Kevin D Williamson.

While I think it may be true that Williamson has his own agenda in pushing this story, at best Lena Dunham wrote about a very serious thing in a flippant, insensitive manner, and not for the first time either, and if it's biting her in the ass I don't have much sympathy.

Yep. Everyone's a loser in this one.

Pretty much. I'm not comfortable calling Lena Dunham a molester but the fact that she would write about grooming her sister and compare herself to a pedophile as if it was cute or twee says a lot, none of it good.

I understand that she's furious about being labeled a predator, but she even said the words "sexual predator," when describing what she did with her sister so what did she think was going to happen? She likened her tactics to that of a pedophile but gets up in arms when someone says she behaved like a pedophile? Don't make no kinda sense.

She got that lack of self awareness up the wazoo.

Even if you don't think that's molestation per se, it's really weird and inappropriate. Shit you'd think her editor, agent, publicist or someone would have told Lena to cut those stories.

The Dude wrote:Even if you don't think that's molestation per se, it's really weird and inappropriate. Shit you'd think her editor, agent, publicist or someone would have told Lena to cut those stories.

This is what I've been thinking all day. I haven't read her book, and have only read a couple of brief articles about this, but I just keep wondering what was the context in the book for even talking about this? And yes, why didn't someone tell her they need to be edited out? I find the whole thing bizarre and inappropriate. The more I read about her in the media, both stories about her and actual interviews, the more I can't believe how she just completely lacks boundaries and a brain-to-mouth (or pen-to-paper in this case) filter.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that Lena Dunham is a Special Snowflake who would disregard any editor's suggestions.

Sadly I expect she thinks these incidents are 'quirky' instead of merely unpleasant and enormously inappropriate. And she's kind of humiliated her poor sister twice - by doing these things in the first place and now by telling the whole world about it.

One of the things that has annoyed me most about the Dunham sisters (yes, Grace, too) is how they've basically put their entire platform out on Twitter. Trying to read their "defenses" in a series of broken Tweets... it's everything I hate about the Internet, basically.

To clarify, my problem with Grace is how she has framed anyone objecting to Lena's behavior as enforcing heteronormative paradigms which work for the state and media. That is the kind of meaningless bullshit that makes it hard to talk about things that actual marginalize "queer" people (to use Grace's own term for herself). This has nothing to do with straight gay or patriarchy.

Obfuscation through big words annoys me. As does the reaction "lolz I didn't do anything wrong because I say so!"

Melk wrote:Sadly I expect she thinks these incidents are 'quirky' instead of merely unpleasant and enormously inappropriate.

This is kind of how I feel about Lena Dunham and her entire career, actually. Well, not exactly "inappropriate," up until now, but Girls is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Melk wrote:Sadly I expect she thinks these incidents are 'quirky' instead of merely unpleasant and enormously inappropriate.

I think she's one of those people who says super inappropriate things for shock value and just kind of expects everybody to know she doesn't really mean it.  And she's probably lived her whole life in a world where people just laugh it off and say, "Oh, Lena, you're so weird/quirky/edgy/whatever", so she just assumes that the whole world is going to react that way.  People in her bubble think she's inappropriately hilarious (either genuinely or because she's their boss), and I don't think she takes the time to stop and think about the fact that the whole world is not her bubble.  This is a really lame comparison, but it makes me think of when I share a link or a status on Facebook, I'm only ever thinking about the people in my feed who I know will be interested in it or "get" it.  The people on my friends list who aren't in my intended audience do not even occur to me.  And then my aunt comes to town and mentions a Facebook conversation my sister and I had about Matt Bomer on a link to a Buzzfeed list about the 28 times Matt Bomer's eyes peered into your soul, and I'm like, "SHIT, EVERYBODY sees these things, not just the four people I know who watch White Collar, and all those other people now think I'm a weirdo," and then I die of embarrassment.  It's like that, only times a million, because what she said was WAY more inappropriate, she published it in a book, and it's probably harder for people to tell her when they do think she's being inappropriate because she's super rich and probably employs a lot of them and if they're mean to her now she'll never take them to one of Taylor Swift's parties.  Also, she never seems to reach the "realize this sounds weird and feel embarrassed" part.

I do feel for her, though.  And her sister, and the rest of her family.  This shit has got to be humiliating.  She created the situation herself, but damn.

Gillian wrote:
I think she's one of those people who says super inappropriate things for shock value and just kind of expects everybody to know she doesn't really mean it....This shit has got to be humiliating.  She created the situation herself, but damn.

I like your assessment, Gillian. That said, I also think she is getting a lot more shit following in the footsteps of many similar 'shock value' celebrities, who were thin and conventionally attractive, and got away with saying similarly incredibly stupid/inappropriate shit...which is almost certainly only going to make her double down on it. Despite the self-created and completely unnecessary humiliation.

I feel like she threw that into the book just thinking it would make people chuckle, without considering how badly it could backfire. Why she had to be flippant and make reference to sexual predators is beyond me, but she shouldn't be so shocked at how her account of her behavior is being analyzed. I'm sure she never meant her sister any harm, and hopefully, she's caused no emotional or psychological damage, but her experimentation does sound squicky and inappropriate, and she should understand why what she wrote has angered and horrified others.

I have never liked Lena Dunham ever since she went on a trip to Japan with her mom and wrote about for some magazine it in a way that was so self-absorbed and awful and cringe-inducing and she clearly thought she was Scarlett Johanssen in LOST IN TRANSLATION except she was too cool to need Bill Murray as a sidekick. This was pre-GIRLS, maybe even pre-Tiny Furniture. I never understood why Nora Ephron thought she was so great, and in fact it made me like Nora Ephron a little less. I also agree with Gillian's assessment, but I almost think that they are past the point where they even know what humiliation is. It's all just more fodder.

I...can't really feel badly for her family. The parents at least seem to have not ever reined her in - "this was within the spectrum of things I did" - and the sister is now defending her in those bizarre and off the point tweets laddical mentioned.

I...can't really feel badly for her family. The parents at least seem to have not ever reined her in

Yep, this is how I feel as well. I read an excerpt from her book a while ago, and everything about it made me think a) she clearly does not have boundaries and feels she can insert herself into other people's lives whenever she feels like it, and b) this is a woman who, as a child and adolescent, was clearly never told not to do something and therefore thinks that her behaviour (not just in this instance with her sister) is completely justified because it's just what she wants to do, so she should be able to do it.

eventide82 wrote:

I...can't really feel badly for her family. The parents at least seem to have not ever reined her in

Yep, this is how I feel as well. I read an excerpt from her book a while ago, and everything about it made me think a) she clearly does not have boundaries and feels she can insert herself into other people's lives whenever she feels like it, and b) this is a woman who, as a child and adolescent, was clearly never told not to do something and therefore thinks that her behaviour (not just in this instance with her sister) is completely justified because it's just what she wants to do, so she should be able to do it.

I would add that -- and I've seen other smart, navel-gazing, deep-thinking people do this as well -- I think she feels that because she examines everything she does SO CLOSELY, it's basically excused after that. I'm sure if you said to her "You have no boundaries, and you feel you can insert yourself into other people's lives whenever you feel like it. You were never told no, and you just think your behavior is justified because it's what you want to do, so you should be able to do it" she'd be like "I KNOW! You are so right about that. I just have NO BOUNDARIES. It's really crazy. So I'm always doing this thing where I insert myself into other people's lives, and they totally hate it! I am so like that. I just had like, NO LIMITS growing up, so I think it's probably a result of that." And then she'd feel like that was that. I think she somehow feels that admitting to what her issues are inoculates her against having to actually deal with the consequences. Of course she didn't hesitate to tell all the weird stories about how she treated her sister as a kid. She's TELLING the story, so she's obviously not ashamed of it, and so, that somehow makes it fine. Maybe because she thinks it makes her so uniquely self-aware that nobody can be mad at her when she's obviously so intelligent and deep? Something like that. I doubt she thinks of it that way consciously, but I think that's how she deals with basically everything.

Even if you called her on doing that, she'd probably just agree with you, and by agreeing with you, think that that was such a special and fearless way to approach it that it magically absolved her of the still-present fact that she does it.

Look, I like Lena Dunham. I find her eyeroll-worthy at times, but I think she has an interesting brain and I think Girls is an interesting show. I don't think she's the voice of a generation (and I don't think she's even said that; she had her character in the show say it, and the character was meant to appear delusional -- even though, as with everything with Lena Dunham, part of the trick is that because the character saying it is positioned as being delusional that also is supposed to make it so it's kind of true though) and I don't think the show is perfect, but I also think it gets WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more criticism than any other show ever made about young women living in the city (Sex and the City, Friends, Ally McBeal, all of which were mostly self-absorbed privileged white people having stupid shallow problems but that never seemed to be much of an issue then) (well, maybe with Ally McBeal) (please enjoy my extremely current references), and I DO think a lot of that is due to the fact that she's not conventionally attractive and she's young and full of herself and we now live in an age where people spend their leisure time dissecting every single piece of media that comes across their faces down to the atoms and mostly find it lacking. I am uncomfortable with what she said in the book and I'm uncomfortable with her lack of clue about an appropriate way to respond to the concerns, but I'm also uncomfortable with the now-common practice of the entire internet putting someone on trial and debating endlessly about whether the person is worthy or not and then rendering a verdict. It is mob justice and it makes me uneasy. I'm not saying people are wrong about it, but I do think there are people who are just happy to have a reason to pile on her.

So there's that, BUT ALSO, she very clearly thinks that she's found the secret to being able to get away with saying and doing whatever the fuck she wants and expressing every unfiltered though that crosses her mind without any consideration of how it will affect other people, and it seems apparent that because she was so smart and articulate as a child her parents just let it all slide and didn't give her any limits. And that's allowed her to flourish artistically and have the confidence and stamina to write and produce her own critically acclaimed TV show. But it also makes her deficient in certain ways as a human being, it appears. And if anyone registers an objection to anything she does she can sidestep them by, to quote Amber, the disproportionately confident reality-show contestant with one leg as played by Amy Poehler on SNL, basically saying "Yeah, I farted. JEALOUS?"

So in conclusion, I don't really have a conclusion. I've followed this whole thing with interest. It's dimmed my opinion of her, for sure.

Instant Monkeys wrote:

eventide82 wrote:

I...can't really feel badly for her family. The parents at least seem to have not ever reined her in

Yep, this is how I feel as well. I read an excerpt from her book a while ago, and everything about it made me think a) she clearly does not have boundaries and feels she can insert herself into other people's lives whenever she feels like it, and b) this is a woman who, as a child and adolescent, was clearly never told not to do something and therefore thinks that her behaviour (not just in this instance with her sister) is completely justified because it's just what she wants to do, so she should be able to do it.

I would add that -- and I've seen other smart, navel-gazing, deep-thinking people do this as well -- I think she feels that because she examines everything she does SO CLOSELY, it's basically excused after that. I'm sure if you said to her "You have no boundaries, and you feel you can insert yourself into other people's lives whenever you feel like it. You were never told no, and you just think your behavior is justified because it's what you want to do, so you should be able to do it" she'd be like "I KNOW! You are so right about that. I just have NO BOUNDARIES. It's really crazy. So I'm always doing this thing where I insert myself into other people's lives, and they totally hate it! I am so like that. I just had like, NO LIMITS growing up, so I think it's probably a result of that." And then she'd feel like that was that. I think she somehow feels that admitting to what her issues are inoculates her against having to actually deal with the consequences. Of course she didn't hesitate to tell all the weird stories about how she treated her sister as a kid. She's TELLING the story, so she's obviously not ashamed of it, and so, that somehow makes it fine. Maybe because she thinks it makes her so uniquely self-aware that nobody can be mad at her when she's obviously so intelligent and deep? Something like that. I doubt she thinks of it that way consciously, but I think that's how she deals with basically everything.

Even if you called her on doing that, she'd probably just agree with you, and by agreeing with you, think that that was such a special and fearless way to approach it that it magically absolved her of the still-present fact that she does it.

Look, I like Lena Dunham. I find her eyeroll-worthy at times, but I think she has an interesting brain and I think Girls is an interesting show. I don't think she's the voice of a generation (and I don't think she's even said that; she had her character in the show say it, and the character was meant to appear delusional -- even though, as with everything with Lena Dunham, part of the trick is that because the character saying it is positioned as being delusional that also is supposed to make it so it's kind of true though) and I don't think the show is perfect, but I also think it gets WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more criticism than any other show ever made about young women living in the city (Sex and the City, Friends, Ally McBeal, all of which were mostly self-absorbed privileged white people having stupid shallow problems but that never seemed to be much of an issue then) (well, maybe with Ally McBeal) (please enjoy my extremely current references), and I DO think a lot of that is due to the fact that she's not conventionally attractive and she's young and full of herself and we now live in an age where people spend their leisure time dissecting every single piece of media that comes across their faces down to the atoms and mostly find it lacking. I am uncomfortable with what she said in the book and I'm uncomfortable with her lack of clue about an appropriate way to respond to the concerns, but I'm also uncomfortable with the now-common practice of the entire internet putting someone on trial and debating endlessly about whether the person is worthy or not and then rendering a verdict. It is mob justice and it makes me uneasy. I'm not saying people are wrong about it, but I do think there are people who are just happy to have a reason to pile on her.

So there's that, BUT ALSO, she very clearly thinks that she's found the secret to being able to get away with saying and doing whatever the fuck she wants and expressing every unfiltered though that crosses her mind without any consideration of how it will affect other people, and it seems apparent that because she was so smart and articulate as a child her parents just let it all slide and didn't give her any limits. And that's allowed her to flourish artistically and have the confidence and stamina to write and produce her own critically acclaimed TV show. But it also makes her deficient in certain ways as a human being, it appears. And if anyone registers an objection to anything she does she can sidestep them by, to quote Amber, the disproportionately confident reality-show contestant with one leg as played by Amy Poehler on SNL, basically saying "Yeah, I farted. JEALOUS?"

So in conclusion, I don't really have a conclusion. I've followed this whole thing with interest. It's dimmed my opinion of her, for sure.

*slow clap*

This is excellent. You offer some wonderful observations on the whole subject.
I kind of got this impression that she was the sort who never quite got over being a precocious child. At some point (and there is always a point) you can't stand behind that label, and have to (hopefully) move on to having a strong well-developed character. Otherwise you will exhaust everyone around you. So far though, she is still managing to cling to it.

I agree she is an interesting person at times, but I am curious if she can create/evolve beyond this present state.

Speaking as a parent (especially as one of a seven year old) I can't help but think, "JESUS CHRIST... where were your parents to teach you boundaries? " This is a conversation I am always having with my kids. (because they do like to wind each other up.) The right to space. The right to not have our bodies touched. The awareness of how we make others feel through our actions and words. That you have to think about the world beyond you. It's one of the basic lessons in raising another human. "How not to be a self-entitled thoughtless jerk."