Over the past few days, a fake People Magazine cover featuring Taylor Lautner “Out & Proud” spread across the internet like some kind of non-domesticated conflagration. It was obviously fake, but it’s easy to see why it still spread, since calling people “gay” on the internet is every 13-year-old’s favorite thing (just ahead of “fake” and “first”). But Russell Simmons is 54, he can’t be expected to be up on all the latest cyber jargon.
Producer Russell Simmons was fooled by the the fake, tweeting, “proud of Taylor Lautner for his bravery and his courage.”
At which point, naturally and deservedly, the Twittersphere became a collective Nelson Muntz, pointing and laughing derisively. It’s okay, Russell, everyone gets duped from time to time. Time to respond gracefully, self-deprecatingly…
He later responded to being duped, saying, “Disappointed that people would joke about someone coming out about their sexuality. Let Taylor Lautner be whoever he wants to be…” [THR]
Yeah, because that was what this was about, people trying to oppress Taylor Lautner. What is it about blowhards that they can’t ever just say, “Oops, haha! You got me!” when they make a mistake? When some jackass gets offended by a joke they didn’t understand, you’d think you could just explain it to them, and once, just once, one would say, “Oh. Okay.” But it never happens. It’s always “Yeah, but still, you shouldn’t joke about that.” As if the mere act of being offended is proof of the other person being wrong, and they can still turn this into some kind of “teachable moment.” I guess this just solidifies my opinion of Russell Simmons being kind of an asswipe. He gets all this good press for showing up to Occupy Wall Street and offering to buy all the ads on that TLC show about Muslims after Lowe’s pulled out, but people conveniently forget that the product he wanted to advertise was his shady, predatory prepaid debit card. Charging people to use their own money seems just barely above Jimmy Johnson’s penis pill ads and Gloria Allred’s fake judge show on the scale of credibility-negating endorsements. I don’t really know where I was going with this, other than that Russell Simmons seems like a pompous jackass. Ha, blogging, am I right? I’m gonna go have a sandwich.