Katy Perry exists insofar that sometimes I hear her music in the grocery store, or the changing room of a Wet Seal, and am like: “Oh! Katy Perry, she exists.” This state of being has, to her benefit, allowed Perry to slither out of numerous public controversies, like that time she bulldozed over some nuns to turn their convent into her mansion, or when producer Mano accused her of calling him the n-word multiple times in 2013. This isn’t even to mention the lower-hanging fruit—many instances of cultural appropriation come to mind, too numerous to list here. Now, sitting neatly on this haphazardly arranged fuck sandwich is Perry’s defense of Ellen Degeneres.
On Tuesday at midnight, Katy Perry tweeted:
“I know I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience besides my own but I want to acknowledge that I have only ever had positive takeaways from my time with Ellen & on the @theellenshow. I think we all have witnessed the light & continual fight for equality that she has brought to the world through her platform for decades. Sending you love & a hug, friend @TheEllenShow.
This defense of DeGeneres comes amid weeks of ongoing accusations of abusive working conditions against the world’s most famous daytime talk show host and other staffers at Ellen. In a Buzzfeed report, one employee claimed that racist microaggressions are the norm, alleging that a writer for the show once told her he “only knows the names of the white people who work here.” When she mentioned these issues, she said her colleagues referred to her as the “PC police” and she was ostracized. Another employee told BuzzFeed News they checked into a mental health facility for a suicide attempt and, upon returning to work, was fired. Yet another employee was allegedly reprimanded for creating a GoFundMe after the show’s insurance wouldn’t cover the cost of their medical needs.
It would normally be “surprising,” then, that someone would think to publicly side with Ellen Degeneres, even in the face of damning claims like those above, and more, which are still surfacing as of press time. But in the context of Katy Perry’s track record, her defense of Ellen is… well… a bit too predictable! Still, at least it’s a bit comical that the best Perry could muster was some wishy-washy “love and light” nonsense.
Here’s something fun: In an interview with Fast Company, Ryan Reynolds says his and Blake Lively’s plantation wedding is “something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” and that it’s “impossible to reconcile” because “what we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.” Learning from this, he and Lively have since donated millions to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and well as the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, as well as posting about it on Instagram:
Listen, everyone is entitled to plan their wedding however they please. But did these two even do the mildest bit of googling? Or, maybe, just read a Wikipedia? Lively designed a fashion line around the Antebellum, and this post seems to imply she also didn’t understand what that meant. How? How is that possible?
I probably will never have the answers to this. But, if anything, Reynolds’s statement—that he and Lively found an Antebellum-era plantation on Pinterest, and ran with it—is a great reminder that social media often has a way of stripping images, places, and people of their historical context. Please do your research, or maybe even just read a book every now and then! [Fast Company]
I’m begging, on hands and knees, that gossip sites please act normal about JoJo Siwa’s new boyfriend, Mark Bontempo. Don’t be a bunch of freaks!
https://www.tiktok.com/@southernbelleinsults/video/6856287494711840006
After years of being the subject of countless memes and unmitigated draggings, it’s cool that Debby Ryan can have a sense of humor about it all:
Orlando Bloom’s dog Mighty has been declared dead after the actor spent seven days searching for him:
- Lisa Vanderpump is allegedly not paying SUR employees. [E News]
- Real Housewives of Atlanta is experiencing internal cast strife amid NeNe Leakes public battle with producers. [Hollywood Life]
- Leave Michelle Williams ALONE! [Us Weekly]
- Gabrielle Union on Terry Crews: “I think Terry is showing us who he is, and what he does during times of adversity, and it’s not solidarity.” [Page Six]
- Lena Waithe on marriage: “I’ve never been in an open marriage, but it’s fascinating to me. We live in a world where, if I told you I cheated on my wife, you would be like, ‘Yeah, that’s the way it goes.’ But if I told you that I’m in an open marriage, it would be as if I told you I’m joining the Church of Scientology.” [THR]
- I keep forgetting that Katie Holmes and Jerry O’Connell are making The Secret movie. [Us Weekly]