The Kerfuffle About Anne Hathaway

I tripped across something a couple of days ago or so about MAGA and puke worthy hypocrites like Elon Musk having a cow about some old video clip of some speech Anne Hathaway gave.

I don't really follow the news and I don't really have context. My takeaway: That hypercritical nonstop drama queen Elon Musk who has FOURTEEN children by multiple women under circumstances where the most brain damaged individual shouldn't buy that he's some kind of devoted father doing right by that many children because "money" -- which I admit sometimes can cover a substantial portion of socially expected fatherly obligations -- and he wants to call himself a conservative. And people apparently go "SEEMS LEGIT!!!" under circumstances that make me go "What's wrong with you and what's your highly questionable agenda?" has apparently been talking smack about Anne Hathaway based on Musk's claimed virtue as a conservative. Ah ha ha ha ha.

He's always talking smack about something. I don't really understand why anything he says gets taken seriously.

Anyway, this morning I very randomly tripped across this video clip telling you how many Hollywood insiders are high school dropouts AND it says:

Anne Hathaway 

NYU (Gallatin School)

English and Women's Studies 

That's almost certainly partial information. I routinely complain that no survey asking about my highest educational attainment ever has an answer that accurately describes my situation.

Wikipedia says:

She spent several semesters studying as an English major and political science minor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.

So it seems she's probably a women's studies major in an individualized customized program in an obscure school most people aren't familiar with.

Here is a clip titled MAGA is losing it over this Anne Hathaway speech supposedly providing original source material. Here is a second clip of that speech with mocking commentary interspersed which indicates it is a September 15, 2018 speech given while receiving the National Ally for Equality Award apparently from some organization or event called Human Rights Campaign.

And I include that clip here because it gives a longer version of the speech and before the part MAGA is losing its mind over she says:

It's important to acknowledge that whatever my actions have been, however hard I have worked, however much the world may have marginalized me and my experiences, that my standing here, (my ability to be visible to you comes from the world unfairly rewarding my particular type of visibility.)

The last part in parentheses is the beginning of the first clip. 

So this speech is nearly eight years old and apparently wasn't newsworthy at the time. She was probably less famous or less important or whatever and she's speaking to a limited audience of "insiders" about LGBTQ rights I guess. And it's an acceptance speech and she's being humble and saying her accomplishments or public "success" is because with the exception of being a woman -- and women are still second-class citizens -- she's "the right kind of people."

No matter how hard she has worked, being socially acceptable in a particular fashion opened doors for her that people in the audience don't see opening because they have dyed their hair pink and walk with a swish and sound obviously gay or whatever.

She's being honored as an ally and she's saying "I don't work harder than you do. That's not why I'm in the public eye. I'm in the public eye because the public finds me pleasing to look at and allows me to spend time in the public eye in a way that rewards me in ways you good people don't get to experience simply because of who you are and how you look."

And she's coming across a little like Enid Wexler in Legally Blonde who has a PhD in Women's Studies. Wexler is the character who at some point suggests Semester is sexist and why don't we call it Ovester and in-groups somewhat often have conversations like that amongst themselves while outsiders react negatively. I've seen conversations where some people object to using words like master and slave in a tech context because they find those words offensive.

This is a little like Patton telling some British ladies at a social club "Britain and the US will rule the world together after the war" and also shockingly and offensively "My, aren't you so much prettier than the French ladies I recently spoke with." This speech was a few weeks before the Normandy invasion. 

He was talking to an audience of all women and he wasn't really expecting anyone else to hear any of that and didn't think it mattered if he was politely complimenting these chicks and talking about "Our countries will continue to be allies after the war." which wasn't really intended to suggest "And SCREW Russia! We are cutting them out!"

Patton gave that speech while the war raged on. The kerfuffle was immediate and he was nearly fired. In contrast, Anne Hathaway gave this speech years ago and people have dug it up and are making a big deal out of nothing.

She was using insider lingo talking to insiders who are a group of people who themselves feel besieged by a world that isn't treating them very well.

It's not a declaration of war. It's a declaration that we are already at war and we are the one's being besieged and we intend to survive and successfully defend ourselves from this BULLSHIT.

Her speech was never intended for public consumption. It's not a PR position.

It's like those dry, incomprehensible reports in the files of charities that say "We provided x number of units of service..." And then when you sit down with a marketing agency they politely ask you WTF that actually MEANS and start writing out descriptions of how many MEALS you fed to homeless people and things like that to humanize it.

I once wrote a piece called Heteronormative Culture is a Strangling Monoculture that starts:

The existence of trans people speaks directly to the defects in heteronormative culture. I am trying to:

1. DESTROY heteronormative culture. 

2. Install something less dysfunctional in its place. 

And later clarifies:

My goal of destroying heternormative culture absolutely does not mean making it impossible for married heterosexual couples to live in a house in the 'burbs with a male breadwinner and housewife tending to the kids.

It means giving people other options so lives aren't ruined if for any reason they can't force fit themselves to this sole available lifestyle pattern.

Then ends with:

Tree monoculture causes trees to be sick and results in what has been called "forest death." The trees you most WANT cannot thrive in a monoculture.

Trees thrive when they are part of a diverse ecosystem and people and society are similar. 

Those highly valued, well-paid powerful jobs stop thriving when there are no other viable means to adequately support people and allow them to live as they see fit.

Our current society is not healthy and rich people are scared it is coming apart and threatening their security. I'm not proposing we "eat the rich." I'm proposing we establish a floor where all the misfits can survive comfortably because without that, the rich cis het white males don't have meaningful security either.

MAGA is behaving the way social psychology predicts male leaders behave in a crisis: They get paranoid and very controlling about things.

If you are a General leading an army in a war, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If you are a leader in a more social influencer kind of way or as a politician, that's very much problematic and actively promotes social problems and fosters disaster.

I have absolutely no idea why MAGA is going after Anne Hathaway over a geeky relatively private speech given nearly eight years ago that is so full of insider speak it's frankly gibberish to me and I've had a class in Women's History and spent my twenties reading feminist literature to try to sort out WTF happened that I was a full-time homemaker in a 1950s-style marriage and not part of a two-career couple.

I studied this stuff to try to make MY LIFE work and I still am the type of person who rolls my eyes at Enid Wexler going on about "Semester is SEXIST and why not Ovester?"

Because, sweetie, not everything that has "sem" in it is a reference to semen. Etymology of semester which means "a course of six months."

If you are LGBTQ or "a minority" as in one of the people who isn't pasty white in skin tone -- AKA the overwhelming majority of earthbound humans -- or otherwise someone who sees yourself as marginalized, a word to the wise: The paranoid fruitcakes in power are already inclined to see this as war and to wildly interpret your desire to be crapped on less as some kind of attack on them.

But you don't absolutely have to add fuel to the fire and low hanging fruit for them to idiotically point to and willfully misinterpret like you saying "Stop hitting me." is exactly the same as you assaulting them.