Actress Gwyneth Paltrow argued Tuesday that she is fighting an onslaught of online attacks, much like a soldier in battle.
Speaking ahead of her surprise appearance at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, Miss Paltrow spoke about the troubles she faces with anonymous commenters who use the Internet to project their own miseries upon her.
“The Internet is an amazing opportunity, socially. We have this opportunity to mature and learn, which is the essence of being on earth — to being the closest person we can be to our actual, real, truest self,” she told tech news website Re/Code. “But the Internet also allows us the opportunity to project outward our hatred, our jealousy. It’s culturally acceptable to be an anonymous commenter. It’s culturally acceptable to say, ‘I’m just going to take all of my internal pain and externalize it anonymously.’”
The actress compared the experience of living through online attacks to surviving a war.
“You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it,” she told Re/Code. “You can make it as bloody as you want to, but is that the point?
“We’re in this very adolescent phase,” Miss Paltrow said. “It’s dangerous, [because] we lack the capacity to say, ‘Why does this matter to me, and who am I in this?’ ‘Why am I having opinions about Angelina Jolie’s operation?’ ‘What is unhealed in me?’ ‘Why am I using the Internet to do this?’”
Cindy McCain, wife of Arizona Sen. John McCain, lashed out at the actress on Twitter.
“Gweneth Paltrow is a joke. Her life is like taking bullets for a soldier. What a joke! My 2 sons serving in the military should talk to her,” she said. “Perhaps Gweneth [sic] Paltrow should go out on patrol with some soldiers. Kind of like a Red Carpet in her mind I guess!”
Miss Paltrow’s comments come after she sparked criticism in a March interview for complaining that her job as a professional actress is more demanding on mothers than most.
“I think it’s different when you have an office job,” she told E! News at the time. “It’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening. When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”
Angelina Jolie criticized Miss Paltrow’s assertion in an interview last week, in which she said Hollywood mothers with substantial wealth and status shouldn’t complain about the woes of celebrity motherhood.
Before you get all cranky, please be advised this commentary was not written by Col. West, but by his female Editor-in-Chief, just in case you were getting ready to play the sexist card. Thank you.
Oh, how I wish actresses would just stick to what they do best: looking pretty and pretending to be other people.
Instead we have to endure the type of cringe-worthy pontification that emerges from their smudge-free lips — such as the latest comment from Gwyneth Paltrow.
She has a new “lifestyle brand” called Goop which I think accurately describes both the texture and value of her words. While appearing at the techy Code Conference in California to promote Goop, she likened mean twitter comments to the suffering of war, saying, “You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like, how in war, you go through this bloody dehumanizing thing…”
Fortunately, Ms. Paltrow’s words are not accepted sympathetically by all, and those who have actually suffered through “this bloody, dehumanizing thing” called war can set her straight on reality.
Thanks to our friends at Clash Daily, we are delighted to share the candid truths presented by U.S. Army Green Beret Sergeant First Class Brian Sikes. In a personal letter to Gywnie, he writes:
“I could see how you, and others like you in “the biz,” could be so insecure and mentally weak that you could pair the difficulty of your life on twitter to my brothers who have had their limbs ripped off and seen their friends shot, blown up, burned and disfigured, or wake up every morning in pain – while just starting the day is a challenge. How about our wives? The ones that sign on to be there for us through thick and thin, that help us to shake the hardships of war upon our return? And do all this while being mothers to our kids, keeping bills in order because we are always gone, and keeping our lives glued together. They do all this, by the way, without a team of accountants, nanny’s, personal assistants, and life coaches. Yeah, reading a mean tweet is just like all that.”
You really must read the whole letter here. It’s marvelous. I just hope it doesn’t make Gwyneth cry.