Selena Gomez and the Sensitive Celebs Joke-Policing TV Shows
In 2019, tensions between pop stars and journalists reached boiling point. Lizzo was attacking Pitchfork for allowing a non-musician to review her album Cuz I Love You. Justin Bieber accused an E! News host of “bullying” for suggesting that he lip-synced during Ariana Grande’s Coachella set. Grande also chimed in with a remark about bloggers not being “lit inside” that instantly became a meme. Lana Del Rey famously chided NPR music critic Ann Powers for innocuously stating that she had a persona. And although it occurred the following year, I would be remiss not to mention the Alison Roman-Chrissy Teigen squabble over cookware lines that ended in Roman being ousted from The New York Times.
This series of incidents sparked important conversations about the responsibility celebrities have on social media when waging war against writers and usually, as a result, inciting online harassment from their army of stans. Aside from Lizzo issuing an apology for the time she dragged an UberEats driver on Twitter after she thought she stole her food, the celebrity class hasn’t exhibited that much awareness regarding the disproportionate power they can wield against regular people over the most inconsequential matters.
Likewise, on Tuesday night, pop singer and actress Selena Gomez thought it was necessary to go on Twitter and call out the writers at Paramount+’s The Good Fight for an episode featuring a joke riffing on another series of jokes that were told on Peacock’s reboot of Saved by the Bell about a kidney transplant she received in 2017.