I’ll be offline for a few weeks. I’m wrapping up my five-year gig at ICANN next week in Los Angeles. It’s been an awesome experience and with many mixed-emotions I leave to refocus on other projects. Until I'm back, have a good two weeks.
Meanwhile…Cher has been ranting on the republican party in tweets for over a year it seems. It hasn’t been news. She’s been tapping into some rarely-expressed liberal anger as far as I’m concerned. She’s not debating, politicking or doing any public relations. She’s just venting. Last week her anti-Romeny tweet went viral before she had a chance to snuff the flame.
Cher scholar Dishy sent me the first news of it from The Hollywood Reporter:
"Thank God I got the half that thinks," she writes in response to an assertion that a series of tweets — now deleted — has cost her 50 percent of her fans.
Cher went on an anti-Republican tirade early Tuesday morning that went viral courtesy of the Drudge Report, and by noon she had deleted the offending tweets.
“If ROMNEY gets elected I don’t know if I can breathe same air as Him & his Right Wing Racist Homophobic Women Hating Tea Bagger Masters,” the entertainer tweeted referring to Mitt Romney, the Republican's likely nominee for president.
After some criticism — some of it profane — Cher tweeted: “TOO HARSH? That’s me Holding BACK! They care nothing about the POOR The OLD The SICK The HUNGRY CHILDREN & People striving 4 a Better LIFE ! –"
I then heard the tweet-storm discussed on The Stephanie Miller Show (Cher would be a super guest on that show!) and even Moveon.org posted about it: "The Words That Started A Twitter Storm: Cher’s Famous Tweet About Romney" where they quoted her apologizing, “Im not sorry 4feelings, but i was not kind.’
I haven't heard any fans trashing Cher over her initial comments and even my mother said she shouldn’t have apologized. There may have been personal reasons why she did.
In any case there are three issues at play here:
- Liberals and their Feelings: the Right (and the celebrity Right) is never apologetic about their angry feelings. See Ted Nugent as a most current example. Liberals are always encouraged not to take it into an angry place. That restraint can't hold forever.
- Girls and their Feelings: women aren’t supposed to get angry or express their anger. Women constantly get pressure to back down from their expressing their anger while the same expressions are seen as appropriate for men. (see the book The Unruly Women by Kathleen Rowe)
- The Struggle of the Lower Class and their Feelings: Cher comes from a working class background; she has working class friends; she cares about working class people (as her tweets and comments have shown throughout the years). She expresses herself in a way that some criticize as being crude, low-rent (i.e. low class), “She talks like a truck-driver; she swears like a biker.” Comments when they are expressed in this way tap into this country’s deep-seated issues about class, especially when unruly (outspoken) women are the ones expressing liberal feelings about class.
They try to shut her down. You go girl!
Last week Cher scholar Robrt sent me the link to the page Kathy Griffin posted about her girls-night-in with Cher.
