Feeling guilty because you loved that Tina Fey sheet-caking bit? Sick with shame that you still love Joss Whedon’s shows? Here’s a cure for your pain …

Spoiler Alert: the cure is understanding that your favorite celebrities are, like us, human beings. If that information is mind-boggling, be sure to check out the highly informative “Stars: They’re Just Like Us!” segment in Us Weekly. Apparently celebrities also have a heart that pumps blood, stomachs that digest food and kidneys that filter human waste! Omigod you guys! They’re just like us!
Tina Fey:
The issue
I’ll admit it. I loved the sheet-caking bit. I love Tina Fey. I love pretty much everything about her, and often when she writes sketches I feel like I could have written them and that she is my soul mate and that we’re basically the two mice in An American Tail singing “Somewhere Out There” to each other. But that’s me — I’m a crazy person who references An American Tail more than any adult human should.
That being said, on my journey to being at least allegedly woke, I immediately saw some of the things that would come out the next day in the inevitable backlash articles. I just knew that it would be a matter of time before I saw the first “Tina Fey: Racist AF” article. I don’t deny that, even in satirical mode, telling people to stay home from protests and ignore Nazis can have the wrong effect. While I saw it as biting satire regarding our own helpless white tears, I knew others would see it as an actual call for inaction.
The cure
Go to a protest against the KKK and Nazis WITH the cake. That’s right. Follow my soul mate BFF Tina’s first few bits of advice to the letter. Go to a Jewish or black-run bakery (I live in Oakland so not to brag but I’ve got my pick) and commission a cake that says “Fuck Nazis.” Then BRING the cake to the protest and shovel it into your face while screaming “FUCK NAZIS!” [Slaps hands]. Problem solved!
The follow-up treatment
Problem not solved? Yeah, it’s rarely that easy. Here’s the takeaway: almost any humor that is irreverent or subversive will be offensive to someone. Example: as a cancer survivor I made a lot of jokes about my condition to help me cope. But cancer not being an inherent laugh riot, I can’t discount the fact that another person suffering from my condition, and perhaps who has it much, much worse, might be offended. In owning that I find this kind of humor funny, I also have to be ready to sincerely apologize if there is someone who is hurt by it. No “it was just a joke!”s or “lighten up!”s. Just “I’m sorry.” You don’t have to be held hostage by the possibility that a joke might be offensive to someone, but — like they taught us in grade school — you should always apologize if you hurt someone whether you intended to or not. So, share away when it comes to satire like Tina Fey’s grassroots sheet-caking movement. But get ready to have conversations about it if you want to really confront the issues of white supremacy.

Joss Whedon:
The issue
Yikes, this one was tough. My news has been blowing up since Joss Whedon’s ex-wife Kai posted this article for The Wrap talking about her ex husband’s multiple emotional and physical affairs throughout his career as a male feminist icon. Now, Twitter is blowing up with people referring to Whedon as “trash” and “collecting his feminist credentials.” His fan page was unceremoniously taken down within a day. Why? The assertion is that Joss Whedon cannot truly be a feminist because of his personal failings.
Of course, a sharp divide was immediately drawn between the people who now think he is evil and people who have decided that his wife is crazy-pants. Do you think there could be a middle ground in there somewhere? However you may feel about Joss Whedon, his wife Kai absolutely has the right to share her experience with him without being crucified. On the other side, as shitty as it is when men are unfaithful and toxic members of a relationship, it’s hardly Roman Polanski drugging and raping a thirteen year-old, which I keep seeing as a parallel among ex-fans for some reason. But somehow this all becomes all or nothing. He’s either a child molester or she’s loony tunes. Pick a side, any side.
The cure
Watch Buffy like right this second. It won’t make what Joss Whedon did in his personal life any less crappy, but it will remind you that this show was exactly what young women needed at that time. No, the show wasn’t perfect. I still don’t like that Spike-Buffy assault scene in Season 6 and I maintain that audiences were not ready for the complexity of that statement. There are multiple uses of ableist language on the show and, because of the time it aired, the nature of LGBT relationships were not always given their due. But it did do something great, and we can’t let what Buffy did for feminism die because its creator isn’t a feminist icon. Of course he’s not. Human beings shouldn’t be icons.
The follow-up treatment
Here’s the thing, and I’ve said this before — When you’re a fan of an artist as a person, rather than just the art they produce, you set yourself up for a big disappointment. Joss Whedon is a person like you or I and, while I think this represents a pretty huge personal failing on his part, I don’t know if that makes him not a feminist. He is an advocate for equality of the sexes which is feminism, lest we all forget.
One could argue that his treatment of his wife represents a hypocrisy not in keeping with his feminist ideology, and maybe that’s true. However, equating him with a predator like Roman Polanski— while it might feel like that “gimme”statement you just need to tweet— truly devalues women who have been the victim of the kind of crime Roman Polanski committed. Also …seriously, are people TRYING to turn people away from feminism? Oh, crap, I forgot it’s cool to tell people they aren’t good enough to be a feminist as if the movement itself is Studio 54 (#badfeminist, #superold).
Enjoy your “cure,” folks. In the meantime, I’ll be over here taking MY cure, which tastes a lot like whiskey, with a hint of “Fuck Nazis” sheetcake.
To each his own.
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If you feel inclined to read more from me, you can find my “hilarious” cancer survival tale here, my Nancy Drew Review Project on Blogger and my writing in novel form on Amazon’s Kindle Store.
Thanks for reading!

