Lady Gaga Called a Slut by NYC Politician
Yesterday, Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro attended a kickoff event for Staten Island’s youth anti-drug program. The President decided to make a speech, deploring the ‘glorification of drug use in the media’. As an example of this so-called glorification, Molinaro used a photograph of Lady Gaga smoking weed on stage at a recent concert in Amsterdam.
Then he called her a slut.
“There’s Gaga. Here’s this, this, I would call her a slut. This slut is influencing many, many children,” Molinaro told the crowd. “To me, she’s not an actress, she’s a slut, in the pure word, in the pure meaning of the word.”
Well, first of all, she’s not an actress to any of us. And secondly, what?!
The NY Times called up Molinaro to give him a chance to clarify his choice of words.
“Looking up the word ‘slut’ to see if it was properly used before I used it, it said ‘improper conduct,’” Molinaro backpedaled. He’s technically correct, of course, but in the context of the sentence he used the word in, it looks like he meant it in the modern, colloquial, misogynistic sense – meaning sexually promiscuous. It was a really poor choice of words in either case.
Molinaro went on to explain the reasoning behind his outrage over Gaga’s onstage antics.
“Now, isn’t it improper for someone who is so high profile to be smoking reefer in front of children?,” he explained. “I have grandnieces that idolize her – 12 and 13 years old – and it’s ridiculous. You see these young girls walking around on Halloween with her outfit on.”
This argument is frequently made when a celebrity (almost always female) publicly does something that’s considered ‘immoral’, whether it be smoking a joint or wearing a sexy outfit. Here’s why it’s a bad argument: Lady Gaga is not a member of The Wiggles. She’s not a children’s entertainer. She got famous by wearing a dress made of prime cuts and singing lyrics like:
“Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun/
And baby when it’s love if it’s not rough it isn’t fun”
If parents allow their preteen children to listen to her music and dress up as her for Halloween, that’s fine – but to then expect that because their children have chosen to idolize her, she should act like a bastion of (what the parents perceive to be) perfect morality at all times is illogical.
