Pop Culture Mondays/4.19.21
By: Brooke Hammerling
Tags: Guns, Racism, Pop Culture, Bullying, Tik Tok

Needs to stop

TIMES UP FOR BULLIES:

So, I will say I was MUCH better prepped in life for dealing with bullies than I was with say, sexual harassers, physical abusers and math. I am not making a joke here…like I was not prepared for any of these other things through my upbringing or education. I was taught that guys get Blue Balls before I ever learned that men could rape us. I learned that I could die if I kept a tampon in my body longer than 8 hours but never learned how to protect myself from abuse. I learned if I had sex in high school I was a slut but if a guy had sex he was a HERO. And I learned math the wrong way but that’s another newsletter.

I also learned that EVERYONE has a bully and that’s just the way of life and it will happen no matter who you are or what you look like. THAT WAS the big life lesson. There was this girl growing up who I worshipped…she was everything I was not. She was COOL and had a big family and always had the coolest rope bracelets and Ralph Lauren outfits and she had HORSES and she was SO mean to me it was traumatizing. I mean there were days I was TOO scared to go to school. She didn’t hit me or pull my hair or anything like that, she just mocked me or shamed me or teased me or even worse….IGNORED me and got my classmates to do the same. And when you’re 9…it is THE END OF THE WORLD. And I remember my mother telling me, “There is a Marcia Wesson (I made this name up to protect my bully who I think grew up to be a a lovely woman btw) in every class and in every school. It is NOT about Marcia, but about how you deal with it and ignore it.”

Yeah so this advice tbh, sucked. I am 46 and STILL am haunted by some of the affects that shit had on me as a kid. BUT you hope that being an adult means you CAN ignore it…hopefully being an adult meant bullies didn’t exist anymore but IF they did you can choose to remove yourself from the situation. But it’s not that easy.

Enter the talk of Hollywood at the moment, Scott Rudin, a producer of Broadway shows and films and blah blah blah. People in the industry have spoken about it for years…the fact that this guy was abusive. TORMENTED his staff, the talent, seemingly everyone. In the land of ME TOO he seemed to be top of the list of getting cancelled. BUT he did not. MAYBE I guess because his abuse was of the bullying kind but NOT of the sexual kind so he was pushed to the side. AND there is that mindset, like my mother had, that if you are being bullied, just leave. Ignore it or leave it. It’s not that easy especially if you’re young and fearful that your entire career is centered around that job. Or if you’re talent and you’re afraid of being fired, or stopping production that would impact people’s paychecks. BUT that all stopped this past week when an exposé came out on Scott Rudin and he then decided to “take a step back and apologize for his actions…’’ actions that are part of his whole day to day life. So, if you missed the article, it is below….but then people took action. Most tragically and hauntingly, the brother of a former employee’s of Rudin’s who took his own life. The video is something to see:

And then Sutton Foster who is basically the second coming of Christ to theatre junkies everywhere → and if you do not watch her on “YOUNGER” then you are missing out BIG TIME it is such a great show…but Sutton, who stars in the “Music Man”, a Rudin-produced show that’s coming when Broadway re-opens, has spoken out. She explains why SHE DID NOT turn to socials to voice her thoughts as she personally didn't feel that was the right format for her (lots of people disagreeing with her) but she did address it on an Insta Live and she says, “the only positive out come was this outcome,” seemingly suggesting the outcome of Rudin being out. She goes on to suggest she had never encountered someone like him.

Before Sutton, MOST people have stayed silent. But Megan Ellison, a young woman I knew when she was a child who has ALWAYS had a point of view and a fearlessness in expressing it but also a woman who remains very reserved and out of the limelight and had not tweeted in YEARS, actually spoke out ON this topic in a tweet:

So for those who wonder why people didn’t just quit…there are many reasons. And for those who have not ever been abused…it does something to your brain where you begin to wonder if you deserved it or provoked it or would never be able to survive without the abuser. You WOULD NEVER EAT LUNCH IN THIS TOWN AGAIN. Well, that’s changing.

THE THR exposé: