I’m one of those girls who came from a bully-ridden childhood, so, now that I’m all growed up, I tend to cut a wide path around people who are shitty just to make themselves feel better. That said, I’ve been know to sling a barb or three when I’m feeling defensive, which, for the record, is most of the time. I’m working on it. When you know better, you do better. Ew. I think I just quoted Oprah.
So, there’s been a huge hue-and-cry on Twitter over the past 24 hours about a series of emails between Jenny over at TheBloggess.com and a VP from a fashion PR firm, Brandlink Communications. It’s schadenfreude at it’s finest. Especially for me, an escapee from the trenches of being a personal assistant in Hollywood, and a girl who struggles with a touch more celebrity obsession than most. That’s a long fucking story I won’t bore you with here. (Oh, look, apparently it’s confession day, too.)
I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a lot more to say about this whole topic, but if you’re not up to speed, you can read about it here. Go on, I’ll wait.
Did you get all that? I have to say, as a writer, I’m not sure what’s more offensive–Jose’s smarmy, entitled tone or his egregious misuse of the English language. Anyway, the Twitterverse exploded this morning, and Jose continued to smarm about the situation. Apparently it’s not the first time he’s had a email catfight with a blogger. Gawker captured a bitchfest he had with Perez Hilton back in 2006. And this was back when Perez Hilton was calling celebrities fat cows, just for fun, and decorating paparazzi photos with doodles of semen and pee trails, and yet he still manages to look like the good guy in their exchange. You can see that here.
At some point, moderately cooler heads prevailed over at Brandlink, and @BrandlinkJose was deleted from Twitter. If you’re just joining the fray, you can see screen caps of his last tweets above. My favorite is the one about his lawyer daddy and his new Armani boots. Second only to the one where he blamed hackers for his behavior. Your mother must be so proud, Jose.
I have so much more to say on the topic of bullies and the people who enable them, but I’m smack up against a deadline of my own, and I’m also waiting to see how it all shakes out. In the meantime, Wil Wheaton is saying it brilliantly over on his blog.
Oh, and did you see the Nancy Upton/American Apparel shitfest a couple of weeks ago? No? You can catch up on that here.
I’m gonna go make some popcorn.
Update: So, I’ve gotten a couple of messages from people who know me, asking about the pr guy, Jose. Full disclosure: A long, long, time ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I worked for a shoe company that employed Harrison & Shriftman. I don’t think he worked there then, and, even if he did, he wasn’t on my account. I don’t know him. Period.
