Not Everyone Has to Like You

Afternoon, Blarians! I’m in Portlandia, listening to Gotye’s Somebody I Used to Know. YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO CUT ME OFF! So glad this song didn’t exist when I was in high school because anytime something crappy would’ve happened to me, I would have blasted this shit. I didn’t even have to date the person. I would’ve been like, “Oh, you don’t want to go to Panera Bread after class anymore because you have Speech & Debate practice?” YOU TREAT ME LIKE A STRANGER AND THAT FEELS SO ROUGH! SOMEBODY! Never underestimate a teenager’s flair for the dramatic.

Or flair for stupidity as in the case of three 14-year old girls who were expelled after Jon Lovitz posted pics on Twitter of his friend’s driveway, which had been defaced by them:

Antisemitism in maple syrup form.

Before I talk about how terrible these teenagers are, let’s discuss a few minor things. One, these fools didn’t even correctly draw the swastikas. I mean, damn, blinding hate shouldn’t get in the way of doing a Google image search of swastika to see what they actually look like. Instead, they screwed up the swastikas twice. WTF?! It takes two seconds to look it up and Google won’t even judge you. You can type, “swatika” and Google will be like: “Did you mean swastika?” and then show you EVERY FUCKING swastika recorded on the internet. Google will spell check your hate to make sure you hate right. Bottom line, these broads were lazy. And that’s fine. You can be lazy. You can be racist/antisemitic. You cannot be both. Two, they used maple syrup to write this out. Were they out of orange marmalade? Who the hell expresses their hate with a sugary and delicious condiment? Use horseradish sauce because that crap is nasty. Three, one of their moms drove them to this person’s house to write this crap on the driveway?! It takes 30 minutes to get anywhere in LA and gas is expensive. Just saying that it’s an hour round trip to do shoddy hate work. If you’re going to exert that much time and effort, you kind of want to crush it, right? Not this junior varsity display these teens did.

Suffice it to say, these teenagers are, at the very least, idiots and at the very worst, Anti-Semites. Oy. But how does everyone know about this? Here’s the backstory: last week, Jon discovered that his neighbor’s driveway had been vandalized, so he went to Twitter, because that what we do now, we go to Twitter first instead of the police, and tweeted this picture. And then he tweeted a follow-up picture, showing the girls’ faces and asking his fans to retweet the pic, so the world can know they’re “Jew Haters:”

You know what’s better than having a conversation with these buffoons? Telling your fans to RT a picture of them and refer to them as “Jew Haters.” Because counteracting bullying with cyberbullying solves EVERYTHING. Look, I’m not defending these girls. They’re clearly behaving badly and have been raised in an awful manner; however, the solution shouldn’t be cyberbulling and expulsion from high school. Suspension? Sure. Having a counseling session with all the three of the girls as well as the parents? Absolutely. Some sort of police action? I understand that you cannot charge them for vandalism, since the maple syrup swastikas are not permanent, but perhaps there is something else they can be  charged with. But being expelled from school? Absolutely not.

The reason why I’m so adamant about not expelling people over hate expressions like this is that I honestly think that people do not realize how dangerous a precedent this sets. It’s essentially stating that if you do something outside of school that the school doesn’t agree with, you can be kicked out. What we tend to forget that you can be a misogynist or a racist or anything that is hateful, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a job, or go to school, etc. Speaking as a POC aka a person of color, I have come to the conclusion very early on in life that not everyone is going to like you. And it might be because I’m African-American. In fact, some people may hate me for the color of my skin. Haters gon hate, y’all. Seriously though, I can demand or have the expectation that I will not be physically harmed or have my rights violated because I am Black, however; I cannot demand that everyone not hate me. That is a very big distinction that I think a lot of people fail to recognize. Not everyone is going to like you. That’s the reality. Is it a reality that I enjoy? Of course not. But we do not live in a police state. And kicking people out of school or firing them only reinforces that type of thinking and I think can all know that this country tends to have well-intentioned ideas that quickly get warped and do more harm then good in the long run.

Furthermore, firing someone or kicking them out of school is a temporary solution. And not a fruitful one, in my opinion. It’s not like this is going to change these girls’ perception about Jewish people. It’s not like people are  racist or antisemitic because they don’t know that the average person frowns on their outlook. People are that way because they were raised that way and we should try and find out why. I think Jon Lovitz and everyone involved really missed an opportunity to have a frank and open and honest discussion about what happened. Three 14-year olds did this. That is so young. What’s going on in their homes that lead them to this point? Does anyone know and more importantly, does anyone care? Unfortunately, not the way the society is. We want an empty apology and punishment as if those things rectify anything. No one wants to talk or understand why someone is the way they are and help change them if change is necessary. Let’s just yay or nay people like we’re Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator:

Do we want to live in a world where a thumbs up or thumbs down decides our immediate fate? I vote nay.

Also, what makes the swastikas such an offense when all the high school students tweeted awful things about there being Black characters being in The Hunger Games suffered no consequence as severe as expulsion. Not that they should have, mind you. However, is it because they were racist about fictional people that somehow makes racism more palatable and less rage-inducing?

This is what happens when we don't talk in this country. People just spew hatred and lolz and think nothing of it.

All I know, in my heart, is that this awful swastika situation should’ve and could’ve been handled differently. I wish we were a nation that talked instead of ruling with an iron fist, no questions asked. I wish we wanted real solutions instead of actions that merely please us in the moment when we are hurt and full of rage.

Btdubs, in case you’re the only person on the planet who hasn’t heard Somebody I Used To Know, peep the video. SOMEBODY!:

Is it just me or are his teef are intense?

Tags: Antisemitism, Current Events, Gotye, Jon Lovitz, Opinion, People Are Cray, Twitter