What Julianna Margulies Can Teach Us About S*ingTFU!
The Good Wife basically called us the hard-R when she could have said nothing. Let's learn to say nothing!
Tensions are high right now. On the world scale there is mass war and death, the economy is allegedly doing “fine,” even as wages are stagnant and prices for consumer goods are higher than ever. The climate is in dire need of us making real adjustments. And (less importantly?) Hollywood has had a tumultuous year.
In what was basically the 4th year of pretending the pandemic didn’t upend EVERYTHING, the entertainment industry had two of the longest strikes (between the WGA and SAG/AFTRA) in history, leading into the notoriously slow holiday season. If you weren’t eating good before things went to shit this summer, you’re probably in a pretty bad spot now…
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And with all of this being the dominant conversation, we still have people like Julianna Margulies (who, in my home, is mostly known for having a name that is interesting to say, and really nothing else), “star” of several series including “The Good Wife,” and “The Morning Show,” chose hurting several communities of people for seemingly no reason.
For context, JM went on a podcast (I hadn’t heard of it before this happened, and frankly, considering the host was as pathetic and demeaning as she was, I’m not about to give them ANY clicks) and over the course of an hour threw Black people, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community under the bus. The conversation was supposed to be about her feelings as a Jewish woman in Hollywood as the ongoing conflict in Gaza unfolds. And instead of focusing on her feelings she said the following things:
“The Blacks” (!!!) were “brainwashed to hate the Jews.”
When George Floyd was murdered she ran to “put up a Black screen on Instagram.”
“As a person who plays a lesbian journalist on The Morning Show” (what??)
A whole bunch of other shit about pronouns, Black lesbians, Muslims, and college campuses.
Before we begin, let me just say, as a Black™ I really don’t think I need to do the emotional and educational labor of explaining why so much of this is wrong. It’s 2023, I know I’m preaching to the choir on this here substack. But I want to offer that her feelings are valid even as her critiques are not, and clearly she has some BIG FEELINGS™. But regardless of said feels, she was asked to go on a podcast, presumably to promote some of her latest projects and maybe to talk about her feelings as a Jewish woman in a time of rising antisemitism and Israel’s ongoing assault on the unarmed citizens of Gaza. Perhaps I’m wrong, but if she wasn’t able to stay on topic, she could have easily rescheduled the podcast appearance.
As a person who played a daily news podcast host for more than 400 episodes, one thing I can tell you is podcasts can be made with just the hosts. The guests are great, but in a jam, if Julz Margz wasn’t feeling capable of explaining her feelings without delving into racism, homophobia, and Islamophobia, she could have just opted out. I’m sure the middle-aged man who hosts that show could have filled the time with recollections of failure and general disinterest in being a productive member of society.
She didn’t opt-out though, and the internet called her out, in, around, and plenty of other prepositions. She then issued this…statement. The statement I’m about to share has been positioned as an apology by DEADLINE, but let me know if you see the words “sorry” “apologize” or “wrong” anywhere below:
“I am horrified by the fact that statements I made on a recent podcast offended the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities, communities I truly love and respect. I want to be 100% clear: Racism, homophobia, sexism, or any prejudice against anyone’s personal beliefs or identity are abhorrent to me, full stop. Throughout my career I have worked tirelessly to combat hate of all kind, end antisemitism, speak out against terrorist groups like Hamas, and forge a united front against discrimination. I did not intend for my words to sow further division, for which I am sincerely apologetic.”
She did use the word “apologetic” which is apt, because she’s an actor, and you can act apologetic, but to do so, you have to say “I’m sorry,” which she didn’t do.
Look, I don’t want to re-litigate this. A week has passed, more people have died, there’s unrest everywhere. Every person I know is grieving, exhausted, and just clawing towards the new year. She’s a racist who said racist things, but I want to just quickly explain the lesson in all this:
It is not hard these days to lose control of our emotions. And with social media rewarding inflammatory language, it’s easy to fall to our more base instincts of lashing out. Julianna could have recognized that she wasn’t emotionally capable of having a civil conversation outlining the real fear she feels as a Jewish woman today. She has a right to those feelings. If she insisted on making that podcast appearance, she very well could have explained that she feels alone or polarized by reactions to what Israel’s government is doing. She could have just sat there and ate her food and cashed her check from Apple TV+. Coulda. Shoulda. Woulda.
The best piece of professional advice I may have ever received was from my former editor at Fusion (RIP) back in the day. One day I was fuming about something on Twitter. This was pre-Trump internet, so probably BuzzFeed ruining online video for an entire generation of creative people or something. Anyway, my boss pulled me aside and kindly said, “Never complain, never explain.”
I was preparing to do something that I still, to this day, am embarrassed to admit I do…Because we all do it: I was gonna fight online. I was gonna spend all day insulting people and getting insulted in return and saying things I’m not proud of when I could have chosen not to explain. To not have said anything at all.
Maybe the answer from time to time is to just not engage. Why are we raising our own blood pressure by looking at our phones and responding to negativity, or pushing our own out into the world? I’m not saying we should never speak up (obviously, come on), but if we are at risk of hurting others and needlessly diminishing ourselves, shutting the fuck up is a perfectly good option. You know what no one complains about? You not choosing violence today. You not generalizing a population of people because your feelings are hurt. You can always call a friend, get a therapist, write it down and set it on fire. You don’t always have to SAY the thing at all.
So TL;DR (and I swear I’m going to try to take my own advice here going forward): sometimes nothing is better than something. Sometimes we can remain a working actor that people of a certain age can picture when our name is said and the strongest emotion it will elicit is neutrality, simply by minding our own goddamn business. Shutting the F___ up is free, effective, and encouraged.
-A
I was really blown away by the level of ignorance, she displayed. Especially the part in the interview where she comments that because she played a lesbian on TV that she has some concept of the experiences of lesbians. Not really what she said, but the comment she made implied such a thing. What a fucking joke. She makes Barbie look like a savant.