Aubrey O'Day, Hitler, and the Problem With Blogs

I know this a minor story, but it is very, very fascinating to me, this Aubrey O’Day Hitler thing.  If you missed it yesterday, Aubrey went on The Sean Hannity Show and said that while she did not condone the actions of Fidel Castro and Adolf Hitler, they were both brilliant men.  Hannity and co. met these statements with affront and condescension, of course, and I predicted that the celebrity media mill would probably churn out a mess of blog posts headlined AUBREY O’DAY HEARTS HITLER.  Perez Hilton literally wrote it as “Aubrey O’Day Hearts Fidel Castro… And Hitler Too!”

As a celebrity blogger, unless you yourself are brilliant, you don’t really get to form nuanced, original thoughts for each of your posts because you’re obliged to bang out a certain number every day.  So when you write about a celebrity, you fall back on the snapshot consensus identity the blogosphere has given her (typically it’s a her), which in Aubrey O’Day’s case is “talentless, dumb skank” (which is the go-to for most young celebrity women).  So that was the kneejerk, for most bloggers: talentless, dumb skank Aubrey O’Day praises Hitler.  Now TMZ has gone out of its way to validate that assessment – which in this case is wrongheaded and off-base – by talking to “the Jewish community” about its outrage at Aubrey O’Day…  

TMZ spoke with Rabbi Chaim Cunin of Chabad House who gave us the following statement:

“When a woman like her uses public airwaves, with access to millions of wonderful citizens of America, and calls some of the most despicable, unspeakable hate mongers of history brilliant, then something is lacking with her intelligence.

This is a constant reminder of how careful we need to be when we talk about hate, because hatred is always present. We need to make sure we are careful and that hatred doesn’t rear it’s ugly head.

‘I’d like for her to think about some older Holocaust survivor having that comment beamed into their home while they are enjoying the freedom that this beautiful country provides and having to listen to her disgusting comments.”

I assure you that TMZ called rabbi after rabbi to get a negative statement about how hateful Aubrey O’Day’s comments were (for the record, Aubrey said, “What Hitler succeeded in doing, was deplorable… And I hope we never see such an abusive use of power again.”) and most were like, uh, no thanks, all she said was that Hitler was brilliant and evil, which is not controversial or incorrect at all since psychologists estimate his IQ to have been in the 140-150 range.   Luckily, TMZ finally found one who could give an accurate statement on behalf of “the Jewish community.”  (I did enjoy that they dubbed her “Aubrey Oy Vey.”)

Most other blogs only went so far as to call her an idiot rather than a hatemonger, but it’s almost as though they didn’t even watch the clip.  It’s almost like, Aubrey O’Day said something, therefore it is stupid.  This is also interesting because it’s the purest example I’ve seen in a long time of how we mainly take our news in the form of juicy little single-facet gotcha! snippets.  (See also: wise Latina Sonia Sotomayor.)  You are not going to click on a blog post headlined “Aubrey O’Day Gives Rational Argument About The Disjoint Between Intelligence and Morality in Adolf Hitler.”  You’re going to click on one that says, “Noted Whore Aubrey O’Day Heils Hitler.”  Now that the short form is really the only form of journalism anyone reads or watches, this removing-a-statement-from-context trick is basically standard practice, even in outlets I admire.  (Hell, it’s the bread and butter of The Daily Show.)  The irony, I suppose, is that this kind of media is the only reason Aubrey O’Day exists in the first place.

But it is kind of a shame, and I truly hope Aubrey O’Day does not apologize for her remarks.  In conclusion, Aubrey O’Day, please go steady with me.

Here’s the clip again: