In an editorial colmun today, Elizabeth Nickson, writing about the moral decrepitude and hypocrisy evident in movie stars who self-identify as “liberals,” mentions a number of outrageously decadent thing movie stars do, like paying people to wait outside in case they need ice cream or whatever. (Please do not turn this into a partisan debate. I’m sure conservative celebrities do the same crap.) She concludes a litany of such things by mentioning that Jennifer Lopez, “like many others, does not allow her employees to look her in the eyes.”
While I know celebrities can be spoiled brats, not allowing your employees to look at your face strikes me as being… well, sort of insane. Getting them to call you “Sir” and wait on you is one thing. Saying they have to look at the ground in your presence suggest mental disease, like you think you’re Princess Anastasia or something.
So, is this true? Does Lopez actually force people in her employ not to gaze upon her rather ordinary visage? Do other movie stars do that? Or is it an urban legend?
A whole slew of insanely ridiculous contract riders (plus a whole slew of other really neat information) can be found at thesmokinggun.com (DISCLAIMER: I am not an employee of thesmokingun.com, nor do I have any financial interest in seeing the page get hits). J. Lo’s contract rider is included.
The real question is why the editorial singled out liberal celebrities for criticism. Or is treating your staff like scum acceptable to Ms. Nickson if they’re registered Republicans?
(Not trying to turn this into a partisan debate; I’m just saying that boorish behavior should be criticized regardless of the person’s political or social views)
It’s a GQ. If you read the original article, the singling out makes sense in the context of what she’s saying. Partisan bickering belongs in the Pit. Do you have any info as to this matter, rjung, or not?
Nobody else heard about this? C’mon, she’s really famous.
Gosh, Lola! You seem to hold some enmity for Ms. Lopez. Do you have some evidence for the story, or are you sure it’s true just because you hate Jennifer Lopez right down to your toenails?
By the way, I’m not a raving J-Lo fan. I saw her in “Out Of Sight,” and I thought she did OK. I saw Rolling Stone’s photo feature of her, and I vigorously disagree with your description of her ass. In most non-anorexic parts of the real world, she’d be found to be quite nice-looking.
Well, I do, actually…She rented a space on a floor of my old office building for her fashion line and the building manager was there when she was checking out the space.
He was told not to speak to Ms. Lopez directly by her “people”, and according to him she’s a REAL bitch. So, I wouldn’t put it past her to treat her staff the same way.
You’re right, I think she’s incredibly overrated with minimal talent. If you think she’s hot, move to the Bronx. Plenty of far more attractive Peurto Rican chicks there.
Not for nothing, but a friend of mine used to work as an assistant engineer at the studio where Lopez recorded “On the 6.” She told me about the no-looking-at-jennifer-rule back then, but said she only made this request while she was actually recording her parts. She said it made her self concious about her singing. (no comment)
She also said that Lopez’s staff included two bodyguards whose sole purpose was to keep Puff Daddy away. He learned this when Puffy tried to force his way into the studio. :rolleyes:
Just to counteract the partisan nature of Ms Nickson’s column, I’ve heard the Sylvester Stallone, who I believe is a Republican, has a similar “don’t look” policy.
My question is that seeing as Ms Lopez doesn’t want people to look her in the eyes, would it therefore be acceptable behavior for me to stare at her boobs if we ever have a conversation?
I’ve heard about these rules, too, and the commentator was making the point that these celebrities are surrounded by sycophantic entourages who see the celebrity as a meal ticket and go to great lengths to isolate the celebrity from the average slob. Only they call it “protection”.
I’m prepared to believe that some stooge said that Lopez didn’t want people looking her in the eye, but unless I actually meet Lopez and see for myself that she is some kind of nutcase, I’ll reserve judgement.
Even if this story about Jennifer Lopez is true, what would that show about liberal celebrities? Why do you think that Jennifer Lopez is a liberal? Has she ever participated in political rallies or announced her support for political causes?
Please note that you’re going to need a better proof than a statement like “Well, she’s a slut and therefore liberal.” That’s no more a proof of her political beliefs than “Well, she’s money-grubbing and therefore conservative.” To show that she’s being hypocritical you’re going to have to find some case where she’s stated her political beliefs.
I guess it was stupid of me to ask a simple OP that mentioned one of the SDMB Knee Jerk Response Words. I’ll address that in the Pit.
Anyone have independent confirmation Lopez is a nut?
Please note that I never said she was a liberal, a slut, or anything else; that I am neither an anti-liberal nor a liberal and, in fact, don’t identify as liberal OR conservative. I just asked for confirmation of a story. The “liberal” bit has no relevance to answering my question. Jeez, read the OP.
I’m sorry I tried to help the Teeming Millions by putting the original newspaper column into context, since I apparently committed a greivous sin by mentioning one of the SDMB Holy War Knee-Jerk-Response Words, and I’ll try not to do it again. Henceforth I will avoid using such terribly inflammatory language so as not to offend our resident partisans. I will from now on use code words. From the point on, persons of a liberal persuasion, or members of a political party that generally identifies itself as liberal, will be referred to in my posts as “twits.” Persons of a conservative persuasion, or those members of political parties self-identified as conservatives, shall be “jerks.” Maybe then the folks
I just think the political alignment is irrelevant to the (alleged) behavior – boorish behavior is equally detestable whether it’s coming from a liberal, a conservative, a Scientologist, or a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.
Give me a break, RickJay. You mentioned in your post that the claim of Elizabeth Nickson was that Jennifer Lopez doesn’t allow her employees to look her in the eyes and therefore she’s another liberal celebrity who is a hypocrite. My point was that we know nothing about Lopez’s politics and that therefore, even if it’s true that she doesn’t allow them to look her in the eyes, we haven’t learned anything about the actions of liberal celebrities.
Other people were trying to answer your question based on whether Lopez really does forbid her employees to look in her eyes. I thought that it’s a waste of time to speculate on that. The chances are very good that it’s impossible to find out if it’s true. Most celebrities have such a guard around them preventing anyone like us from ever meeting them or seeing them in ordinary circumstances that’s it’s unlikely that any accurate facts about their ordinary lives will leak out. (As has been point out, this heavy guard is partly the arrogance of celebrities, partly their justified fear of ordinary jerks, and partly the nastiness of bodyguards.)
My point was that it doesn’t matter. We don’t know anything about Jennifer Lopez’s politics, so anything we would learn about her private behavior wouldn’t be relevant to the claim of Elizabeth Nickson. The only thing that I would accept as relevant to a claim that Lopez is liberal or conservative is her publicly stated political positions. I was afraid that someone would come back with stupid claims like “She’s a slut, therefor she’s liberal,” or “She’s money-grubbing, therefore she’s conservative.” (Incidentally, as far as I know, nothing is publicly known about either of those claims.) I know that those statements are stupid and irrelevant, but I’ve been in arguments where people used claims just like them. I was trying to make the point that dubious claims about Lopez’s private life are irrelevant to the question of whether she is politically liberal or conservative.
um, rjung, Wendall seems to me that both of you are attempting to focus on the word ‘liberal’ from the OP vs. the actual OP question (checking forum, yep, GQ).
and, since the word ‘liberal’ wasn’t a designation of the OPer, but of the source of his question, your attempts can be legitimately seen as an attempt to hijack this nice little GQ into a GD about if the press is fair to liberals or the relative nutiness of celebrities based on their political alignment.
Yes, but he quite clearly wasn’t attempting to gather information to support or refute Nickson’s premise. In fact, he quite clearly stated that he wasn’t interested in Nickson’s premise. He simply wanted to establish or refute the claim that Lopez doesn’t allow people to look her in the eyes.
He could have easily asked his question in the form, “I read in the newspaper that Jennifer Lopez doesn’t allow people to look her in the eyes. Is this true?” Upon which he would have immediately been asked, “What paper? What was the context?” and so forth. By establishing that information at the front, he gets his thread hijacked into irrelevancies. Yeesh.
> . . . your attempts can be legitimately seen as an attempt to
> hijack this nice little GQ into a GD about if the press is fair to
> liberals or the relative nutiness of celebrities based on their
> political alignment.
I have no desire whatsoever to debate whether the press is fair to liberals or conservatives. I have no desire whatsoever to debate whether liberal or conservative celebrities are nuttier. You can easily check that in fact I very seldom post in GD because I find such arguments to be boring and uninformative. One of my points is that it’s very unlikely that we will ever be able to determine if Jennifer Lopez really forbids her employees from looking her in the eyes. My other point is that it doesn’t matter if we find out that this is true, since Lopez hasn’t discussed her political beliefs publicly, so we can’t determine if Nickson’s claims about liberal celebrities are true.
