Stevie Nicks, whom I adored as a teenager and through much of my adult life, penned what is being criticized as a tone-deaf tweet (are they still called that on X?) in reference to the Maui fires. Her post is here, and here's one of her critics:
In the tweet, she begins by reminding us that she has a house in the most magical place on earth, Lahaina. Her niece and her husband and their son were staying at the house and enjoyed one-and-a-half days of fun. That was before the fire, which would displace hundreds and kill at least 99 with the death toll expected to rise, broke out and ruined the fun. Oh, and lives, too, Ms. Nicks.
The family did escape and made it back to Los Angeles, where they are, and I quote, “totally freaked out.” I am glad that the family is safe, but “freaked out” cannot begin to describe the grief of the people who live there, who are mourning lost loved ones, worried sick over missing friends and family, and whose homes, unlike Ms. Nicks’, have been reduced to smoking debris. And also, unlike Ms. Nicks’ situation, most Hawaiians struggle with an incredibly high cost of living. They did not lose vacation homes. They lost their only homes.
Much of the tweet is an exercise in vapid, self-absorbed twaddle. Nicks seems to wallow in her personal situation while ignoring the desperate conditions on Maui.
Here's where I find fault with the article's author--he slams Stevie for being "vapid", "an old lib" who "manages to labor under the delusion that the world is desperate to hear their opinions and is fascinated with their lives", and then criticizes her for not writing a "thoughts and prayers"-type post about the fires. What the author seems not to realize is that anyone reading Stevie Nicks' tweets probably is interested in her view and her personal situation, why else would someone read her tweets? No doubt she probably could have added in more wailing and gnashing of teeth about some of the horrible results from the fire, but that wasn't the purpose of her tweet. Just watch the news if you want to hear about how horrible the fire damage is. That isn't what moved Stevie to write, she wrote to give a personal slant to the horror.
The author seems to want to have it both ways, to insist that she write something deep while simultaneously slamming her as incapable of writing something deep. I don't think you have to be a Stevie Nicks fan from way back to see the flaw in that logic.
4 comments:
I read her tweet, and found it very moving. Yes, it is personal, and I cannot imagine what she was going through with more knowledge about the dangers than her family was on Maui.
The author points out that Stevie Nicks and family are "totally freaked out". A charitable person might consider that when totally freaked out, people may not be particularly articulate or insightful.
I have no strong feelings about Stevie Nicks. To me, her post reads like she knows that people in the world care about her, so she wants to share what she went through and how she's processing the experience. She certainly didn't say anything offensive.
Hawaii suffers from too many celebrities. There was similar angst levied at Oprah who showed up at a shelter WITH A FILM CREW to document her largesse. It is worth nothing the celebrity areas were not impacted and this may be a major cause on top of Biden's lackadaisical insistence on playing part time president rather than having any actual concern for the people of Lahaina. I've been there, it is/was a beautiful old part of the city with lots of small interesting shops. I hope the rumors of "someone" trying to buy out the owners to create a fifteen minute city there are false, but nothing would surprise me.
It's one thing to post a tweet, it's another to show up with a film crew. At that point it stops being about charity and becomes even more about ego.
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