Obnoxious Bitch

Saturday, May 08, 2004

People need to grow a fucking spine!

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the necessity (and more importantly the spirit) of laws against sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.  However, when I read about Amaani Lyle and her suit against Warner Bros. and the producers of “Friends”, I can only wonder how some people can live with themselves when they’re too spineless to confront an undesirable situation without involving legal counsel and the courts.

I know if I were working as a writer’s assistant, and the conversations were making me uncomfortable, I’d at least SAY something and ask for the behavior to cease - not wait until I left the company and then turn around and sue.  If this woman failed to either directly confront the writers and ask them to stop, OR to go to her supervisor, or even HR (ptui!) for fuck’s sake… how can she claim they willingly created a hostile environment?  Are there truly adult people, working in the fucking entertainment industry, who don’t have enough intestinal fortitude to say, “Hey guys, wouldja mind taking your blowjob talk outside, or at least keep it down?” I’m sure working on “Friends” was much different than working at Nickelodeon, but c’mon Amaani… I can almost understand being offended by the word “cunt” because so many women ARE (unlike me - I love the word!), but claiming to be psychologically scarred by a bunch of men’s use of vulgarity and profanity is just freakin’ ridiculous.

So there was supposedly no explictly sexual content in the shows they were writing, and Ms. Lyle feels it was inappropriate to bring up sex, porn or nudity during the writers’ brainstorming.  It’s IS show business, after all, and no matter WHAT the “product,” keeping it sexy is what it’s all about.  “Friends” was so popular for 10 years because the men and women in the audience, every last one of them, at one time thought about what it’d be like to fuck Jennifer Aniston, or Matt LeBlanc (hey, I’d do him, and I never watched a show until the finale - heh)… and that can’t EVER be far from the minds of anyone writing for television.  I’ll allow that perhaps these guys’ conversations were far too graphic for Ms. Lyle’s tender sensibilities, but if that’s so, WHY did she never say anything? She claims this was an everyday thing; and yet she “suffered” through months and months of this hostile environment without ever once going off, like any other normal person would?

The fact of the matter is that in spite of the strides made by women in the workplace, it’s still a man’s world and boys will be boys… especially in the entertainment industry where eternal Peter Pans keep the machine going by giving the people what they want - the idea that whatever’s in front of them will somehow get them laid.  Sex sells, and the entertainment industry sexualizes anything and everything.  Any woman who expects to be treated with kid gloves in the business is woefully naive and deserves to be run off if she’s too easily offended AND can’t bring herself to tell the boys when they need to shut the fuck up already.  When you’re playing with the boys, you’d best have balls enough to stand up for yourself once in awhile or you’ll get chewed up and spit out in short order.  Hooray for Hollywood.

What really sucks is the bitch will probably end up getting a settlement for her whining, with money that comes out of MY pocket when all’s said and done.  If they’re paying off spineless jellyfish like her, those dings in the bottom line mean less cash in the corporate pool to be spread around to those of us who have a brain AND a spine, and spend our days toiling to make the money people like Amaani Lyle get simply for being easily offended crybabies who find a lawyer to take their case.

Maybe I just don’t get it because I’m simply not offended by crass language, profanity or sexually explicit speech, and in fact, I’m probably better at it than half the men I know.  Hell, I’d have ribbed those guys for being so obviously fixated and wondered aloud if what they didn’t really want was for Jennifer to don a strap-on and fuck their hairy asses silly, while they were dressed in cheerleader outfits.

Stupid men, spineless women and deep corporate pockets… meanwhile, we can’t get goddamned head count to help with the mountain of work on our plates.  What the fuck kind of justice is THAT?

Now go buy a few DVDs - unfortunately you’ll be contributing to the blood money paid to malcontents like Amaani Lyle, but you might also make life a little easier for some hard-working geeks like me.