Plan B Forum

When Gwyneth Paltrow stirred controversy this week by comparing her daily struggles with internet trolls to the “dehumanising” experience of soldiers at war, she messed with the wrong woman: Cindy McCain.

Hearing about Paltrow’s comments, the wife of Arizona Senator John McCain took to Twitter, calling the actress “a joke” and stating that “My 2 sons serving in the military should talk to her.” (McCain’s son Jimmy served in Iraq as a Marine and her son Jack is a Navy lieutenant.)

In an interview on Thursday with HLN Now TV, she went a step further, calling Paltrow’s comments “ignorant” and “selfish” and offering to take her to meet with veterans.

“I would encourage Gwyneth Paltrow - and I would be happy to go with her - to go sit down with some troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq and talk to them about what really goes on, and perhaps meet some of the young men and women who have lost limbs from this,” Cindy McCain said. “It’s Hollywood; I don’t know what else to say.”

Paltrow, the Academy Award-winning actress and founder of goop.com, made the comments this week at a technology “Code Conference” hosted by Re/code that delved into internet culture.

“You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanising thing. It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanising thing, and then something is defined out of it,” Paltrow said at the conference, according Re/code’s write-up of the event. “My hope is, as we get out of it, we’ll reach the next level of conscience.”

Paltrow went on to say that the internet offers amazing opportunities to “mature and learn,” but also “to project outward our hatred” through anonymous comments.

McCain, who got her share of unpleasant internet scrutiny during her husband’s two presidential campaigns, first shared a link to Paltrow’s comments on her Twitter feed via the conservative website Breitbart.

After proposing on Twitter that Paltrow meet with her sons, she fired off a second tweet suggesting that the actress “should go out on patrol with some soldiers. Kind of like a Red Carpet in her mind, I guess.”

Charlize Theron doesn’t Google herself. Which is just as well, given what’s being said about her today.

The Oscar-winning actress caused an online furore after comparing press coverage of her private life to rape. The comment came during a Sky News interview in the UK, where she was promoting her new film A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Theron’s interviewer mentioned he had typed her name into Google and was surprised to see so much gossip about her boyfriends, appearance and children. Her reaction was adamant.

“I don’t do that. When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start, I guess, feeling raped,” she said.

“When it comes to your son and your private life…some people might relish in all of that stuff…but there are certain things in my life that I think of as very sacred and I’m very protective over them.”

“That doesn’t mean that I always win that war, but as long as I don’t have to see that stuff or read that stuff or hear that stuff, then I can live with my head in a clear space.”

But online communities seized on Theron’s “rape” analogy, accusing her of being insensitive and trivialising sexual assault. Some users commented that while a life in the public eye is a choice, rape is not.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebri ... z33FlzJmaC

When Gwyneth Paltrow stirred controversy this week

I'm offended by people who state publicly that we should be offended by things that we wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't said anything...

In the latest episode of ‘Gwyneth Paltrow states the absolute ridiculous’, the actress has claimed that saying negative things to water can hurt its feelings.


The ‘consciously uncoupled’ star revealed that she follows the work of Japanese scientist Masaru Emoto, whose experiments attempt to investigate whether human consciousness has a direct effect on the molecular structure of water.

His theories go as far as to claim that shouting at rice – as one so frequently does – could turn it bad.

“I am fascinated by the growing science behind the energy of consciousness and its effects on matter,” Paltrow wrote in a blog post for her much derided clean living website GOOP.

“I have long had Dr Emoto's coffee table book on how negativity changes the structure of water, how the molecules behave differently depending on the words or music being expressed around it.”