This Week in Gossip #41

Janet’s big goof, the decline of Cameo, Ryan Murphy’s hubris, and Deadpool’s Oscar dreams.

What’s Going On With Janet Jackson?

It’s easy to forget just how much fame changes you, and how quickly it divorces you from what we tentatively call reality. For someone like Janet Jackson, a bona fide megastar who has been in the public eye since she was a small child, her definition of normalcy is not a common one. She’s 58 years old, one of the biggest-selling female musicians of all-time, and a true icon whose influence is palpable throughout the past four decades of pop. Honestly, her being a Jackson means that her fans just kind of expect her to be a bit woo-woo or not in touch with current times. Who could blame her for that? But then there are her recent remarks about Vice President Kamala Harris, and this is where things got odd.

In an interview with The Guardian, Jackson went on a weird tangent about how she had heard that Harris, who is Black and Indian, wasn’t “really” Black. Jackson quickly crumbled under even gentle questioning and showed that she really had no idea what she was talking about. She even claimed that she’d heard Harris’s father, who is still alive and semi-public in his work as an academic, was really white. He’s not, for the record. It was a strange, disheartening, and obviously conspiratorial claim, one that’s been utilized endlessly as an attack against Harris by the right-wing, including Donald Trump. It’s near-identical to the racist attacks that Barack Obama faced, wherein the endgame was to assert that he was simultaneously not American but also somehow using the race card incorrectly.

Fans were grossed out by Jackson’s ignorance, obviously, and an apology was soon issued. But was it? The statement had come from Mo Elmasri, who said he was Jackson's manager and was first shared with Buzzfeed. It was a harried but decent apology, pretty standard PR stuff. But then Jackson's brother Randy released his own statement saying that the previous apology was "not authorized."

It should be noted that Randy Jackson, who pleaded no contest in 1991 to a charge of battery against his wife, has shared social media posts in support of Kanye West's racist rants and the hard-right "patriotic" trucker convoys that plagued Canada in 2022. Of the 11 people he follows on Instagram, Donald Trump, Candace Owens, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are three of them. And yes, he’s a Trump supporter.

Janet fans are concerned that Randy might have pushed her down the hard-right conspiracy rabbit hole. Page Six claimed that "Janet’s bubble is small, and she listens to Randy. She does peddle in conspiracy theories." This is often how it happens: isolated or cloistered people cling to their inner circles above all else and that can so easily be taken advantage of, even by loved ones. If Janet’s team is managed by Randy, he’s got a lot of access to her, both personal and professional. She’s a former child star who hasn’t stopped working since prepubescence, and she’s also faced a lot of cruelty and misogynoir from the entertainment industry. Post-Super Bowl, it’s not surprising that she keeps a tight lid on her life. But it seriously sucks that someone whose music was fiercely political on issues of race, gender, and sexuality seems to have been warped by these bigoted conspiracies that exist solely to stoke fear and hate.

Getting the people you love out of the bubble of radicalization isn’t easy. When you’re famous, it’s a whole other heap of trouble. I’m sure Randy would love it if he suddenly became a bankable MAGA grifter courtesy of his sister. We just have to hope that someone else close to Janet, someone who isn’t leeching off her money, can break through.

Cameo, Where You Can Pay Celebrities To Talk To You, is Not in a Good State

Remember Cameo?

It's the site where you can pay to request a custom video from a celebrity of your choice. Did you want a Real Housewife to send a birthday message to your best friend? Or get a low-level Harry Potter star to congratulate you on your graduation? There's a Cameo for that. It promised a new era of celebrity, both in terms of the ways we interact with them and in how they could make money. But all is not as it seems.