Story highlights
Paltrow compared negative comments on the Internet to war
It's not the first time her remarks have stirred strife
She recently complained of balancing motherhood with celebrity
Gwyneth Paltrow may have given more ammunition to “the enemy.”
The actress has come under fire for likening the impact of negative online comments to being in a war, according to an interview she gave to Re/Code. While discussing those trolls who make nasty, anonymous comments online, Paltrow called the effect of their insults “dehumanizing.”
“You come across (online comments) about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing,” Paltrow said, according to the interview. “It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it. My hope is, as we get out of it, we’ll reach the next level of conscience.”
That bit of introspection did not go over well.
Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain – a former prisoner of war – tweeted, “Gweneth Paltrow is a joke. Her life is like taking bullets for a soldier. What a joke! My 2 sons serving in the military should talk to her.” She further tweeted, “Perhaps Gweneth Paltrow should go out on patrol with some soldiers. Kind of like a Red Carpet in her mind I guess!”
It’s not the first time the star has stirred strife with her comments. In March she faced criticism after she told E! it was “much harder” for her as both a mother and a celebrity.
“I think it’s different when you have an office job, because it’s routine and, you know, you can do all the stuff in the morning and then you come home in the evening,” she said. “When you’re shooting a movie, they’re like, ‘We need you to go to Wisconsin for two weeks,’ and then you work 14 hours a day and that part of it is very difficult. I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as, of course there are challenges, but it’s not like being on set.”
Gwyneth Paltrow wants to end ‘the mommy wars’
Paltrow later defended herself in a blog entry on her Goop site. “As the mommy wars rage on, I am constantly perplexed and amazed by how little slack we cut each other as women,” she wrote.
In June 2012, the actress set off a conversation about race and sensitivity after she tweeted “Ni**as in Paris for real” while attending a Jay Z and Kanye West concert in Paris. Paltrow is friends with Jay Z and the tweet referred to a song title from the two rappers, but many took offense at her use of the racial slur.