Reese Witherspoon, Kristen Bell, And Mark Ruffalo All Chimed In On Ellen’s Friendship With George W. Bush
Unsurprisingly, Ellen Degeneres’ recent defense of her friendship with former President George W. Bush elicited a wide variety of responses. Since she framed their friendship as something that “Will Give You Faith in America Again” instead of the perhaps more honest “I’ll be friends with whoever the fuck I want”, Ellen made it easy for people to side with her. Because who doesn’t want to make the crushing anxiety, anger, and dread of #thesetryingtimes just go away! Even for a minute. But these days, much as MAGA is an illusion, so is FIAA (Faith in America Again). Some of Ellen’s Celebrity Defenders (coming this Fall to Fox!) like Reese Witherspoon and Kristen Bell, caught shit for falling for Ellen’s Pollyanna line. Mark Ruffalo, on the other hand, said “kindness” can take a back seat until we get to the bottom of this alleged war crimes situation. It sounded more bad ass before he hulked of his jeans and was left wearing teeny tiny shredded daisy dukes.
According to Huffington Post, Reese was moved to retweet Ellen’s video with the following message. The tweet has since been deleted.
Thank you for this important reminder, Ellen! “I have friends who don’t think the same things that i do. When I say be kind to one another , I don’t mean be kind to the people who think the same way you do . I mean ..Be Kind to Everyone. “
Everyone? Even the po-po, Reese? And here’s Kristen’s nuanced and considered contribution to the conversation.
Here are some other celebs that came to Ellen’s defense.
Everyone was expected…. but REECE WITHERSPOON?!? Girl what’s tea?!? And you too Jennifer garner!! Like what’s tea??? https://t.co/nFJ3jpNAwE
— 🧘🏿♀️🌏🕊💗 (@MalikoMinaj) October 9, 2019
I would not be surprised to learn that after Monday’s show, Ellen’s assistant spent many, many hours calling everyone in her Rolodex, asking them to show Ellen a little love on the internet like “Lenny, dahling! How have you been? Did you ever find your sunglasses? Look, Ellen’s in a little bit of a pickle and has a tiny favor to ask that absolutely won’t blow up in your face I swear. You love love right?”. HuffPo says the backlash was swift.
Soon after their posts were published, many people online criticized both Witherspoon and Bell for defending DeGeneres, calling their support a “privileged” way of looking at the circumstances. In the comments of Bell’s post people said they had “lost MAJOR respect” for the actor, adding that, “Tolerance of intolerance is complicity” and called the framing of DeGeneres’ defense “absurd.”
That’s a lot of rancor over a few milquetoast words and series of essentially meaningless crown emojis, but I get the point. However, nobody needs to explain to Mark the difference between your Aunt Patty’s stubborn insistence that Bert and Ernie are just roommates, and a man who backed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Sorry, until George W. Bush is brought to justice for the crimes of the Iraq War, (including American-lead torture, Iraqi deaths & displacement, and the deep scars—emotional & otherwise—inflicted on our military that served his folly), we can’t even begin to talk about kindness. https://t.co/dpMwfck6su
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) October 9, 2019
Unfortunately for Ellen, her campaign to reinstate FIAA by sharing nachos with an alleged war criminal, seems to have backfired. The debate over Ellen and George’s friendship has sparked renewed interest in George’s presidential legacy. When Ellen pulled George out from under that rock he’s been chilling under for the past decade, a whole lot of scary spiders came running out behind him. And now she’s got to deal with shit like this.
If Ellen just sends a few more takedown notices we'll probably all forget about this whole thing https://t.co/qxfnFPNPzj
— 🎃 Parker Higgins 🎃 (@xor) October 10, 2019
I hope it was worth it and, at the very least, they gave her and her friend an extra pump of cheese on their nachos.
Pic: YouTube