Steve Martin attacked for his ‘callous’ Twitter tribute to Carrie Fisher

Steve Martin attacked for his ‘callous’ Twitter tribute to Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher, who died on Tuesday at age 60, departed this planet too early. On that I presume everyone can agree.

But when it comes to penning tributes to the late actress and diarist, people had better tread carefully — even those living within the gated liberal bubble known as Hollywood.

Fisher was a woman, after all, and there are some feminists out there with sharp teeth just waiting for some schlemiel to stumble and say something offensive. Something like this:

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

sreve-martin-tweet

I’m afraid I can’t show you the original tweet because the funny man deleted it shortly after posting it. He felt impelled to kill the message after he came under attack for his insensitivity.

Confused? Wondering which of the three adjectives he used were deemed offensive? If so, you are not thinking like a liberal. Here’s New York magazine’s Claire Landsbaum:

Princess Leia’s status as the catalyst of male sexual awakening has been alluded to countless times in pop culture. On Friends, when Ross confesses to Rachel that he had a sexual fantasy about bikini-clad Leia, Phoebe assures her it’s a rite of passage. “Every guy our age loved that,” she says. “It’s huge. That’s the moment when she stopped being a princess and she became, like, a woman.” As the Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg points out, one of the most glaring signs that Leia is seen as sexy rather than complex is the Philadelphia dad who complained about a scantily clad Leia action figure. And on Tuesday, Steve Martin helpfully reminded us of this fact in a now-deleted tweet when he said that for him as a young man, “she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.” [Emphasis added]

Got it? Mediaite’s Lindsey Ellefson, herself a lib, also linked to the above hit job, only to point out that Landsbaum was the only feminist incensed enough by Martin’s tweet to pen an article about it. From this Ellefson concludes that tweets reacting to Landsbaum’s over-the-top reaction, are themselves over-the-top.

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles is a freelance writer and regular contributor to "Liberty Unyielding."

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