Oh snap!
I guess âask me anythingâ is sometimes the wrong approach.
Why do people keep walking in to these AMAs? Have they just enjoyed the services of a handler/PR flack and a squad of loyalists and/or toadies for so long that they donât realize that the world still contains people willing to ask vaguely impolite questions when you deserve them? Do they just not care? Have they run the numbers and concluded that the publicity value is greater than the expected fallout from already-public information being rephrased?
See, Iâve been an asshole before (though admittedly not this big an asshole) and I would still do an AMA. I just would be prepared to have the Worst Thing I Have Ever Done trotted out in the very first comment.
Does anyone have the deleted original text of his AMA introduction?
They probably figure itâs just like being on the late night circuit. No late night show host is going to throw you hardball questions. Literally no one â not Conan, not Kimmel, not Fallon, not Meyers, NO ONE â is going to ask Mark Walhberg about the time he beat the shit out of two Vietnamese men while shouting âgookâ and âslant eyed gooksâ. Wahlberg claimed to have met one of these men and experienced âtears of joyâ from their pardon.
Well thatâs funny Mark, because in 2006, you had this to say about your hate crime:
And though the right thing to do would be to try to find the man and make amends, Wahlberg says, he admits he hasnât done so â but says heâs no longer burdened by guilt.
âI did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes,â Wahlberg says. âYou have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasnât until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I donât have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning.â
How magnanimous of you. By the way, he only started asking for an official pardon to expand his fucking hamburger business.
But thatâs not what late night shows are about. Theyâre all scripted encounters to make the guests look cool so they can plug their shit.
Woody Harrelson and Wyclef Jean thought the same way. Oh, thisâll be just like running the late night circuit or giving a fluff interview with some entertainment magazine to pump my latest project. It also shows me thereâs no young people on their staff who know that reddit will be extremely vicious if you arenât one of their sacred cows.
Itâs possible that this is exactly why he was looking for the PR boost; but it seems particularly weird because the Worst Thing He Has Ever Done is also more or less the most recent thing he has done. His most notable and successful releases are '90s(which will start meaning âoldiesâ far sooner than Iâd like); and his more recent releases have posted way further down the charts. âI cynically fucked over the poorest country in the western hemisphereâ is easily his most notable achievement of the last decade.
I could see doing one if I knew that I was going to be âcontroversialâ; but that would require having some sort of recent accomplishment of roughly equivalent magnitude to my recent scandal.
(There is also the problem, though probably not a major one or heâd have been bagged for his financial irregularities based on other evidence by now, that for recent incidents it is both less plausible and potentially more risky to attempt to defuse that line of inquiry with a âyeah, I seriously fucked up on that one, canât imagine what I was thinking now, feel terrible about it, etc.â If you give people the contrition they want sometimes theyâll get bored of poking at the matter since there isnât anything left to gain. If your official position, for legal purposes, is âmumble, mumble, perhaps some unfortunate mistakes were made but not by meâ nobody is going to be placated.)
It sounds like the âlate nightâ area would be improved by an injection of acid-tongued adversarial humor. Surely that would be more entertaining than live-action-press-release.
I donât know how to Reddit. Did he answer any of the snipes or was he mum on the allegations.
Ratings might go up temporarily, until celebrities stopped going on those shows.
[quote=âxeni, post:1, topic:73774, full:trueâ]
[Read the post]
âHey wyclef, I hope you have time to answer this what with how busy you are answering the other ones but anyways, whatâs the first thing youâre going to do when you get to hell?â[/quote]
My first time reading an AMA. That made me LOL!
YES.
Self awareness is something politicians and successful artists seems to be lacking of.
Delusion narcissist. There are, in fact, living breathing humans who qualify for that label.
I had the displeasure of meeting such a person. You will not be surprised to learn he was a CEO. Early his tale of success included the phrase: âWe were lucky to have gone with Windows instead of OS/2.â As time progressed that changed to: âWe had no doubt Windows was the right choice.â Eventually reaching the apex of his delusion: âWe knew what we were doing at every turn. Our success was never in doubt.â
I thought this one (just above) was also rather masterful, still not 100% sure how much is pure absurdist trollery:
I saw Wyclef Jean at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didnât want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, âOh, like youâre doing now?â
I was taken aback, and all I could say was âHuh?â but he kept cutting me off and going âhuh? huh? huh?â and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like âSir, you need to pay for those first.â At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually âto prevent any electrical infetterence,â and then turned around and winked at me. I donât even think thatâs a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly. After that when he left he said âthese hips donât lieâ and threw a whole row of gum on the floor and walked out
I should admit that I donât really know anything about Wyclef Jean, musical or political, except that, whoah, just remembered, wasnât Bob Dylan, of all people, in one of his videos???
[quote=âmetsuken, post:7, topic:73774â]They probably figure itâs just like being on the late night circuit. No late night show host is going to throw you hardball questions.[/quote]Apparently those late-night interviews are all meticulously constructed to be completely unsurprising to all parties involved.
Further down the comments others talk about it being a meme, sadly:
I love internet for calling people out on their shit.
The Gary Shandling show was great for calling attention to this.
Ah, I see, thank you.
Funny meme, to be fair. âElectrical infetterance,â hehe.
