Bette Midler apologizes after tweeting women "are the n-word of the world"

Timothy Bella, The Washington Post

published

8:20 PDT, Friday, October 5, 2018

While the protests in Washington unfolded Thursday in response to allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh and his next procedural vote in the Senate, actress Bette Midler addressed to Twitter to make known his feelings. The end result was the actress "Hocus Pocus" who tweeted a shocking phrase taken from a song by John Lennon and Yoko Ono and showed herself on the wrong side of a lot of critics.

"Women are the words of the world," tweeted the actress Thursday. "Violated, beaten, enslaved, married, worked like a dumb beast, denied education and inheritance, endure the pain and danger of childbirth and life in silence for thousands of years (.)"

She concluded, "They are the most disrespectful creatures on Earth."

Midler, 72, paraphrased the title of a 1972 song written by Lennon and Ono. Just like the response that Lennon and Ono received at the time of the release of the song, Midler was greeted with indignation. On Twitter, people have condemned the actress and asked her to remove the tweet, which would receive 14,000 "likes" and over 8,000 responses, most of which were critical, according to USA Today.

Users made it clear in their responses that it was not correct that Midler was using the word or making such a comparison. One of the most notable blame came from Jemele Hill, an Atlantic journalist who recently left ESPN: "An End Point".

Midler answered a few hours later. But instead of apologizing, she doubled her previous comments, pointing out that her message was not about race, but about sex.

"I guess I offended a lot by my last tweet," she writes. "Women are the … etc" is a quote from Yoko Ono from 1972, which I have never forgotten.She was just ringing, and it just sounds right now. 39, whether you like it or not.It is not a matter of race, it's about the status of women, THEIR HISTORY. "

Midler would later delete both tweets. She would also apologize for hours after the initial tweet.

"The overly brief investigation of the charges against Kavanaugh has angered me," she said. "Angry, I tweeted without thinking that the choice of my words would enrage black women who suffer doubly, both as women and being black.I am an ally and I am at your side; I have always done it.

Released in April 1972, Lennon and Ono praised the song as a pro-feminist hymn, a virulent attack on patriarchy. Although the National Women's Organization attributed the song "Positive Women's Image" to the song, almost every radio station in the country chose not to play, the Los Angeles Times reported. The answer puzzled the Beatle.

"As the song says," The woman is the slave slave, "Lennon told the Los Angeles Times in 1972." I agree that many people, black and white, are slaves in the world, but each of them has its own slave and it is usually the woman ".

Lennon and Ono would give interviews on television and in newspapers to give their point of view on the meaning of the song. One of these interviews was on "The Dick Cavett Show".

"I had to learn about myself and my attitudes towards women," Lennon told Cavett.

In an interview published on YouTube in 2012, Cavett recalled how much Lennon and Ono wanted to sing the song on ABC, which was not very well received by network leaders.

Cavett said that a compromise had then been reached to allow the series to keep the song on the episode if it could make a statement in advance, warning of controversial content of the performance. Cavett was surprised at the response he received for the episode.

"A lot of complaints were received, but all were about the insignificant message that Cavett had said before the song and none about the song itself," he said in the interview.

The reaction on Midler's feelings continued until late Thursday, when some people were upset by the incident on Twitter before they could enjoy their annual screening of "Hocus Pocus", his film of the day. Halloween 1993

"@BetteMidler had to be canceled in October, every month?" Gennette Cordova, contributor to HuffPost, wrote. "I have not even seen Hocus Pocus this fall."