Miley Cyrus and My Friend's Place

Social media is going wild over Miley Cyrus winning Video of the Year for "Wrecking Ball" at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards...except it is not really because she won. Instead of accepting the award herself, she sent up "Jesse" - someone who has had to deal with homelessness in his youth. You can read more at Rolling Stone.

I have written twice about Miley Cyrus on my blog so far - once for her performance with Robin Thicke, and the other on why she deserved to be nominated for TIME's Person of the Year in 2013. This time, I am really glad to be writing about her. There are a lot of comments from people that this was just a publicity stunt.

So it is...for a good cause. I cannot put it any better than my friend, Sarah Harvard:

"Why do we shut down people from doing good things or attempting to do good things?

We may think it's a gimmick, but she gave an opportunity to a homeless teen and brought more awareness to the issue than before."

So many acts of charity are being dismissed - from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to the Pay It Forward line that formed at a Starbucks in Florida. Who cares if these causes are being propelled and hyped up by the media? As long as there are tangible benefits and awareness being brought to them, I believe it is worth it.

When I first heard of Miley Cyrus sending up Jesse to accept her award, it reminded me of when a certain actor from The Godfather won Best Actor at the 45th Annual Academy Awards in 1973.

Now that we have that out of the way, it is time to discuss the most important part of all of this... It was almost like Miley Cyrus knew she was going to win all along! What if Beyonce had won instead? Poor Jesse would not have had his time to shine and share with us his story and of other homeless youths. Are there other oppressed people sitting next to celebrities, just hoping that the celebrity wins the award so that they can tell the world how they have been hidden away from society and how we can help?? Then freakin' Adele wins instead and hogs the spotlight.

Thanks, Adele. Six wins in one night, and in the process, you obliterate the voices of at least six different people from the shadows.

It makes me think that the winners know ahead of time, so that their victimized comrades will be guaranteed speaking time. However, I am not a conspiracy theorist - that would be these people. I do not believe that our beloved celebrity award ceremonies would lie to us like that. Enough of my nonsense. Go check out My Friend's Place right now. I, as your Libertarian Overlord Katrina Haffner, coerce you.

Why Miley Cyrus deserved to be one of TIME's "Person of the Year" nominees

I first wrote about Miley Cyrus in this post four months ago after her performance with Robin Thicke.

On Facebook in late November, I noticed that people were freaking about the nominees for TIME's "Person of the Year." Why? Because Miley Cyrus was on it.

Read more about it here.

People were complaining about how TIME has gone downhill and was proving itself to be more of a joke because of this.

It really annoyed me. What exactly - the fact Miley Cyrus was on the list or the fact people were going crazy over this?

Well, both...but mostly the latter.

First of all, READ THE DESCRIPTION OF WHAT MAKES A PERSON "PERSON OF THE YEAR."

On the poll, it says "Cast your vote for the person you think most influenced the news this year for better or worse."

"Person of the Year" is not who is the best all-around role model for the world to follow, it is about who sparked interest and for some reason or another has people talking about him or her and the subjects brought up because of that person. Miley Cyrus did exactly that.

Sure, it was pretty stupid how people were paying attention to her performance at the VMAs while people were either ignoring or were unaware (most likely the latter) of the matter with Syria, but like it or not, it produced a lot of discussion on rape culture, slut-shaming, racism, and feminism.

Then of course when the talk about that was dying out, her music video of her song "Wrecking Ball" was released, which showed her naked on a gigantic golf ball. People hated that she was "naked and provocatively riding the wrecking ball." I would not call that provocative at all, but whatever she was doing with the mallet...well, I will admit if they just deleted those scenes I would have probably thought the video was pretty well done. Then when she was wearing clothes, she had on a tank top...with no bra underneath! How scandalous! Really people? Grow up.

Print Miley cutouts and place them on friends' ornaments and see if anyone notices. Do it.

I am indifferent to Miley to be honest. It does frustrate me when I think of how hard I had to work to get my Hempfest post views higher than the one about Miley, but other than that, I just think she's human - she does stupid things, but can also say stuff of worth

Like this.

Did I think Miley Cyrus deserved to be the "Person of the Year" for 2013. Ehh, I don't think so...I mean, I didn't care to go through the list TIME produced and look at everyone of them, but I think the one I had noticed in the news the most were her, Edward Snowden, and Pope Francis. For those who don't know, Pope Francis got the 2013 title.

Seriously though, people - please read what the "Person of the Year" really is about before blabbing about why someone should not be on there.

To end this all, I leave you with a sage piece wisdom...

My 2 cents on the the Miley Cyrus outrage

I tried to ignore the whole "Miley Cyrus twerking" thing. I really did. Then I discovered brief analyses describing the impact of that performance on feminism and racism. Because I belief racial and gender discrimination and societal portrayals make up a huge part of politics, I'll talk about it some.

It would have been nicer if people focused on Syria. A lot of people I talked to didn't even know what was going on. When seeing my Facebook libertarian friends complaining how people are more focused on Miley than on Syria, it seemed like they were exaggerating. When I actually went onto non-libertarian forums...it was all about her.

Anyways, back on track...(ironically)

The biggest complaint is that her performance was lewd and offensive to females.

When I finally got around to watching her performance, I had no problem with most of it. However, when she slapped that woman's butt, grabbed her own crotch, etc., that was too much for me. I seriously had no problem with her outfit and most of her dancing. Nevertheless, it was overall a bit tasteless and excessive.

Here, a sexologist writes an interesting take on it, and I have to agree. Both parties (and MTV and whoever else was involved with this) are at fault.

In this article, a woman complains about the racial implications of Miley's performance - treating black women as objects, "black" singing, twerking, etc. I think this is a bit of an overreaction, but since I am not a black woman, I can't feel much personal offense and therefore can't speak for any who were offended. I did not feel like, while watching, that Miley treated the black women as "objects," but I did notice that she was a white girl in a crowd of black people. When she spanked that woman, I didn't think "oh, she smacked a black person's ass," I thought, "wow, was spanking that woman's butt really necessary...?" You see, I tend to notice gender first (or so I think, my subconscious may differ), not race. The whole thing about Miley wanting "a black sound" for her new album is just a very ignorant thing to say.

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Feminism and 'Race' Feminism and Race brings together a wide range of writings on 'race', racism, and feminism that have been published in the past two decades. It aims to provide readers with an overview of the history of these debates as well as to suggest future directions for feminist scholarship and practice in this field.

I am not disagreeing with the author of the article when she says that the performance was racist, but I feel that it was more oblivious to the perpetuating of negative stereotypes of black culture and female identity than it was to the outright objectifying of (female) blacks.

What I am even more worried about is that Miley Cyrus has made twerking and other overblown interpretations of what is associated with black culture seem unacceptable. Even where twerking might be tolerable and commonplace, what she has done may have entirely ruined people's perceptions of it. Only time will tell.

Finally, not really related to race or gender in any way, but to clear up a mistake. The picture of the Smith family reacting to Miley's performance isn't really them reacting to her performance, it's actually to Lady Gaga's. I had been suspicious of that screenshot ever since it surfaced, since things can easily be taken out of context. Blame it on my untrusting nature of the media.

In the meantime, use this to capture people's attention in order to get them to see what important stuff is actually going on in the world.

Whether you like Miley Cyrus or not, I know you like me.

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