Midweek Obsessions, Vol. 62

Dare we fall for the narrative?

🪧 Amazon and Starbucks workers on on strike!

Don’t cross the picket line! That means boycotting both Amazon and Starbucks until they give their workers a fair contract.

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👽 The Ariel School Incident

Did you know a group of 62 school children in Zimbabwe claimed to have experienced a UFO landing in 1994? I didn’t, either, but I’m kind of curious about it now and want to watch the documentary that was made about it.

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💘 Love is real, but celebrity is not

My friend Rebecca sent me this very long, very sweet account by Mandy Patinkin and his wife Kathryn Grody that’s been making the rounds online. It’s about their first date in the late seventies, and the set-up of the two of them telling their respective versions is giving When Harry Met Sally.

mandypatinkin

A post shared by @mandypatinkin

Listen. I love Mandy Patinkin (as a concept) as much as the next person who watched the VHS of Yentl on repeat as a smol child. He is so sexy in that movie that it genuinely still haunts me. Having said that, I read the Barbra memoir, and she says he was awful to her on set, and he has a well-documented history of being awful to people (and a lot of women!) on sets. And Streisand also claimed that he was hitting on her when they were shooting in the Czech Republic in 1982—meaning two years into his marriage with Grody, and the year before their son Isaac was born. As far as I know, he has not addressed that story, so we can assume it’s not false enough so as to be libelous.

Click the IG post for my reaction:

phenix.julie

A post shared by @phenix.julie

People have affairs, that’s life, and the Patinkin-Grody marriage is not my business. HOWEVER, the whole social media framing of Kathryn Grody and Mandy Patinkin as like your sweet elderly Jewish parents lowkey falls apart if you are into celebrity memoirs or have done any reading on the subject. SPEAKING OF WHICH, though:

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🚺 “PR Crisis Managers” psyop us constantly

The New York Times piece about how Blake Lively was the victim of an actual smear campaign is essential reading for 2024.

There have long been figures behind the scenes shaping public opinion about celebrities — through gossip columns, tabloids and strategic interviews. The documents show an additional playbook for waging a largely undetectable smear campaign in the digital era. While the film, about domestic violence, was a box office hit — making nearly $350 million worldwide — online criticism of the actress skyrocketed.

“He wants to feel like she can be buried,” a publicist working with the studio and Mr. Baldoni wrote in an Aug. 2 message to the crisis management expert, Melissa Nathan.

“You know we can bury anyone,” Ms. Nathan wrote.