Hey, remember back in 2009 when a reporter from Wonderland magazine asked Megan Fox to talk about director Michael Bay and after dabbling in a few Napoleon insults, she instead compared the director to Hitler? Remember when the world collectively told her to shut the fuck up and have some goddamn decency and then she wasn't asked back to the Transformers franchise and we all began to slowly but surely not give a rat's ass about her?
Yeah, well, apparently Dancing with the Stars' Cheryl Burke was off somewhere fucking around when all of that went down. Because some-fucking-how we've got another thoughtless, disrespectful and intolerable celebrity making the same kind of paralyzingly asinine remarks.
Sunday during an interview on the "Allegedly With Theo Von & Matthew Cole" podcast, Cheryl Burke was asked who her least favorite celebrity partner was on DWTS. Now, other more seasoned celebrities (and human beings) wouldn't have fallen for this cheap attempt at gossip journalism. Instead of answering, someone more experienced or simply smarter would've refrained and moved on to a different topic. Someone braver might've even called the interviewer out on the low-rate question that shouldn't be regarded as journalism.
And here is when a thoughtless and ignorant decision to answer a subpar and adolescent question takes a turn into "are you fucking kidding me with this shit" territory.
Instead of deflecting, not only did Burke answer said question but she went on to say that working with Beverly Hills, 90210 star Ian Ziering made her want to slit her wrists. She said she considered jumping off a balcony to injure herself and did so with any partner she was given over the age of 65 (save for Wayne Newton).
You know, I realize that even though it's the year 2016, we've still got quite a way to go on our journey to understanding mental health. I get that there are still a lot of people who don't "believe" in psychiatry and think that issues of this nature are made up, bogus or even worse. And I realize that taking medication for these types of issues is still fairly high on the universal stigma meter.
I am pretty sure, however, that we've most definitely reached a time when people tend not to joke about committing suicide all that often anymore. Most people, save from a certain breed of schoolyard bully, are in total agreement that making light of the topic of suicide is pretty much completely abhorrent and fucking inexcusable.
Now, I'm not sure exactly what Cheryl Burke was doing the day that fucking memo went out. I'm assuming it was something like kicking puppies or stealing delicious candy from tiny, tiny babies. Maybe she was telling Make-A-Wish kids that once when she was their age, she swallowed a piece of gum and thought she was going to die so she knew what they were going through. All of these things seem like viable possibilities.
Cheryl Burke has since apologized for her comments and admits that she was "out of line" in her remarks. And kudos to her for listening to her publicist when the poor fucker called her thirty seconds after the sound waves carrying her words reached a human being's ears. But I wonder if she's really thought about the greater damage that she's done. She's helping to reinforce to those people who are struggling directly with this issue the idea that no one cares about what they're going through. She's diluting the very meaning of the words themselves -- words that should strike a chord when someone hears them. And then there's the more personal level. Just based on numbers alone, there is an almost certain chance that Cheryl Burke knows someone that is or has struggled with suicide, whether she knows it or not. She's admitted to having friends and family that struggle with depression and yet she somehow thought that making light of this issue, with a goddamn microphone in her face, was a totally okay and not at all completely insensitive and disrespectful thing to do. Does she seriously think that some half-assed apology that rings with the truth of a politician's smile is going to repair the damage caused by her callous and incomprehensibly self-absorbed remarks? Does she really even care? Doubtful.
Hopefully Cheryl Burke will somehow learn from this, although one has to wonder how prepared her brain is for the learning process. I think reading her words, straight from the horse's ass, really puts into perspective just how adolescent and fucking stereotypically "Heather" this 26 year old perpetual Mean Girl is:
"My least favorite [partner] would be Ian Ziering. The fact that his name is not EE-AN and it's EYE-AN makes me want to throw up."
"By the way, I also don't know anybody, so I would have to Google almost every single partner of mine, other than Ian Ziering because I used to watch 90210," she shared. “My mom, my crazy Asian mother, would let me watch an hour a week, and I would watch 90210, 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. I'm like, 'Why, couldn't you give me Luke Perry or Jason Priestley? Why you give me that guy?' I know he's on 90210, but give me Screech [Saved by the Bell actor Dustin Diamond]."
"I mean, I could try and hurt myself," she said. "I thought about that a couple of times. I've got a balcony and was like, 'Should I jump?'...I wouldn't die. I wouldn't die. No. I wouldn't die. I would just be like, 'Hey guys, I'm injured this season. I won't be able to come back 'til next season.'"
"Anyone over the age of 65 I wanted to jump," she added, although she was quick to note that her season five partner, 74-year-old Wayne Newton, was 'lovely'."
She's a real fucking class act, isn't she?
Now, I'm guessing she'll have more learning opportunities than normal right now. She'll probably have plenty of chances to practice not saying stupid-ass shit with the overwhelming number of pseudo-journalists that are sure to beat down her door in the next couple of weeks, hoping for a new nugget of insensitivity and brainlessness.
No matter what, though, I think Cheryl will be able to take this experience and use it to better her relationships with future dancing partners. After all, she probably sees much clearer now how easy it is to lose your footing, misstep and really stick your foot in it.
HA! Just kidding! She hasn't learned shit.
Personally, I think the real kicker -- what Alanis Morisette might call "ironic" -- is that if this happened in the 90s, good old Cheryl would be sitting in front of the TV, Wednesday at 8:00, to watch Steve Sanders and company doing a very special episode of 90210 to address fallout from this whole disgusting event.
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