Chelsea Clinton Blasts Charlotte Rampling but not Snoop Dogg

Chelsea Clinton took to Twitter to proclaim that British actress Charlotte Rampling’s remarks during an interview with French Radio Network Europe 1 about this year’s Oscars were “Outrageous, ignorant & offensive.”

Rampling was asked for her opinion on the controversy and the Oscar boycott proposed by Jada Pinkett Smith, and responded that she felt it “is racist to whites” and went on to say that “one can never really know, but perhaps the black actors did not merit making it to the final stretch.” The interview, by the way, was in French. The Guardian has an English article on it. Charlotte Rampling has already expressed regret over her remarks, saying they were misinterpreted, noting that she is all in favor of diversity.

Apparently, however, Chelsea Clinton has not heard about Snoop Dogg’s outrageously offensive videos where he declares that he is not going to the Oscars. “Somebody asked me was I going to watch the bleep Oscars,” he said. “Bleep no!… All these great movies and all this great bleep y’all keeping stealing from us. Bleep you. Bleep you.” Snoop Dogg then made another video that he addressed to Jada Pinkett Smith in which he extended his “bleep you” sentiments to the Grammys, and proposed an all black Hood Awards. White people, he said, “steal all our culture, steal all our slang, steal all of our everything and then they make it cool and then we can’t get no acknowledgement for what we do as far as being originators and creators of this entertainment world…” The rapper has already been asked to apologize by his producer and had this to say (do you we have to warn you that it has explicit language?)

The Oscars controversy is particularly ironic in view of the current immigration controversy on the political stage. President Barack Obama likes to say that we don’t turn people away in this country because “that’s not who we are.” In fact, he likes to say “that’s not who we are” a lot, about a lot of things:

But when you look at the news, it appears that it is who we are: a nation still very much divided by racial tensions that continue to erupt and continue to divide.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, meantime, has announced that it has taken historic action to increase diversity: “In a unanimous vote Thursday night (1/21), the Board of Governors of the Academy … approved a sweeping series of substantive changes designed to make the Academy’s membership, its governing bodies, and its voting members significantly more diverse. The Board’s goal is to commit to doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.”

Good. Now maybe we can work on resolving issues of police brutality, corruption, crime and poverty.