If an exalted girlboss, who is best friends with Meghan Markle and Lauren Sanchez, admits dropping racial and gay slurs in years past, does it make a sound?
It would seem not.
And the silence from the social justice warriors, cancelers and even fellow media is as deafening as it is hypocritical.
On Friday night, an investigation into the behavior of billionaire Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd — who began her career at Tinder before suing the dating app and it’s parent company in 2014 for sexual harassment — was published by the Daily Mail. The parties settled out of court.
Former Tinder colleagues said Wolfe Herd overstated her influence and role at the tech company, was violent toward her ex-boyfriend Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen and treated fellow female employees terribly. (She denied the allegations).
And in the piece, she admitted to using the N-word and other slurs, but — forgive her lord — she blamed it on her colleagues, saying she was simply keeping up with the fellas in the male-centric tech company.
The story paints a murkier picture of the founder’s fairytale of female empowerment, which was made into a fawning film, “Swiped” and debuted on Hulu last week.
Wolfe Herd, who said she had nothing to do with the film, is played by Lily James.
But surely, her friend’s admission would spur Markle, who built her entire identity on fighting against racism, to speak out against such dangerous language? The Robert F. Kennedy Foundation even gave her and her husband Prince Harry the Ripple of Hope award for championing racial justice.
After all, Markle ran to Oprah in 2021 to cry about the racism she allegedly endured at the hands of the royal family. She accused an unnamed member of having “concerns and conversations about how dark [Archie’s] skin might be”
She and Prince Harry said racism “was a large part” of their reason to flee the UK and he blathered on about “unconscious bias.”
But why the crickets from Markle? And the rest of the ‘be kind’ brigade out in Hollywood?
Back in April, she only had effusive praise for her pal, who was the inaugural guest on her podcast “Confessions of a Female Founder.” The two fawned over each other and Markle described her as, “the kind of friend who just always seems to know the exact right thing to say when I need perspective.”
On that episode, Wolfe Herd said she was initially driven to create a female forward platform, which would eventually become Bumble, to “encourage kindness among women.”
It’s all so phony.
For over a decade, we’ve been living through a witch hunt where media and internet executioners have acted like raccoons, scraping through people’s garbage, looking for any offensive posts or actions.
And lots of folks were axed because of such words. In 2013, Paula Dean was dropped from the Food Network for admitting she used the N-word years prior.
Meanwhile, Chris Harrison left the Bachelor after 20 years because he was blasted for defending contestant Rachael Kirkconnell, who had attended an Antebellum themed college party in 2018.
Megyn Kelly was exiled from NBC and forced to apologize for asking when wearing blackface on Halloween became so taboo. Never mind that Jimmy Fallon, Jane Krakowski and John Hamm had actually done blackface on network shows. Jimmy Kimmel also did blackface while playing Karl Malone.
Shane Gillis was fired by Saturday Night Live in 2019 after a “journalist” revealed that he used Asian slurs in a podcast.
In late 2020, the New York Times wrote about a random teenager girl in Virginia who used the N-word in a video as a 15-year-old and it came back to haunt her years later, as she was forced to withdraw from her college.
But racial slurs and offensive words, which were once a five alarm fire, that landed celebrities and nobodies into a pit of shame, are no longer worth mentioning.
After all, Markle transitioned from fighting racism to a more important callings: spreading joy, making jam and being a support beam of the female empowerment complex, while making lots of cash.
And because calling Wolfe Herd out would only upset her Montecito ecosystem. Unlike attacking the royals, which led to a rollout of lucrative opportunities in podcasting and streaming.
On one hand, I’m heartened that our culture is seemingly no longer interested in the re-litigation of past indiscretions or errors in judgement with the penalty of social execution.
I’d like to think we’ve decided to grant people the grace to make mistakes and be human.
However, I know that’s not the full story.
Wolfe Herd is protected because she is in the club of anointed good people. Such mercy won’t be extended to non-members.