Jeff Bezos must have hit his head pretty hard over the weekend…or perhaps he had a Dickens-esque Christmas Carol moment.
Either way, in the past 24 hours, the Amazon founder Bezos gave away a majority of his $124 billion fortune to fight climate change and unify humanity. In addition, he awarded Dolly Parton with the Courage and Civility Award, which comes with $100 million that Dolly can donate to charities of her choice.
Woah. So maybe bullying the 1% does work after all. After years of begging Bezos to have some compassion for us lowly Amazon shoppers, did he finally hear us? Or maybe he got tired of the accusations that he was a robot with no feelings.
This is a huge milestone for one of the richest men in the world…one who infamously refrained from signing The Giving Pledge. The mega-rich - think Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet - have a penchant for donating most of their money to charitable causes in their lifetime.
This may be thanks to Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez, who’s a journalist turned philanthropist. The pair sat down with CNN to chat about Bezos’ new “giving” persona…the first time he has ever explicitly agreed that he would donate a large sum of his money to charity.
Or maybe it’s connected to the philanthropic acts of ex-wife MacKenzie Scott. Scott - an author and committed philanthropist - signed The Giving Pledge post-divorce and has already donated half of her $24 billion net worth to charitable organizations.
Most likely, it’s because Amazon’s laying off 10,000 employees by the end of the week...but apparently, that’s neither here nor there for Bezos.
He did do the obligatory sketch about a slight variation on himself — "Leeron," a cowboy character who invented electric horses and a machine for digging tunnels. But he still showed more range than we expected. And the sketches were no worse than an average episode of SNL in recent years — i.e. rarely funny, but not so bad that you have to look away.
Still, it was bizarre watching one of the wealthiest men to ever exist doing live sketch comedy. And there were a few highlights that were particularly weird...
When Elon Revealed that He Has Asperger's
During his monologue, Elon Musk casually referred to how he was "making history" as "the first person with Asperger's to host SNL. Or at least the first to admit it."
He said it as if everyone already knew he had Asperger's, but everyone didn't know that. It's not the most shocking revelation, but it is the first time he's publicly acknowledged his diagnosis.
So it's legitimately great that Elon Musk decided to share his diagnosis on SNL. But the idea that it's somehow more history-making than a host with a net worth of around $170 billion dollars is laughable.
When Miley Sang a Mother's Day Song While Wearing Shirt Nipples
Okay, this didn't involve Elon Musk at all, but it was still weird enough that it deserves to be acknowledged. Rather than a typical sketch for the cold open, musical guest Miley Cyrus performed a cover of Dolly Parton's "Light of a Clear Blue Morning," cutting to scenes of cast members joking with their mothers and celebrating being reunited by vaccinations.
The only weird part was the fact that Miley's shirt had some of the most prominent and egregious fabric nipples in the history of fashion. Miley has previously been touted as an advocate of the "free the nipple" cause — which calls for an end to the weird stigma, sexualization, and censorship of women's nipples, while men are free to go topless in public and on social media.
Still, it just seemed weird that Miley was singing to the mothers of the world with a shirt that was clearly designed to look like a pair of exposed snow-white nipples..
So it was somewhat surprising to see that the currency had lost around a third of its value by Sunday morning, even after Musk went on "Weekend Update" as financial expert "Lloyd Ostertag" to explain its value to an audience of millions. Perhaps it had something to do with when Michael Che pushed him to admit, "Yeah, it's a hustle."
Grimes as Princess Peach
A cameo from Musk's partner — synth-pop musician Grimes — was to be expected at some point in the night, but the context was pretty weird. In the sketch, Musk played Wario — a sinister character famous for hoarding wealth... — and is on trial for the murder of Mario in a Mariokart race.
In the course of the trial, Wario is also accused of having an affair with "Mario's wife," Princess Peach, played by Grimes in full cosplay — we almost didn't recognize her at first. But the fact that there have been rumors of Musk having an affair with Amber Heard when she was married to Johnny Depp made it all a little uncomfortable.
There were three jokes about cousin-on-cousin romance over the course of two early sketches. It was starting to seem like a theme to the night. It was just weird...
The Wigs
Over the course of the night, Elon Musk wore five different wigs, four of which seemed entirely unnecessary. They barely changed his appearance but did serve as a werid reminder of the era when the Tesla CEO's hairline wasn't so robust...
When He Acknowledged His Awful COVID Takes
The cowboy sketch was one of the cheesiest and most predictable of the night, with lots of references to Elon Musk's real life persona but with a thin patina of old-west aesthetics — OMG, a horse is plugged into a Tesla charging station, lol!
But the worst part was when "Leeron" acknowledged that "for a while I thought masks were dumb, but now I admit masks make sense."
American hero Dolly Parton bravely continues to keep our faith in humanity alive.
Parton recently appeared and informed the public that she turned down disgraced former president Donald Trump's Presidential Medal of Freedom, not once, but twice. She cited scheduling conflicts — the first time she was offered the award her husband was ill, and the second time travel was banned because of the pandemic.
"Well, I actually have to be honest in all fairness," Parton said on the Today Show. "I got offered the freedom award from the Trump administration and I couldn't accept it because my husband [Carl Dean] was ill. Then they asked me again about it, and I wouldn't travel because of the COVID, so now I feel like if I take it I'll be doing politics. So, I'm not sure," she said, as graceful a denouncement of politics as there ever was.
The fact that Dolly Parton deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom is a unilaterally bipartisan issue, perhaps one of the few things people from all sides of the political spectrum can agree on. President Barack Obama, for example, cited not giving Parton the award as one of his great regrets.
"That was a screwup," he told Stephen Colbert. "I'm surprised. She deserves one. I'll call Biden."
Parton herself has doubts about taking awards at all. "I don't work for those awards," she added. "It'd be nice but I'm not sure that I even deserve it. But that's a nice compliment for people to think that I might deserve it."
Dolly wasn't clear about whether the fact that Trump was the reason she wasn't accepting the medal, but fans certainly took it that way.
The Medal of Freedom is presented to people who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."
Obama gave his awards to Loretta Lynn, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. Trump chose mostly to gift his medals to people who could not turn them down — Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley, for example — to political allies and golfers, including retired players Annika Sorenstam and Gary Player.
Perhaps Joe Biden will finally get Dolly to receive the award she deserves, or perhaps she'll continue to avoid politics, focusing instead on life-or-death issues. For example, she's spent her time supporting Black Lives Matter, funding the Moderna vaccine, hosting a children's literacy foundation called Imagination Library, and giving $1000 a month to wildfire survivors — AKA a lot more than the government is doing.
Plenty has been said and written about the chaos of 2020.
Between the global health crisis, economic recession, political turmoil, and social justice movements that transfixed the world, it seems that something notable happened just about every day of this year.
At Popdust, we've made it our mission to cover the darkest and most bizarre corners of Internet and pop culture. So while other news outlets covered politics and vaccine development, we made sure you knew everything there was to know about things like QAnon, unsettling Twitter threads, awkward celebrity kisses, and viral videos.
Here are our top 10 most read articles of the year.
In late March, Denver Nuggets player Jamal Murray's Instagram story began to fill with a firestorm of strange content. Among this content was a video that appeared to show the basketball player receiving oral sex from his girlfriend, Harper Hempel. The videos were quickly deleted, with Murray claiming he'd been hacked. But that didn't stop Instagram users from screen recording the video, later using it to harass Hempel. As the article notes, "When it comes down to it, you can't call yourself a feminist, or even a decent human being, and continue to possess an intimate and sexually explicit video shared without the consent of the people who are featured."
One of our most controversial articles of the year, this piece discusses allegations of sexual assault brought against emo rapper and viral sensation Hobo Johnson. Allegations aside, a deep dive into his lyrics reveal a level of masculine manipulation masquerading as sensitivity. As noted in the article, "No matter how he treats women in real life, his artist persona and the attitudes he expresses in his music pose real dangers with potentially nauseating consequences."
As the world seemed to crumble around us in March 2020, millions of people turned to a more pleasant virtual reality for escape. Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch sold a record number of games, making it one of the most successful video games in history. Of course, with the game's popularity came a lot of strong opinions from devoted fans. Among the most contentious points to make the rounds online was the discussion of which Animal Crossing villager is the absolute worst.
Amazon CEO Jaff Bezos' ex-wife Mackenzie Scott announced in December 2020 that she had donated more than $4.1 billion to nearly 400 charities in recent months, focusing on areas and issues closely connected to the COVID pandemic.
In discussing her giving, she wrote, "This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling ... Meanwhile, it has substantially increased the wealth of billionaires." This seemed to some like an explicit call out of her ex- husband, who, in comparison to Scott, has donated very little of his vast fortune all while becoming exponentially richer throughout the pandemic.
Dolly Parton has had a big year in the realm of social activism. Not only did she partially fund the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, she also came out as a strong voice in favor the Black Lives Matter movement. "I understand people having to make themselves known and felt and seen," she said in the interview this summer. "And of course Black lives matter. Do we think our little whites a**** are the only ones that matter? No!" she said.
The drama between Amber Heard and ex-husband Johnny Depp has been explosive, to say the least. In 2016, after filing for divorce, Heard claimed that Depp had been physically and verbally abusive to her, leading to years of court battles and emerging evidence of a relationship that was likely abusive on both sides. In 2020, Depp subpoenaed James Franco for supposed surveillance footage that proved Heard had faked the bruises on her face that she submitted as evidence of Depp's abuse.
While it's unquestionably a major step for LGBTQ+ rights and representation that Pete Buttigieg was able to make it as far as he did in the Presidential primaries, we had some questions. No, not about his platform, and no, not about the idea of a gay man in the White House, but about the way Pete and his husband kiss.
This heartbreaking story is about Quaden Bayles, a young boy who was born with dwarfism. In February of this year a video of Quaden struggling with the emotional toll of constant bullying went viral. Of course, the Internet being the seething cesspool that it is, strangers started to bully Quaden, claiming that he was lying about his age.
If you've somehow avoided hearing about it, QAnon is a fast-growing online conspiracy theory. As we explain in the article: "They believe that their mysterious prophet has awakened them to a reality that you and I will soon be forced to face: that global elites from Washington DC to Hollywood are part of a Satanic (possibly Jewish) cabal of murderous, cannibalistic pedophiles who torture children in order to harvest their adrenaline-rich blood and oxidize it into the addictive drug adrenocrhome."
QAnon's leader is an elusive figure named Q, who claims to have ties to the inner workings of the government. While Q's identity is supposedly a secret, he might not be as anonymous as he thinks.
In June of this year, among the already chaotic terror of 2020, a new two-headed beast took center stage for a brief moment. Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, 58, and Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt, 43, began to date shortly after Hannity divorced his wife of 20 years, easily taking the spot for the worst couple in America. But just how bad are they? Read the full article and find out.
On Wednesday Lord of the Rings actor Sir Ian McKellen received his first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, and said that he felt "euphoric."
Frankly, we felt the same way. At 81 years old McKellen is in a high-risk category for a severe case of COVID. Knowing that the beloved actor and gay rights activist is on his way to immunity is one small anxiety we can remove from the heaping pile of fear and tragedy that has been growing since March.
As this awful year wraps up — with some faint light at the end of the tunnel — this news gave us an opportunity to breathe a small sigh of relief. And we need so many more of those right now.
So as Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are rolled out, here are nine other celebrities who need to hurry up and get vaccinated so we can all sleep a little easier.
Patrick Stewart
Speaking of Sir Ian McKellen, we can't forget his best buddy and fellow knight, Star Trek: TNG star Sir Patrick Stewart. Just like their iconic X-Men characters Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier — though with substantially less super-powered violence — the two are inextricably linked.
The 80-year-old Picard star has spent his time in quarantine well — advocating for pit bull adoption and reading Shakespeare's poetry to his 1.6 million followers on Instagram. But he ran out of sonnets back in October, so as long as Gandalf is getting immunized, so should Captain Picard.
Betty White
Betty White is 98 years old and still kicking ass. Since 2010, when the Internet came together to get her a gig hosting SNL, the Golden Girls star has had a career resurgence, and we're not ready for her to retire yet. Especially not with Christmas nearly upon us, and Lifetime's Betty White Christmas movie delayed until next year.
2021 is 99% guaranteed to be a huge improvement on the current state of affairs, but that will be especially true if we can look forward to watching Betty White train santas next December. So while a very tough 104-year-old woman in Spain recently beat COVID — and Betty White could probably do the same — it would be great to know that it wasn't even an issue.
Among the highlights were Warwick's confusion over Chance the Rapper and The Weeknd's chosen monikers, tweeting at Chance, "If you are very obviously a rapper why did you put it in your stage name? I cannot stop thinking about this." She then called out The Weeknd for his odd approach to spelling before adding, "If you have 'The' in your name i'm coming for you. I need answers today."
But as great as her social media presence has been in its own right, what's even better is the fact that it has spawned some real good in the world. Following their Twitter exchanges, Warwick is teaming up with Chance the Rapper and The Weeknd on a charity single called "Nothing's Impossible".
Raising money for the nonprofit Not Impossible Foundation, which seeks to eradicate hunger worldwide, the forthcoming song is part of Warwick's declared "mission to end foolishness by 2021." But if she's going to win out against foolishness, she needs to be at the top of her game — which means she'll have no time for COVID.
In other words, we need Dionne Warwick to get vaccinated so she can remain the undisputed queen of Twitter and hopefully make another visit to Popdust in a post-COVID year.
David Attenborough
Speaking of older celebrities blowing up on social media, British naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough recently broke records on Instagram, collecting a million followers faster than anyone in the platform's history. At 94 years old he joined Instagram as part of his effort to promote his new film A Life on Our Planet.
The movie's stated goals are to document the reality of climate change's catastrophic effects on the Earth, and to chart a path toward a more sustainable future. Those are some big goals, and Attenborough is going to need to stay healthy if he's going to help us navigate away from Armageddon.
Also, since he recently started lending his soothing narration to mindfulness exercises for the Headspace app, our mental health may literally depend on him maintaining a healthy set of lungs.
James Earl Jones' voice is a brilliant actor with one of the most iconic voices of all time. From Darth Vader to Mufasa to King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America, he has secured his place in film history. And with the long-awaited sequel Coming 2 America set for release in March of 2021, he's far from done.
Basically, think of how you feel when you watch the saddest scene in The Lion King (you know the one). That's how sad the entire country is going to be if we screw up by not getting James Earl Jones vaccinated.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is 79 years old. Yet over the last five years he has been an instrumental part of a transformational movement in American politics — with young progressives at its core.
He has spent decades fighting for the rights and needs of the working class, and he continues to do so as "moderate" and Right-wing senators resist any COVID relief legislation that includes even bare minimum direct payments. He was critical in getting necessary legislation like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal to be taken seriously, and now stands to make a real difference as Joe Biden's likely pick for Labor Secretary.
Whether or not he technically qualifies as a celebrity, it's essential that we get Bernie vaccinated ASAP so he can keep fighting and live to see the fruits of his lifetime of hard work.
Jeff Bridges
At 71 years old, Jeff Bridges is younger than most of the celebrities on this list, but the star of The Big Lebowski and Tron is currently receiving treatment for lymphoma. That treatment seems to be going well, as Bridges recently announced that he was "feeling good," but it still puts him at a higher risk category for COVID-19.
With that said, it's not yet clear what kind of impact the vaccines might have on cancer patients and other people with compromised immune systems. So while we don't necessarily want "the Dude" to be the first in line for vaccination, we're hoping that immunization will be a safe option for COVID protection, and wishing Jeff Bridges a speedy recovery.
Organ recipients are generally required to take immunosuppressants to prevent their bodies from rejecting the foreign organs, but that also puts them at higher risk for COVID. So Gomez is another case of a celebrity who should probably not rush to be immunized — but shouldn't put it off too long either.
So as we look forward to 2021, we can hopefully look forward to vaccinations for healthcare workers, ourselves, and our loved ones — and also these celebrities. It's the necessary step to finally moving on from this awful pandemic.
For anyone whose curious, the CDC has information on when you might be eligible for a free vaccine.
He has attempted to clean up his act over the year and has made claims of serious personal growth. And he may have had some success in rebranding as a major critic of former-president Donald Trump.
But last year he received a five-year extension of his contract with satellite radio giant SiriusXM, so it's worth looking back at what got him to this point — decades of being a cruel and spiteful dick. There are way too many examples to mention, but these seven disgusting moments (that would have ended anyone else's career) are some of his finest work.
Baby Spice Interview - 2005
Back in 2005, Emma Bunton — AKA Baby Spice of the Spice Girls — appeared on Howard Stern's show and seemed to be prepared for some discomfort, as she remained a good sport throughout. Nonetheless, she was visibly uncomfortable as Howard made comments about her body, announced that he was turned on by the thought that she might have come to his studio without a bra or underwear, "just for me."
While Bunton did her best to brush off these comments — as well as endless questions about her sex life that rose to a level just shy of propositioning her on air — the whole situation was horribly degrading. Stern and his crew even played loud, graphic sex noises until Bunton was compelled to take off her headphones.
It was part of Bunton's job as a singer and actor to participate in this kind of interview and promote her work. There is an implicit pressure to play along, but she made it clear that she didn't want to participate. Howard Stern responded by leaning into it, treating her like a sex object, dismissing her objections, and making her about as uncomfortable as he possibly could.
Carnie Wilson Fat-Shaming - 1999
In 1999, Carnie Wilson of the iconic trio Wilson Phillips went on Howard Stern just a few months after getting gastric bypass surgery to help her control her weight. At that time Stern's radio antics were filmed for a TV show on E!, so there were cameras set up to film in and around the studio.
When Wilson arrived, she was directed by a producer to stand in a particular spot to "wait for Howard." Little did she know, they had set her up for embarrassment, and the "Hold On" singer was actually standing on a scale, with her weight being displayed in big red numbers.
Though she had already lost more than 50 pounds following her surgery, it was obviously mortifying, but that was just the beginning. Once in the studio, Howard grilled Wilson about why she didn't date overweight men, and even bringing on her boyfriend — now-husband Rob Bonfiglio — to suggest that he was either gay, or only interested in Wilson for her money, and that their relationship wouldn't last.
When Wilson pushed back and called stood up to Sterns bullying, he seemed to be impressed and said, "I adore you." Meanwhile, Wilson was inwardly concealing how much he had hurt her. On an appearance on The View she noted that immediately after the interview, Bonfiglio bought her flowers at their hotel to cheer her up, but said, "I literally crawled in bed."
Gabourey Sidibe Fat-Shaming - 2010
In another instance of egregious fat-shaming, when Gabourey Sidibe was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the 2009 movie Precious, Howard Stern couldn't handle the fact that people were praising an obese woman. He repeatedly referred to her as "the enormous fat black chick," impugned her acting abilities, and joked that the only future she could have in acting would be as "the football player" in Blindside 2.
On top of it all, Stern couldn't even be bothered to learn Sidibe's name, calling her "Gabrielle Siday" and, when corrected, joking that she was named "Gabaret" after the movie Cabaret. Stern attempts to justify his fat-shaming by talking about a time in his life when he was badly overweight and his parents supposedly shamed him into changing his habits.
It's hard to say to what extent there's any truth to that story. But his attempts to frame it as a form of compassion, looking out for her health, were somewhat undermined by his comparing her to a planet...
Of course it's possible that Howard Stern really does attack other people's bodies as a projection of some internalized shame about his own struggle with weight. If that's the case, he should take note that his predictions about Sidibe's acting prospects were wrong. She has continued to have an active career, with major roles in the Showtime series The Big C and in FX's American Horror Story.
Dolly Parton Audio - 2008
In 2008 Howard Stern played a series of clips cut together from the audiobook of Dolly Parton's memoir,My Life and Other Unfinished Business. The clips made it sound as though the "9 to 5" singer was making hurtful and disgusting remarks about fellow musical icons Linda Ronstadt and Kenny Rogers — as well as some other celebrities. They even cut the audio together to have Dolly talking about her love of "n****r c**k."
Cutting together bits of celebrity audiobooks is a favorite bit of Stern's. As recently as 2017 he cut together pieces of Caitlyn Jenner's audiobook to have her talking about having a "huge c*nt." But while a frequent Stern guest like George Takei may take this kind of "joke" in stride, Dolly did not appreciate it.
Noting that she was "completely devastated," the icon of Dollywood released a statement saying, "I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life. I cannot believe what Howard Stern has done to me. In a blue million years, I would never have such vulgar things come out of my mouth ... If there was ever going to be a lawsuit, it's going to be over this."
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was a talented young Mexican-American singer-songwriter who had a thriving fanbase in the '90s and is still beloved to this day. In 1995 she was just 23 years old when she was murdered by an obsessive fan who had insinuated herself into Selena's life — until she was caught embezzling money from the singer's fan club. Millions mourned for her.
Her life story was turned into a 1997 movie starring a young Jennifer Lopez and is the subject of a miniseries that just started airing on Netflix. The one person who didn't seem to understand the gravity of this tragic story when it actually took place was Howard Stern...
As her fans mourned, Stern responded to Selena's death by insulting her music, playing sound effects over it, and performing a racist caricature of a Mexican Selena fan.
Dana Plato Interview - 1999
In May of 1999 Dana Plato, former star of the classic '80s sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, was nervous to go on the Howard Stern Show. Like many child stars, she had struggled with the temptations and pitfalls that life presents.
Following rumors that she was once again abusing drugs and near death, she gave an interview with Howard Stern. She had reason to expect some unpleasant questions from the infamous shock jock, but the interview started out well enough. Stern and co-host Robin Quivers complimented her looks — contradicting some of the rumors. It was only when Stern started fielding abusive calls that things got bad.
Stern may not be to blame for the content of these calls — though given his well-known history of having employees call in, even that is uncertain — but he chose how to respond to them. Rather than cutting off callers who were speculating that Plato sounded high, Stern encouraged it — along with abusive comments about her sex life — and surveyed the studio for opinions, pushing Plato to deny it and encouraging her to take a drug test.
The calls created a clear sense of public animosity and suspicion, making Plato defensive and even more nervous. Just one supportive caller was enough to bring Plato to tears.
The next day Plato took a combination of painkillers and muscle relaxants that killed her. Initially thought to be an accidental overdose, her death was later ruled an intentional suicide.
Of course it's important to note that Howard Stern doesn't only go after celebrities. He also directs his bullying at his employees (particularly Gary Dell'Abate, AKA Bababooey) and at ordinary people whom he deems worthy of his and his audience's derision.
Over the years this has resulted in a cast of recurring characters termed "The Wack Pack". Referred to by nicknames like "Gary the Retard" (Gary Loudermilk, who has Down syndrome),"Eric the Midget" (Eric Shaun Lynch, who suffered from Ehlers Danlos syndrome), and "Beetlejuice" (Lester Green, whose microcephaly lent him a supposed resemblance to a character from Tim Burton's 1988 Beetlejuice) — every segment featuring one of these guests is disgusting exploitation — something approaching a modern take on the freak show.
While members of the Wack Pack generally enjoyed the notoriety and the opportunities the show provided them, that was never even close to the main purpose of these segments. Howard Stern plays the part of the kid in middle school who would "befriend" a special education student in order to amuse his real friends.
Stern fakes innocence while asking questions designed to elicit a response that he and his crew can mock. Perhaps the most blatant and upsetting example of this behavior came in 1994 with the "Battle of the Wits".
Stern pitted "Gary the Retard" against "Beetlejuice," in a trivia contest in order to laugh as they failed to correctly answer questions like "how do you spell 'red'?" There are clips of the contest available on YouTube, but it's honestly too cruel and exploitative to share any of them here.
So as Howard Stern's career continues, and he works to sell himself as a changed man, we should keep in mind how he got to where he is. For decades he has commodified being an assh**e.
His greatest talent has always been a willingness to be the cruelest most unpleasant man in broadcasting. And he has never properly apologized for any of it.
So congratulation on your new continued success, dick.
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