The tough part of being a celebrity is all the talking you have to do. Interviews, press conferences, paparazzi following you around asking questions – all of these situations and more give any celebrity plenty of chance to say one dumb thing. It’s bound to happen when you talk that much.
But sometimes, that small, seemingly innocent quote, can lead to a huge mess. Simply trying to give someone a new twist on an answer you’ve given hundreds of times can get you in deep trouble.
Here are some examples…
Paul Newman Said…
“24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not.”
You’ve probably heard that expression a lot. Maybe one day at a party you overheard the extremely drunk guy say it in an attempt to make people think that he can have some good old fashioned fun, even in face of the fact that his propensity for drinking himself in to oblivion makes everyone worry.
The seemingly innocuous quote eventually turned in to a monster when college students around the country began celebrating a day called “Newman Day.” On Newman Day, students do just as the quote suggests: They drink one beer every hour, all day – all while still showing up to all of their classes. While this tradition had wormed its way in to dozens of colleges and universities around the United States, it wasn’t until it hit Princeton University that Paul Newman found out about the holiday created in his honor.
He wasn’t very happy about it. Reason being, Newman’s son Scott passed away due to a drug overdose, which led to Newman starting his own foundation that promoted substance abuse prevention through education.
Students getting drunk in class are a bit contradictory to Newman’s beliefs to say the least.
Newman asked Princeton to stop promoting this “holiday.” Princeton representatives said that Newman Day was not a school sponsored event, that it was a campus tradition that they had no control over.
It was at this point that Newman and Princeton teamed up to spread the word of the dangers of Newman Day. While the day is still celebrated, the number of yearly at Princeton has declined.
But the funny thing about this quote and its attribution to Paul Newman is that Newman probably never even said the quote. It is reported that Newman once said it during a speech he once gave to a college, a speech that there is no record of. So why the quote was even attributed to Newman in the first place is a bit of a mystery, but he took responsibility for its consequences anyway.
NBA player Kevin Garnett said…
“This is it. It’s for all the marbles. I’m sitting in the house loading up the pump, I’m loading up the Uzis, I’ve got a couple of M-16s, couple of nines, couple of joints with some silencers on them, couple of grenades, got a missile launcher. I’m ready for war.”
Kevin Garnett is known as one of the best players in the NBA. He’s a dominating presence that recently led the Boston Celtics to their first NBA championship in quite a long time. But before he began his stint with the Celtics, Garnett was a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team that was good, but never quote good enough, even with his superstar skills on the court.
Back in 2004, Garnett’s Timberwolves where in the middle of a hotly contested playoff series with the Sacramento Kings. The quote above was given in the lead up to the deciding game in the series. Of course, as most athletes tend to do, Garnett equated the game to a war, to preparing for a battle that might get ugly.
Now, these kinds of quotes are tossed around a lot in the world of sports. The intensity of a rivalry can sometimes get hyped up to the point of extreme hyperbole. So a quote like Garnett’s is actually fairly generic, even if it is a little bit extreme. So the real problem with the quote wasn’t the quote itself, but the timing of the quote.
Garnett said this in May of 2004, a time when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their bloodiest and most ugly. Needless to say, soldiers and the families of soldiers that were serving in these wars were pretty ticked off that a man playing a game for a living would compare his job to that of a person being shot at in a battle. The NBA and the Timberwolves were showered in complaints.
Soon thereafter, Garnett gave a rather lengthy apology in which he really could have just summed up with the words, “I was being an idiot, I’m sorry.” After that, the anger died down some.
But then it got sparked all over again when the center for the Sacramento Kings, Brad Miller, decided to throw his hat in to the hyperbole ring, this time as a bit of a mocking gesture directed at Garnett. He said, “I’m bringing my shotgun, my bow and arrow, my four-wheel drive truck, and four wheelers and run over him.”
By this point, no one really cared about the somewhat insensitive quotes that much, and Garnett and his Timberwolves eventually went on to defeat the Kings in that playoff round.
Hilary Clinton said…
“I’m not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.”
Way back in 1968, there was a country singer by the name of Tammy Wynette. Tammy had quite an impressive list of musical accomplishments behind her, but nothing – NOTHING – she ever did could even compare to the popularity of her famous song “Stand By Your Man,” a song about a woman’s love for her man – a love that will allow the woman to overlook the man’s faults and mistakes.
While soon-to-be President Bill Clinton was campaigning for the spot of Commander in Chief, he was also embroiled within one of what would eventually become many extra-marital affairs. This one involved a woman by the name of Gennifer Flowers (yes, it’s spelled correctly).
In an effort to get their names and faces out there more than they already were, Bill and Hilary made an appearance on the news magazine show 60 Minutes. During the interview, the subject of Bill’s indiscretions popped up as was to be expected. Hilary, trying to portray herself as a modern independent woman, said the quote above. And it worked. She came off as a woman that would not stand idly by as he husband trampled all over her.
But this didn’t fly with Mrs. Wynette. Tammy was furious that Hilary had basically degraded her hit single as nothing more than a woman devaluing herself. She said that Hilary had “offended every true country music fan and every person who has made it on their own with no one to take them to the White House.” This then sparked a flurry denouncements from country music radio station DJ all around the country who felt they needed to step in and side with one of their biggest stars. Many DJ’s even labeled the Clintons as “country music-hating liberals,” which added to the already arduous task of winning over southern voters.
Hilary later apologized, and Wynette graciously accepted. In fact, they so patched things up that Wynette later performed “Stand By Your Man” at a Clinton fundraiser. This is all the more poignant given the later Monica Lewinsky scandal that Bill Clinton found himself in. Even through that, Hilary still stood by her man.
President George H. W. Bush said…
“Just as Poland had a rebellion against totalitarianism, I am rebelling against broccoli, and I refuse to give ground. I do not like broccoli, and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”
I guess it makes sense when you think about it, but who knew there was such a thing as the “broccoli industry”? And who knew they would get so upset? Well, they do exist and they were steamed (yes, that’s a very lame steamed broccoli pun).
When George Bush Sr. Said this somewhat amusing quote back in 1990, no one could have imagined what an impact it would have had on the popularity of this tree-like vegetable. Soon after the quote, America’s schools stopped serving broccoli, and children all across the country began to protest their broccoli servings at family dinner tables. In fact, it was reported that broccoli sales dropped significantly in 1990, all because of the president’s personal dislike of it.
Not only was the broccoli industry upset at the quote, but they were also upset at the fact that Bush Sr. Had literally banned broccoli from being served anywhere the president happened to have been eating, especially the White House and Air Force One. This also upset nutritionists all over the country as the presidents messages basically told children that vegetables were bad for them.
To protest the quote, broccoli growers all over the country began sending cases of the vegetable directly to the White House. President Bush then sent all of these cases to various food banks in the D.C. Area.
It was later discovered that while broccoli may not have been on the top of everyone’s favorite foods list, it actually helps prevent certain types of cancers.
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