I have a feeling that, while living in the US, Paltrow was surrounded by people that work for a living. Now, they might have all been highly paid actors and directors, but, they were still people that worked for a living. So, when you ask someone about their day, that’s what they’re going to mention. Furthermore, she was younger (young people are usually busier making a name for themselves) and didn’t have any kids (people without kids to focus on tend to focus on whatever is ‘big’ in their life….i.e. WORK).

So, she makes a small fortune, has kids, and moves to a wealthy area of Britain with a lot of ‘old money’ people that haven’t worked in generations. Am I shocked that those people don’t talk about getting ahead in life? Not at all. Who are they going to try to get ahead of? They’re the front of the line.

I don’t object to someone having preferences. I wouldn’t be offended at all if she said “With the crowd I hang with now, we talk philosophy at dinner and I find that more enjoyable than the crowd I hung with back in the US where we always talked about work.” That wouldn’t have even made me blink.

My issue is that she generalized an entire nation (300 million people) as only ever talking about work and generalized another entire nation (don’t know the pop of Britain) as having better dinner conversations. There are plenty of people in the US that never talk about work at dinner and plenty of people in Britain that always talk about work at dinner. If she had done a similar generalization that didn’t wash with the PC crowd, even more people would be offended (i.e., “Oh, I prefer living in Britain to living in Africa because I like living in real houses.” suddenly it seems more offensive, but the same basic principal applies)

She can say what she wants (until Sharia takes hold) and she can say it how she wants. However, if she offends me, I can take my movie dollars and spend them elsewhere. It’s not censorship, it’s the free market.

JadeNYU on December 6, 2006 at 5:10 PM