Russell Brand

“It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.” Dorothy Parker (speaking about the Hollywood blacklist and the effect of her political views on her writing career, from interview in The Paris Review, summer 1956)

First, so you know I’m qualified, let me tell you I am no stranger to having my grandfather learn about my indiscretions by way of the media.

When I was 18, my grandfather helped me buy my first car, a sweet little red compact, on the condition that I take care of it and not allow anyone else to drive it.

Imagine my grandfather’s disappointment when he recognized my car on the evening news, smashed into a tree in the middle of a neighborhood park, after what was to have been a midnight beer run went terribly wrong.

I’d loaned the car to some friends, and on a whim, they decided to pocket the money we’d all pitched in for beer and to pull a beer heist instead. Their plan went awry, and under hot pursuit by authorities, they abandoned my car and went on the lam. Enter the investigative reporters of KSBW Action News.¹

Suddenly, my grandfather knew a whole lot more about my life than I wished him to know, including that I was hanging out with hooligans and was quite fond of beer. My grandfather ultimately forgave me and carried on thinking I was the most remarkable young lady on the planet, as grandfathers do.

So, I can relate in some small way to how Georgina Baillie must have felt when her grandfather learned abruptly of an aspect of her life she’d have preferred to have kept hidden from him. Although I realize it’s not perhaps the most pleasant experience she’s endured, as a woman and as the mother of a 24-year old daughter, I want her to know that she has the strength to handle this. It is up to her whether this incident makes her or breaks her.

In the end, I think Georgina Baillie will carry on and be just fine. She’ll learn from this experience and grow from it. I give her that credit and that respect. Her grandfather will carry on thinking she’s the most amazing young lady on the planet, as grandfathers do. And if not, if her relationship with her grandfather is seriously damaged, as she has stated, because he learned about a different aspect of her life and personality, then I hope she will understand that should be a little bit offensive to her, that someone would judge her so harshly for her life choices, especially someone who loves her. (Would that we all had parents and grandparents as accepting and as generous with unconditional love as Russell Brand’s own mother.)

I also want Ms. Baillie to know that, along with the freedom a young woman has to live her life as she chooses, comes the onus of accepting responsibility for her actions. It is the easy thing to do to deflect all the blame to Brand. Believe me, when I was 18, I did my best to deflect the blame to my hooligan friends and to sweep the fact that I’d gone against my grandfather’s wishes in loaning the car to them in the first place under the rug. I still feel ashamed of myself that I didn’t stand up right away and accept responsibility for my part, and that I so easily let my friends take all the blame.

“Oh, yes, I am wise, but it’s wisdom born of pain. Yes, I’ve paid the price, but look how much I gained. If I have to, I can do anything. I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman.” (Helen Reddy, I Am Woman, 1972)

If my daughter slept with Russell Brand, and it was talked about on the radio, I would say to her that, perhaps, as a smart young woman, this is something she might have seen coming, maybe not under exactly those circumstances, but Brand’s life is in the public eye, his sex life is in the public eye. It’s not out of the question that, if a woman spends time with him, it could become quite public knowledge. Consider, for example, the women who are photographed on a regular basis leaving Brand’s home. (By the way, I find it interesting that no one chastises the Sun for printing photos of those young ladies and exposing their lives in that way — do they not think their grandfathers might be reading?)

To women, I have this to say:

I think women should be a little less outraged that, during a BBC Radio 2 broadcast, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand left indiscreet messages on Andrew Sachs’s answering machine revealing that Brand slept with Sachs’s granddaughter, and a little more outraged that the incident caused such a stir. As women, we will not stand shoulder-to-shoulder with men until such situations cause the exact same amount of stir, no more and no less, as the same situation would were all the gender roles reversed.

I’m betting Barbara Brand isn’t overly delighted every time a young woman shares a story of intimate time spent with her son in the media. Women come forth on a regular basis to publicly discuss sleeping with Brand, exposing private conversations, intimate details and the like, and it’s okay, because Brand is a man. No one worries about how it affects his mother to hear it. No one gives a lot of thought to whether it was a ladylike thing to do to kiss and tell. No one rushes to Brand’s defense. In fact, quite the opposite, he’s depicted as some sort of snake charmer by the press, casting his spell on young women who are not given credit for having the sense to make their own decisions nor given the freedom to be as adventurous as their male counterparts.

I think we women are focusing on the wrong things in our battle for equality, or what’s left of it. We are focusing on the inconsequential. I don’t care who Russell Brand sleeps with, and I care even less who Georgina Baillie sleeps with.

What I do care about is this: I care that, after twenty years in my profession, I still make less money than my male counterparts, many with less education and experience. I care that the world continues to be run, in large part, by men. I care that, in some parts of the world, women are required to wear veils and forbidden to pursue an education, or that laws have to exist in other parts of the world forbidding the abandonment or drowning of female babies because they are not valued as highly as male babies. The rest is all smoke and mirrors.

“We’ve got a generation now who were born with semi-equality. They don’t know how it was before, so they think, this isn’t too bad. We’re working. We have our attache cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don’t realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.” (Erma Bombeck)

Women will not have true equality until we are imbued with the same strength as men to suffer the consequences of our decisions and our actions, until our fathers and grandfathers stop patting our brothers on the back in congratulations for their sexual escapades and then, in the next breath, acting as if they are not emotionally capable of withstanding the knowledge that our sisters are having sex.

Neither will we be equals until we are given credit for having a sense of humor. And we do have a sense of humor. We can take it. We can laugh at ourselves, our mistakes, our embarrassments. We have the resiliency to realize it’s likely not the end of the world and to move on with our lives. Youthful indiscretions are a part of life, and we learn from them. I, for one, make my own beer runs these days.

I like to imagine humorist Dorothy Parker on the other end of that answering machine, checking her messages. The mere thought of how she might have reacted, even in a much earlier time, makes me laugh out loud. Or Kathy Griffin – she wouldn’t have gone off sulking, she’d have given it back ten-fold. I can only imagine what she would have said under similar circumstances, but I can tell you this much — she’d have taken it like a man.

Russell Brand returns to radio tomorrow, April 19th, at 9 p.m. UK time. Click here to stream the show live from wherever you are in the world: TalkSPORT.Net Media Player

1. In those days, children, journalists couldn’t simply lift stories from Twitter and had to go out into the world and report on actual events. [↩]