It's time once again, for some reason, to talk about Chappell Roan?

I have to be honest, despite the fact that I find Chappell Roan to be a very entertaining and talented artist in the mainstream music space today, she is routinely one of the most boring figures to talk about on this channel, simply because when I do sort of come across these media freakouts about her, I often struggle to muster anything of significance to say, because most of the time the reasons people are freaking out about or at her are not very deep or meaningful or substantive.

Now, that's not to say Chappell is anywhere near a perfect person, or that I haven't had my criticisms of public statements she's made in the past. But as you may have noticed, she was easily one of the most talked about music celebrities last week, simply over this really weird one-off on-camera interaction she had with a handful of paparazzi and photographers outside of some establishment she was going into.

Roan: "All of you, I'm asking kindly to please leave me alone and stop following me and harassing me."

Which again, I did not even say anything about this clip. It was such a nothing-burger and yet it generated untold amounts of headlines, TikToks, and think pieces about how terrible and awful and entitled of a person she is simply for not enjoying being hounded by randos and orbiters and paparazzi.

Like, I'm sorry, did we not just culturally go through this moment where we rethought like how bad hounding celebrities was back in the 2000s, and we were all supposed to be coming to grips with like, all of that was not good, the culture it created was toxic and bad for everybody, and we should from here on out just be rejecting it.

Did we undo that discourse? Did that just not happen? Are we not doing that now? The 2000s are back, y'all. That's why everyone is heroin chic skinny again.

So now this week we are seeing an even larger flood of headlines and hateful comments and responses in response to a somewhat similar story, one that frankly has even less hard material details to it because it all comes secondhand from an Instagram post launched by a football player, a soccer player, who told this harrowing story of how his daughter was upset by a security guard who was just innocently, I guess, looking at Chappell from afar at a hotel.

And this little girl, her whole life was ruined by Chappell Roan via this security guard. This not only had Brazilian and American social media freaking out, respectively, but also the mayor of Rio de Janeiro. Yeah, she, uh, she got banned from there.

I'm sorry, I'm like a little low on the finer details of all this, but part of the reason why is that apparently the finer details don't fucking matter because eventually, once Chappell Roan came to social media to just clear the air around all of this madness and calm things down:

"[...] a security guard who is not my personal security. I didn't even see a woman and a child. Like, I did not. No one came up to me. No one bothered me. Like, I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel. I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child. I did not. They did not come up to me. They weren't doing anything. It's unfair for security to just assume someone doesn't have good intentions."

Which eventually led to a response from this little girl's mother:

"[...] And I know that Chappell has responded, saying that it wasn't her security and that she didn't do it. So, 100%, this security guard was not a security guard of the hotel. That's what I can say. He looks after artists. So I don't know if it was her personal security guard, but he was with her. So that is all I know. Did she send him to do it? Again, I don't know. Look, I would like to hope not, but at the same time, I think that you have a responsibility when you are a celebrity to make sure, I guess, that the people that work for you and that act on your behalf are acting on your behalf. Even if she did send him, or she didn't send him, I don't know. For me, I feel like it really overstepped a boundary."

The mom couldn't even get her full side of the story straight in terms of whose security she was talking to and laying out ridiculous standards like, oh, you know, regardless of, you know, who this person is directly answering to, Chappell's responsible for how they're acting or who they're talking to or what they're saying.

You're telling me every single time a celebrity goes into an establishment, they need to have a face-to-face conversation with any security person connected to them directly or not in every establishment they enter to avoid something like this?

Honestly, it's all just so maddeningly stupid and frankly so far beneath the intelligence of your average person. Because honestly, if Chappell Roan wants to have her security acting in a way where they just sort of keep any and all weirdos and curious people away from her, people who are filming, wanting to say hi to her, whatever, if that's what she wants, who gives a fuck?

Could you argue this is maybe a little entitled on her part? Maybe. But I dunno, her boundaries are her boundaries, as any human being should be able to have them. But also, feeling like you deserve a piece of Chappell's space and time and attention just because you enjoy her music casually or even intently, that's also entitlement, too.

But also, the story of this little girl has been pushed so far and has gone so insane that it's not even the logical framework within which we're talking about this issue. This has gone beyond a boundary conversation and has mutated into Chappell Roan hates her fans. Chappell hates children. Chappell sent her security to ruin this little girl's day and throw her off a cliff.

'I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children. Like, that is crazy. I'm sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something, and that if you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.'

It's getting to the point where if you aggressively and instantaneously react to the proposition of Chappell just being like, I want my space, I want my peace. If you're the type of person who has a strong visceral response to that, you're just a fucking idiot. You're a moron. You're stupid. You're smooth-brained. You are dumber than the mold growing on the cheese in the back of your fridge right now.

Because this doesn't hurt anyone. It doesn't concern you. Why are you freaking out about it? Because the fact that this story, this topic, has turned into an international sensation and now involves politicians is insane to me, especially during a time where there are so many more important things to freak out about right now.

So yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna leave it there because what even is this?

Anthony Fantano, Chappell Roan. Forever.