Gilmore Girls Creator Pulls Woman Card Against Shonda Rhimes

Last week Shonda Rhimes was chilling watching Bunheads (a really fantastic show by the way) and tweeted her disappointment over the supreme whiteness of the show.

Which, valid. The show is incredibly white.

It is a sea of ivory.

The media took this as a major criticism/Shonda Rhimes attacking Amy Sherman-Palladino (the creator of Bunheads and the sublime Gilmore Girls).

This week Sherman-Palladino responded in the lamest way possible:

Look, I’m not going to get into a pissing match with Shonda Rhimes because she has 15,000 shows on the air, and she’s doing just fine for herself. … [But] I’ve always felt that women, in a general sense, have never supported other women the way they should…I think it’s a shame, but to me, it is what it is.”

Sherman-Palladino, who says she has never met Rhimes before, went on to say that with the increased demands on showrunners — particularly while getting a new program on the air — there’s no room for criticism among peers. “I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t go after another woman. I, frankly, wouldn’t go after another showrunner,” she said.

Excuse me a moment while I squeeze the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger and sigh loudly.

Amy, holder of my heart because Gilmore Girls is perfection and spoke to me and continues to speak to me on a whole slew of levels, calling out the whiteness of your show? It is not the end of the world. It is not the same as saying your show is racist. Or crappy. Or unrealistic. It is none of those things. It’s just white.

Don’t be all negative Nancy lady. You are usually way too awesome for that. Don’t play the woman card. You’re too awesome for that. Don’t act like Rhimes committed a major faux pas. You’re too awesome for that.

You say you can do better, because you’re white. I’m white. The whole system we operate in is white. So we try to do better. We can’t get defensive. We can only assure that we’ll improve. It isn’t difficult and if you have trouble with it take a moment to ask yourself why rather than getting all snarky.

Otherwise we get issues like this one and we get articles from news outlets ripping into Shonda Rhimes for making observations and we get articles from jerks like me being all “AMY WHAT THE HELL I LOVE YOU WHY WOULD YOU SAY PROBLEMATIC THINGS LIKE THAT?” And no one wants that…or this article.

Source [Media Mayhem via Pajiba]