The Gosling-saved journalist, Laurie Penny, has been Tweeting about it for the past twenty hours, often hilariously: “He did not say ‘hey, girl.’ He said ‘hey, watch out!'” … “Identity of no-idea-if-actually-a-manarchist-but-definitely-a-decent-sort Ryan Gosling confirmed by girl near me, who said ‘you lucky bitch.'”
But attention to the story snowballed, and Penny got sick of it: “I would also like to thank the several other, more anonymous New Yorkers who have saved me from cars since my stay here. #trafficfail.” … “EVERYBODY NEEDS TO CALM DOWN ABOUT RYAN GOSLING NOW.” … “No seriously. My phone and email have been going crazy with media requests all night and all morning and it’s getting silly now.” … “I don’t mean to be a dickhead about this but I really think it’s a bit of a fuss over not very much. It did make me laugh, but life goes on.”
She then proceeded to write an exasperated and exasperating post about the incident titled, “Ryan Gosling Saved Me From a Speeding Car But There’s War In the Middle East So Everyone Calm Down,” which went up on Gawker about an hour ago. Some nuggets:
“I am grateful to the dashing and meme-worthy Mr. Gosling, just as I am grateful to every other kind New Yorker who has saved me from oncoming traffic in recent weeks, good citizens making the streets of this fine city that much safer for random British writers who can’t remember to look both ways.”
“The real heroes I’ve met in America are risking everything to make sure that the United States doesn’t slide further into bigotry, inequality and violence whilst everyone is distracted by the everyday doings of celebrities.”
“As a feminist, a writer, and a gentlewoman of fortune, I refuse to be cast in any sort of boring supporting female role, even though I have occasional trouble crossing the road, and even though I did swoon the teeniest tiniest bit when I realized it was him. I think that’s lazy storytelling, and I’m sure Ryan Gosling would agree with me.”
Cool, but uh: this story really has nothing to do with you, it’s about Ryan Gosling. And yes, it is a little sad, but not because there’s a war in the Middle East or injustice in the world. I mean, that’s sad, too. But public obsession with this particular story is sad because it’s ridiculously rare for a very handsome, very wealthy, very famous young man to seem like an actual good guy. Of course we lose our collective shit whenever Ryan Gosling restores our faith in the humanity of men that have no good reason to act like humans, because they’ll still get whatever they want no matter how badly they treat the people around them. See: Ashton Kutcher, Chris Brown, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc., etc., etc. Sorry you have to bear the brunt of that this time around, I’m sure it’s totally irritating. But at least you didn’t get run over by a car.
Image via WENN.com
[via HollywoodDame]
