Earlier this week, the New York Times’ TV critic Alessandra Stanley wrote what many critics and pretty much all of Twitter considered an “imbecilic,†“disastrous,†self-contradicting review of ABC’s upcoming Shonda Rhimes–produced show How to Get Away With Murder. (The piece’s first line is, “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called ‘How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.’â€) Slate’s Willa Paskin wrote that Stanley missed the point; Vox called it “careless and obtuseâ€; and Vulture’s very own Margaret Lyons did a paragraph-by-paragraph riposte calling the article “inaccurate, tone-deaf, muddled, and racist.†The article also spawned two Twitter hashtags, #IWasAnAngryBlackWoman and #LessClassicallyBeautiful.
Here’s a roundup of some of the best celebrity tweets in response to the article. As Rhimes herself might say: Boom.
First, in case you missed it, here is Rhimes’s reaction:
And here’s how some of her cast members responded. (It should be noted many active Twitter users were disappointingly silent on the issue. We won’t name-check you, but you know who you are):
Many other celebrities were outraged, as well.
Stanley responded to all this in 176 characters: “The whole point of the piece — once you read past the first 140 characters — is to praise Shonda Rhimes for pushing back so successfully on a tiresome but insidious stereotype.†Alright, then.