By Aileen Burke
Staff Writer
A particularly political late night program today is The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and it is no surprise that his show has delivered many statements surrounding the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
This past week, Lady Gaga was on the show to promote her current box office smash “A Star is Born.”
While being interviewed by Colbert, he asked her if she was okay with talking about politics and then subsequently asked, “How do you deal with the current political environment, with the moment we are in?”
Gaga was extremely specific with her respons
e; a response that has generated a lot of buzz since it aired on CBS.
“When it comes to the political stuff… I’m going to say, bring it on. Because what I have seen on the news with this debate of Kavanaugh versus Dr. Ford, it’s one of the most upsetting things I have ever witnessed,” said Gaga.
“Trump the other day was speaking at a rally and he said, ‘She has no memory of how she got to the party, should we trust that she remembers the assault?’
And the answer is yes. And I’ll tell you exactly why… The brain changes.
And literally what it does, is it takes the trauma and puts it in a box and it files it away and it shuts it so that we can survive the pain.”
Gaga went on to say: “…it also does a lot of other things. It can cause body pain. It can cause baseline elevations in anxiety. It can cause complete avoidance of not wanting to even remember or think about what happened to you. But, what I believe that have seen is that when this woman saw that Judge Kavanaugh was going to be possibly put in the highest position of power in the judicial system of this country, she was triggered, and that box opened. And when that box opened, she was brave enough to share it with the world to protect this country.”
This statement was met with great applause from the studio audience, and after the episode aired social media exploded with many people and fellow celebrities reaffirming their stance, stating ‘Believe Women’ and propounding the idea and importance of the #metoo social media movement.
It was important to the movement that she took the time out of her television interview to come to the defense of Ford.
When an actor is releasing a movie, especially a movie with as much buzz as “A Star is Born,” their time on talk shows is usually dedicated to an informal Oscar campaign.
Every second on the screen is important to let the public know – and the Oscar voters – about the process of creating a work of art that is potentially deserving of such a high caliber arts award.
Nonetheless, Gaga has been an outspoken activist for marginalized groups since she came on the music scene in 2008 with the release of her first major album ‘The Fame.’
She has always gone out of her way to speak out for others, and this instance shows that even if she is making a new turn as an actress – that will not change who she is fundamentally.
For more thoughts from the artist on suicide and mental health, find her essay in The Guardian, which was co-authored Dr. Tedros Ghebreysus, World Health Organization director general.
