Neicy Nash-Betts won an Emmy last night in”Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie”—love those Emmy categories— for playing Glenda Cleveland in Netflix’s “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” I didn’t see it: there are some topics too distasteful—no pun intended—even for me. Neicy’s acceptance speech is being cheered all across the news media as “inspirational,” ”powerful” (Huffington Post) “blazing” (The Times) and other superlatives.
“I’m a winner, baby! Thank you to the most high for this divine moment,” Nash-Betts said as she held her trophy. “Thank you, Ryan Murphy, for seeing me. Evan Peters, I love you. Netflix. Every single person who voted for me. Thank you. My better half, who picked me up when I was gutted from this work. Thank you.”
“I want to thank me, for believing in me and doing what they said I could not do,” she added. “I want to say to myself in front of all you beautiful people, ‘Go, girl, with your bad self. You did that!’ Finally, I accept this award on behalf of every Black and Brown woman who have gone unheard, yet overpoliced, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor! As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power. And, baby, I’ma do it till the day I die.”
Personally, I hated the speech.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….
Am I being unfair?
I’ve won some awards in my time and had to make acceptance speeches. A proper response, in my view, is humility and gratitude. I regret that on one occasion I used my moment in the spotlight to tell an organization that its criteria for handing out awards was unfair and ridiculous so my own honor was meaningless, but at least that sour note related to the event. (It also had the desired effect, as the system was changed.)
I find Nash-Betts’ self-congratulations narcissistic in the extreme. Virtually every actor who is trying to succeed as a professional in show business can cheer themselves for sticking with a random, chaotic, stressful business where success is always as much happenstance as merit. There’s nothing special about her. “I want to thank me” is a statement that can’t be uttered without prompting a reflex “Yecchh,” in my value system. Richard Nixon could have said the same when he won the Presidency in 1968. Donald Trump could have said it when he was elected in 2016, and there would have been mass gagging across America.
Then she lumped the woman she played in “Daumer” with two black women whose experiences could not have been more different. Glenda Cleveland had tried to alert police that something seriously wrong was going on in the cannibal’s apartment, and the police didn’t believe her. Almost every ongoing crime has someone who tried to call police attention to suspicious occurrences and can say afterwards, “See? If they had listened to me, this all could have been prevented!” Of course we never hear about the far more frequent episodes when a neighbor alerts the police and nothing was amiss at all. It’s not usually a racial issue. Linking Cleveland to Bland, the black woman who was arrested and jailed after being too aggressive in protesting a traffic stop for the police officer’s taste and was found the next morning hanged in her holding cell, and Breonna Taylor, killed in the crossfire when police made a no-knock raid on her apartment and her criminal boyfriend of the moment started shooting, is inflammatory while ignoring the many confounding details of both incidents.
Of course the Hollywood audience loved the speech. They are all narcissists. It is still no way to accept an award.
Ethics Alarms 
I know that “humble brag” is a thing.
Is this an example of “bumptious brag”?
“A proper response, in my view, is humility and gratitude.”
I agree. Thanking yourself is narcissistic. And silly. “I want to say to myself in front of all you beautiful people, You did that!” Yes, everybody knows you did that. That’s why you are there getting an award.
But, her decision to identify with her group, “every Black and Brown woman,” is insidious. The Left’s insistence of identifying people according to their groups is just disgusting. (Frankly, it is disgusting when those on the right do it, as well, but they seem to do it less frequently.) Group love and group hatred are the most common causes of human atrocities. The failure of refusal to stand alone as an individual makes you part of a herd, and herd are there for manipulating. That she relegates herself to a herd so willingly (and enthusiastically) is evidence of the insidious way people can be manipulated into a mind-set, while this particular mind-set has the power to thwart racial progress and harmony indefinitely.
At the same time, I must admit that the inclination to group-think is a particularly strong one. I try very hard to keep my biases and prejudices at bay (or, at the very least, give them little credit), but there is a strong instinct to retreat to the safety of a group. I just wish that the default group was race. That may be fine in a homogenous society, but we don’t have one of those. And, her comments just reinforce a toxic mindset we should be trying to avoid.
-Jut
“I regret that on one occasion I used my moment in the spotlight to tell an organization that its criteria for handing out awards was unfair and ridiculous so my own honor was meaningless, but at least that sour note related to the event. (It also had the desired effect, as the system was changed.)”
I’m not certain you should regret “that one occasion.”
It seems you used the occasion (seized the opportunity) with intent to accomplish a good and ethical purpose …to change something in an organization you believed needed changing, as evidenced by the fact that “the system was thereafter changed.” Needed change is a good thing, and most times it takes that one person willing to step up and taste the sour note for right reasons.
Obviously, you deserved an award for your accomplishments within the organization that were beneficial to the organization. So remain humble and gracious, but also enjoy the peace you earned and deserve for speaking up at the one moment that was your [only] chance to make a difference. (not withstanding that you continue to do so everyday for your EA readership.). Your only other option was to write a letter to the leadership to say “the criteria” was unfair and ridiculous, which we all know would have accomplished nothing.
And they left out a bunch of people in the “In Memoriam”, too! Richard Moll, Phyllis Coates, Inga Swenson, Mark Goddard, Robert Clary, “Sesame Street’s” Bob McGrath, Frances Sternhagen and Shecky Greene!
AND they ended the segment with the singing of the “Friends” theme with the Honor Position at the close being Matthew Perry.
Not Harry Belafonte. Not Richard Belzer. Not Robert Bla….okay, maybe not him….not Angela Lansbury! Matthew Perry!
Wait. The Emmys are still on air? Huh. Who knew? It seems my sock drawer is just as disorganized as Jack’s.
jvb
Are you being unfair? The mention of Breonna Talyor seems completely irrelevant to her work, but I never watch these things.
Playing the opening theme to Friends to honor(?) a newly deceased (by way of overdose on drugs) actor who hasn’t worked since that show makes my brain hurt and churns my stomach.
The self-congratulations are unseemly for a “thanks for this award” speech. This isn’t a new practice. But to mention people that you never met and have absolutely zero impact on the award is just virtue signaling.
Having not watched, did such mentions generate spontaneous applause from the audience of pseudo sycophants?
Matthew Perry was brilliant in the Whole Nine Yards and its sequel. Proved to be capable against Bruce Willis and Michael Clarke Duncan.
Not saying the tribute was deserved, just that the implication he hasn’t worked is undeserved.