Hilarious

This is one of those weird, harmless, funny stories making the rounds this week:  apparently Alec Baldwin's wife has been engaging in some sort of long-running Andy Kaufman performance-art exercise in pretending to be of Spanish heritage. Even funnier is that some of the self-appointed keepers of the "cultural appropriation" watch have declared themselves put off by this peculiar avocation of Hillary -- ah, I mean Hilaria Baldwin.

These subcultures are fascinating to me when they reveal themselves to the larger "culture," such as it is. If I understand the situation correctly, Hilaria has ensconced herself in the coveted "momfluencer" niche, getting attention and teevee time and emoluments not only for being married to a talented actor (who is a quarter-century her senior), but for being seen using certain brands on her Instagram feed.

Imagine being able to get a nice check delivered to your mailbox, simply by taking a selfie of you, for example, using Goya beans in your kitchen. Amazing times we live in.

It's all about what aspects of this "story" people want to fixate on. What's weirder -- that a thirsty celeb-adjacent milf entered an arena where such characteristics tend to be CV boosters, and leveraged a mythical aspiration as an extra foot in the door; or that there are upper-middle-class women out there for whom such a person is considered to be "influential" in some respect? How dare this person, whom I don't know but from whom I take merchandising cues, present herself as something she is not! Why, I never! (Well, maybe you should.)

Even funnier is that she has been playing this character for years, and only now some enterprising celebrojourno decided to do about thirty seconds of digging through public records to figure it all out. Well done, yournamalistas. Good thing there's nothing else worth getting to the bottom of these days.

If nothing else, her and her parents' love for Spanish culture appears to be sincere. Maybe she really wishes she were Spanish, rather than from privileged Boston Brahmin stock. Big deal. Look at the extended tedium of the Kardashian-Jenner tribe, and their exhausting, constant leg-humping to pimp and peddle and schmooze every goddamn product straight up 'murka's collective asshole. Look at Kanye's tiresome attempts to pretend to be a genius, or even pass as a functional human being.

This is going to sound completely sexist and lookist and chauvinistic, and I don't give a good goddamn -- anyone who can squeeze out five kids in seven years and still look like that can pretend to be whatever the hell she wants, and good luck with it.