As I was scrolling through my Twitter feed the other day, I could not help but see a plethora of tweets about Malia Obama and how one of her college “friends” posted a video on the internet of her smoking weed.
The majority of the tweets that I saw were saying exactly what I was thinking: why do we care so much about what Malia Obama/celebrity children do and, why can’t we just let them be and live in peace? First of all, Malia needs to get new friends ASAP because the ones that are posting are fake for even considering posting a video of her without her permission. Secondly, why are people getting so mad over the fact that a college student is smoking weed? I think a lot of us who have been in college for quite some time can all attest that college is the time for experimenting and finding out what you like and do not like. When I saw that Malia Obama was trending on Twitter, I clicked on the link just to see what other people (mostly Conservatives) were saying about the former president’s daughter. A number of them were surprised but not shocked that Barack Obama’s daughter smokes (seeing that he used to smoke back in the day as well).
What really got me mad was that they were so up in arms over Malia smoking that they were not focused on what is really happening in our world with our former president. Today when I looked through my Twitter feed, I saw that many people, including Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton, were defending Malia on her smoking video, stating a fact that we all should know: she is a private citizen like the rest of us and deserves privacy. What cracks me up so much about the hysteria over a college girl smoking a blunt is that with any celebrity child, leaked videos and pictures will continue to come out just to make a fuss when there should be none in the first place.
When Bill Clinton was in the White House, and before there was any scandal to rock the public, the media had a field day with picking on his daughter, Chelsea Clinton. When George W. Bush was in office, news outlets everywhere were talking about the Bush daughters coke habits. And with former President Trump, we have seen that the Twitter universe has picked on and made fun of Barron Trump, especially after he started crying when he thought that Kathy Griffith chopped off his dads’ head.
In all of these cases, I still ask the same question: Why do we care so much about what celebrity children, especially those of the president, do in their spare time? Why are Conservatives on Twitter taking numerous jabs at Malia Obama for just being a young adult? When you step back and look at it, it’s because people have nothing better to do than to start fights over the internet. They have nothing better to do than to rant away, hoping that someone pays attention to them and grabs the bait.
As good citizens, all we can do is let Malia Obama and the countless other celebrity kids live their lives. We are not their parents and should not be bantering them for what they do behind closed doors. And Malia, please get new friends. Preferably ones who won’t sell videos of you to the internet.