This weekend, the months of conversation about Lady Gaga's debut movie will result in what's promising to be a successful box office debut of A Star Is Born. Ahead of its opening weekend, Gaga stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert not to just plug her movie, but to deliver a powerful and moving statement about Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her brave accusations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. "What I have seen on the news with this debate of Kavanaugh versus Dr. Ford, it’s one of the most upsetting things I’ve ever witnessed," Gaga began.
I am a sexual assault survivor. 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 also know this woman is smart because she’s a psychologist – she’s no dummy. If someone is assaulted or experiences trauma, there’s science and scientific proof – it’s biology – that people change. The brain changes. What it does is it takes the trauma and it puts it in a box and it files it away and shuts it so that we can survive the pain. And 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.
Gaga is right of course. And this is nothing new for an artist who has long advocated for sexual assault survivors and the LGBTQ community. But, she could have easily began her long Oscar campaign by using her valuable time on Colbert to talk about herself. Instead, she used her platform—and her status as one of the biggest stars in the world—to defend Dr. Ford. This video has already been viewed 60,000 times as of Friday morning, the same morning the Senate will be voting on Kavanaugh.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
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