Caleb McLaughlin, one of the co-stars of the Netflix hit Stranger Things, is attacking the show’s fans as racist. He’s certain that the fact he’s not as popular as his white co-stars is due to the fact he’s black.
“My very first Comic Con, some people didn’t stand in my line because I was Black. Some people told me, like, ‘Oh, I didn’t wanna be in line because you were mean to Eleven,'” he said at a Heroes Comic Con Belgium event Sunday. “Even now, some people don’t follow me or don’t support me because I’m Black.”
“Why [do I have] the least amount of [social media] followers? I’m on the same show as everybody from Season 1,” he added. His parents told him that “the sad truth” is that he’s less popular because he’s the “black child on the show.”
According to far-left BuzzFeed, Caleb, who is 20 years old now, has 15.4 million Instagram followers. His co-stars’ follower count is higher, and in some cases, much higher: Gaten Matarazzo has 18.7 million followers, Finn Wolfhard has 26.3 million, Noah Schnapp has 27.6 million, and Millie Bobby Brown has 58.5 million.
So the only explanation for this discrepancy is that Stranger Things fans are ugly racists who hate black people.
What a terrible and ignorant thing to say about your own fans! Caleb is obviously plagued with parents who are consumed with race, as opposed to common sense and access to Google. Because if anyone in the McLaughlin family had access to Google, they would see that some of the most popular people on Instagram are not white. Dwayne Johnson (338 million), Selena Gomez (347 million), Beyonce (274 million), Nicki Minaj (201 million), Kevin Hart (152 million)… I could go on and on…
Nowadays, it’s not only stupid to cry racism about anything in America; it is especially stupid to cry racism if you are in the entertainment business.
Some 40 years ago — 40 years! — when I was growing up, the pop culture landscape looked like this…
Top movie star: Eddie Murphy
Top comedian: Richard Pryor
Top daytime TV star: Oprah Winfrey
Top nighttime TV star: Bill Cosby
Top music stars: Michael Jackson, Prince, Tina Truner
Don’t even get me started on sports…
I grew up in rural Wisconsin, and if my high school friends had a sister, you could bet a poster of a black person was pinned to her wall. And no one thought a thing of it.
Granted, I don’t watch Stranger Things. Still, my educated guess is that Caleb lacks behind the others in fan passion because he lacks the charisma of his co-stars, or his character is not as beloved, or the writing for his character doesn’t pop as much as it does for the others.
Or, maybe, just maybe, the fans sense his disgusting contempt for them?
A healthy culture doesn’t create disgusting, ungrateful little brats like Caleb McLaughlin. He’s young, famous, rich, healthy, and … crybabying… Man alive. At 20 years old, he’s as privileged as any person in the history of mankind, and he’s … crybabying.
I’ll tell you something else a healthy culture doesn’t do… It doesn’t enable this kind of behavior and ingratitude and slander.
Unfortunately, we do not live in a healthy culture.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.