Does Drake Bell Deserve The Lashing Over His Tweet About Caitlyn Jenner? You Judge, Based On His Reason
Drake Bell, a child star in his younger days, is bearing the brunt of his rather controversial tweet about Caitlyn Jenner. However, it would be a little difficult to accuse him of “Transphobia” once you consider his reasoning.
While the internet is abuzz about 65-year old Caitlyn Jenner’s positive influence on the perception of the LGBT community after openly embracing her inner sexuality, former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell is catching fire for his tweet, “Sorry…still calling you Bruce.”
Caitlyn Jenner was assigned a male gender at birth, but she was no ordinary man. A track and field athlete, Bruce won a gold medal and set a world record in the 1976 Summer Olympics that was unbeaten for four years. Apart from sports, Bruce was also a popular TV figure, who was married to Kris Kardashian and starred on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
When Bruce announced that he no longer wanted to live as a man and would soon transition into a woman, he received an overwhelming response across the world for openly embracing his inner gender identity and displaying the courage to do something about it, even with the glaring eyes of the orthodox society being upon him.
Then Vanity Fair released its new cover featuring Jenner and the headline “Call me Caitlyn,” and the online world exploded. While thousands of fans seemed to pour out their affection, millions joined Caitlyn on her Twitter account, breaking the record for accumulating a million followers in the least amount of time. #CallMeCaitlyn immediately began trending.
Another Jenner world record, and at 65? Who'da thought! Humbled & honored to have reached 1M followers in 4 hrs. Thank you for your support.
— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015
Though everyone was gushing over Caitlyn, Drake Bell tweeted,
Some of the tweets that flew right after Drake’s largely acknowledged insensitive comment were:
Even when Drake deleted his tweet, the internet pounced on the seemingly offensive comment and continued lashing out on Drake:
Drake later replaced the tweet with multiple seemingly apologetic and encouraging tweets:
I’m not dissing him! I just don’t want to forget his legacy! He is the greatest athlete of all time! Chill out!
— Drake Bell (@DrakeBell) June 1, 2015
The last tweet seemed to justify why he still wanted to call the stunning 65-year old Caitlyn as Bruce. Being a great athlete means that her name should be remembered just the way it was. However, Bruce has willingly become Caitlyn and has openly wished that she be referred to and remembered as a woman and not as a man.
Interestingly, this is isn’t the first time Drake Bell has locked-horns with the Tweerati. Last year he got into a feud with Justin Bieber and bore the brunt of his fans. Incidentally, Drake has a history of trolling Justin, but could his tweet about Caitlyn be an innocent attempt at preserving the woman’s former legacy?
[Image Credit | Jonathan Leibson / Getty Images]
