Kelly Ripa has found herself in hot water after jokingly claiming that her son, Michael Consuelos, is living in “extreme poverty,” and she’s now clapping back at the “fake outrage” over the off-the-cuff remark, USA Today reports.
On Wednesday The Inquisitr reported that Ripa had opened up about what’s been going on in the life of her 22-year-old son, now that he’s graduated from college, gotten his own place, and sprung the nest. Though he grew up in wealth and privilege, Michael is now just a regular working guy, living in an apartment in Brooklyn and, like all young people, oft finding himself without two fives to rub together.
Kelly joked that Michael was living in “extreme poverty.”
“I think he loves the freedom. He hates paying his own rent and he’s chronically poor. I don’t think he ever really experienced extreme poverty like now.”
Of course, from context it was obvious that Kelly was being hyperbolic and that he was not living in extreme poverty; he’s just broke. She even joked that he’s been calling his parents up every now and then wondering if that Halloween check from grandma, which usually is worth about $20, has come in.
Unfortunately, not everyone got the joke.
Some, for example, accused the Live With Kelly And Ryan host of making light of actual extreme poverty.
“Poverty is not something anybody wants to experience. It is not a ‘tool’ to build character,” wrote one Twitter user.
Another noted that he or she had lived on the streets before and knew firsthand what is meant by “extreme poverty.”
Other users took Ripa to task for not helping her son out when she can clearly afford to.
“[My daughter is] working three jobs to pay for college and an apartment. Sucks when parents can’t help so much eh? I feel your pain,” he or she wrote.
Ripa took to Instagram to address the controversy. She accused her haters of generating “fake outrage” over the whole thing, or of writing their comments having only read an attention-grabbing headline and not the whole story.
What’s more, she noted that neither she nor her husband, Mark Consuelos, grew up having anything handed to them and that they wanted their children to experience being adults for themselves.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday night, she repeated, almost word-for-word, what she had previously said about Michael being “chronically poor” and living in “extreme poverty,” even as the controversy around her words was still playing out on social media. She also noted that her son lives in Bushwick, where, according to Apartments.com , the rent on a one-bedroom apartment can easily exceed $2,000 per month.