A-Rod and J.Lo potentially making a bid for the New York Mets is, on the surface, a glamorous and hopeful idea, a forward-looking act of positivity in these calamitous times.
It would be even more so if these two hadn’t been using this quarantine to constantly flaunt their wealth and privilege — that is, when they’re not breaking quarantine.
Step aside, Chris Cuomo. This week, J-Rod have become the epitome of a coronavirus theme I keep returning to: the newly visible chasm between the haves and have-nots, celebrities and civilians, the selfish and the selfless. We’re only going on Week Six, but a shocking number of the rich and famous still don’t understand — or worse, don’t care — that the bulk of Americans are experiencing deep pain and sudden poverty.
Jennifer Lopez grew up working-class in The Bronx. She’s not the best singer, dancer or actress, but her extraordinary work ethic propelled her further than she’d otherwise go. Alex Rodriguez was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs. He has rebuilt himself from scandal-scarred lesser to Derek Jeter (and his Jeter complex may be a factor in this Mets bid) into a legitimate entrepreneur and philanthropist with a special interest in the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which saved him as a child.
Both of them know what it’s like to have no safety net, to worry about relying on others for help. It’s a situation 26 million newly jobless Americans find themselves in, and it’s a fate that awaits millions more.
Yet these two, who really should know better, think now is the time to splatter their glamorous life all over social media and underscore how special they are.
While the rest of us shelter in place, with all this newly free time to worry about how to pay bills or rent or where the next meal’s coming from, A-Rod and J.Lo — two world-class athletes who surely have a Peloton between them, not to mention personalized workouts designed by personal trainers — just had to have a public Miami gym open for them in early April, after Florida’s governor had issued a statewide stay-at-home order.
“The gym is not open,” read a sign posted to the gym’s door. The photograph Page Six ran? J.Lo and A-Rod opening that door on their way out.
Not since the Varsity Blues scandal have we been so bracingly reminded that there really are one set of rules for the 1 percent and another for everybody else. At least that scandal saw jail time for its offenders. Why aren’t J-Rod facing, at the very least, fines for so brazenly violating these rules?
Six days after their shameless gym excursion, the couple posted a video to Facebook.
“Hey everyone — we want you to please stay home to stop the spread of COVID-19,” says Jenny from the Block, wearing her best expression of knitted-brow faux-concern. “You know, we’re staying home to protect those on the front lines — the doctors, the nurses and technicians that are working so hard to save lives at our hospitals.”
They really would do better to not tell the rest of us what to do, especially since J.Lo and A-Rod were photographed throwing a huge outdoor birthday party for his daughter Ella, lots of people milling close together, some not wearing masks, J.Lo stripping to her bra for the cameras, just last Tuesday.
Guess the attention Lopez got for singing Barbra Streisand’s “People” — from her gorgeously illuminated backyard, while wearing a $225 Coach sweatshirt emblazoned with Streisand’s face — wasn’t enough.
Oh, excuse me — of course it wasn’t, because two days later Lopez gave an interview about the time Streisand approached her at an Oscar party and asked to see the $1.2 million pink diamond ring given to her by then-fiancé Ben Affleck.
That ring, Lopez said, was “whatever.”
J.Lo and A-Rod may be masters of re-invention, but these past few weeks have unmasked them as the same old malignant narcissists they ever were: Rodriguez, the man who gave both his daughters the middle name “Alexander,” who posed kissing himself in the mirror for Details magazine, who reportedly had not one but two commissioned portraits of himself as a centaur.
And Lopez, who took up so much oxygen last year between her Oscar campaign for “Hustlers,” her Super Bowl half-time show and reminding us she still looks amazing enough to wear an updated version of that green Versace dress, is still the same tone-deaf diva who demanded an all-white trailer — including roses, Diptyque candles and room-temperature Evian water — while recording a benefit song for the victims of 9/11.
“You know,” Lopez said as she introduced her rendition of “People” last week, “there’s one thing that I realize more than anything this whole time, and it’s how much we all need each other.”
Here’s a COVID-19-related epiphany: Turns out J.Lo and A-Rod need us more than we ever needed them.