User blog comment:Churchpants/Nick Being Unfair to Jennette?/@comment-3221718-20110426172859/@comment-3419321-20110426182134

You know, this reminds me of a scene from an episode of Home Improvement. (I never liked that show, by the way, but it's a useful comparison in this case.)

Tim was telling one of his sons about a time when he was in high school, and the school was planning to shut down a shop class that he really liked. Tim had tried to organize people to protest the decision, and keep the shop class going.

He told his son that his passion to save the shop class actually wound up hurting his attempt to do so.

In arguing to keep the shop class going, Tim had pointed out how much money the music department was getting, and questioned whether the school so many music programs, making a number of sarcastic and derisive remarks about it in the progress.

Tim explained to his son that there were a lot of people in the school who would have sympathized with and supported him if they had understood exactly what he was trying to do.

"But, instead, I wound up making those people really angry at me, because they thought I was trying to destroy the music department. When the truth was, I never wanted to hurt the music department. I just wanted to save the shop class. You see, my passion got in the way of my vision."

The root of this, I think, was when people tried to support Jennette by arguing how much better she is than Miranda.

I have seen statements (on this blog, to some extent, and elsewhere as well) that have stated or implied that Miranda is a terrible singer, that she's a mediocre actress, that she's unattractive, that she isn't funny, that she's nothing special, that she doesn't deserve the money and attention she's getting, etc., etc.

More than once, I've seen people imply that Jennette is the only person who makes iCarly funny at all. Other times, people have actually blamed Miranda for the way Jennette is treated, or, if they acknowledge that she isn't at fault, they still sometimes act as if people are justified in being angry at Miranda anyway.

Unfortunately, some folks who really like Miranda got upset or angry about all of this, and responded in kind ... and I've seen it get pretty vicious at times from both sides.

The source of the problem, in my view, was that some folks were so passionate to defend Jennette that they didn't realize how hurtful their remarks were toward Miranda.

I don't believe that the majority of these people really wanted to hurt or insult Miranda. They just wanted to defend Jennette. But, to borrow a line from Tim Taylor, their passion has gotten in the way of their vision.

Of course, the same can be said for those who were trying to defend Miranda.

I just wish everybody would just stop. And let me be clear, I am not just talking about this blog, but people in general who are arguing about Miranda and Jennette.

We don't need to attack one of those two actresses in order to support the other, and ... although I don't know them, I would like to give Miranda and Jennette the benefit of the doubt enough to assume that us criticizing them and fighting with each other isn't what they would want.