The idea of a couple of Hollywood types getting upset over something stupid isn't shocking. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones got angry because Scott Jennings went to town on their son Dylan, because he seemed to think he could play with the big boys.
But what they need to do is lay off Jennings and listen to Meghan McCain.
While McCain is far from the most staunch conservative voice out there, she's a lot more self-aware than a lot of people give her credit for. She sat down with Jennings on her podcast recently and said some things the Hollywood elite need to listen to.
Earlier in the interview, McCain said she thought Dylan 'should not have been booked on a show with you because it's like bringing a knife to a gun fight, quite frankly.'
She then went on to say that the entire segment on November 10 made her feel 'so uncomfortable,' as she referred to herself as the 'queen of nepo babies' thanks to her father, the late Senator John McCain.
'I have been put on TV way too early as a nepo baby,' she said. 'And of all people, Paul Begala schooled the living s**t out of me the one and only time I went on Bill Maher,' McCain said of a former adviser to then-president Bill Clinton.
'I have been Dylan Douglas,' McCain continued. 'But what didn't happen is my parents didn't have a meltdown. My dad was like, "Buck up and move on."'
I was never much of a John McCain fan, but he had the right of things there, and Dylan's folks would do well to have taken the exact same approach.
Look, politics is damn near a blood sport. If you're going to enter the arena, you've got to be prepared for people not to be very nice to you. Yes, that includes on CNN, where Jennings was once again outnumbered and still handed Dylan his butt.
"Dylan's never been spoken to like that in his entire life," one unidentified source noted, and that seems pretty obvious. Yet Dylan Douglas supposedly hosts a political radio program, which tells you a lot.
See, Meghan McCain has been at this game for quite a while. She's maintained relevance and done her own thing quite a bit. Yes, she's a "nepo baby" due to who her father is, but she's worked and dealt with things as they came to her. She even went into the lion's den to be the token conservative on The View, which means she learned she needed a tough skin in this business.
Dylan Douglas may or may not have that, but his parents clearly have a problem with him taking the knocks everyone else is expected to take.
For what it's worth, Jennings probably nailed a lot of what happened when he said this:
When he then saw that Zeta-Jones and Michael were livid about the segment, Jennings reiterated that he was 'surprised.'
'But I think that what happens with some of these folks is that they exist in a very tight little bubble. They never really talk to Republicans or conservatives. They don't really get outside of their bubbles, where people tell them how smart and good-looking they are.
'And then they wind up on television with someone of a different persuasion, and it's surprising to them.'
He's probably right.
McCain grew up in a family where that was part of the norm. She entered the family business where that was business as usual, so her father wasn't shocked when she got her butt kicked.
Michael and Catherine, though, are actors and live in a world where everything is fake, then find out that the rest of the universe doesn't want to kiss their butts because of who they are and are shocked by the whole thing.
Jennings hopes Dylan comes back. Whether he does or doesn't, though, let's hope his folks grow up and recognize that politics is played by big-boy rules, not Hollywood's.
