A few years ago, the Alicia Keys-Swizz Beatz situation began blowing up all over the urban blogs, but for the most part, “legit” mainstream media outlets and blogs ignored the sketchiness of Swizz’s multiple baby-mamas, his deadbeat-daddying, the shadiness in which he and Alicia started up while he was still married. It was a mess, and it got “white-washed” rather effectively. I bring this up because while I’ve written one story about the current Gabrielle Union-Dwyane Wade situation, for the most part it’s been a repeat of the Keys-Beatz thing. Now, I’m not saying Dwyane Wade is as shady as Swizz – he’s not! Hardly anyone is as shady as Swizz. I’m just saying that for the most part, the mainstream media is taking Gabrielle Union’s side and looking the other way as urban blogs report story after story about all of the drama with Dwyane Wade’s ex-wife.
The basic gist of the “scandal”/scandal: Miami Heat baller Dwayne Wade was married to Siohvaughn Funches, and they have two kids together. Circa 2009, Dwyane met Gabby, split up with his wife and began shacking up with Gabby. The order of these events is up for debate – Funches claims that Gabby “homewrecked” her marriage, and Funches filed a lawsuit against Union too (although the case was dismissed). Gabby maintains that she and Wade didn’t start up until he and Funches were already over and legally separated. Pro-Gabby sources also make Funches out to be some kind of nutjob, and I believe that Dwyane has primary custody of the two kids too. Pro-Funches sources still claim – to this day – that there was definitely an overlap between the marriage and Wade’s relationship with Gabby. So… I still don’t really know. In the Union interview I covered back in April, she said, “I think people mistook me taking the high road as an admission of guilt. Dwyane and I made a decision very early to not react to the negativity. And I kept feeling like the truth would come out. The problem is, when it did, nobody cared. What I discovered on social media is that people don’t read the entire story.”
Well, Gabby has a new little interview with T.T. Torrez – and my radar is still up about Gabby. I’ve always liked her and I’ve always thought she was beautiful, but I wonder if she’s handling this on-going situation the right way? When Gabby gets the question about Siohvaughn right off the bat, Gabby kind of goes off:
Gabby says, in part, “It’s hard. Aside from loving him, I want to protect myself. I’ve built my life, I built my own brand, I built my career, and my career took a hit from that madness. Because some people refuse to see the truth even when it’s presented to them time and time and time again. So I love him, but at some point it’s about self-preservation, and I needed to protect myself. I pay for family. I pay for my mama and my daddy and my sisters and her family. D doesn’t write those checks, I do. So when something is starting to affect how I make a living? No, no, no, baby. Let me figure out a way of not only protecting our home, Dwayne and I have with the kids, you have to put them first…and then I have to take care of my family… Fortunately, by taking the high road…and not engaging in the back-and-forth craziness, I was able to do both.”
Part of me thinks that Gabby should get credit for not going full-blown LeAnn Rimes about the situation, you know? Because this could be so, so much worse. Instead, I’m left vaguely unsettled, like there’s some wording or phrase that rubs me the wrong way but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think one of the things that bugs me is that Gabby seems to really have an inflated sense of her own career, her own “brand”, you know? She acts like she’s Angelina Jolie, like she’s one of the top stars out there and… she’s really not. She works consistently and all that, but she’s not a superstar or an A-list actress or anything. In previous interviews too, she was talking about how she’s so super-famous, it was so “easy to track” where she was and what she was doing, and that was somehow “proof” that she didn’t have an affair with Wade. Ugh.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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