In an oddball mix up, Married to the Mob CEO Leah McSweeney is feuding with Saturday Night Live cast member, Michael Che. The dust up began on McSweeney’s podcast Improper Etiquette, and has spilled over to Page Six and Twitter.
Blogger Luvvie Ajai has also jumped in, accusing McSweeney of behaving as though she’s entitled to Che’s attention because she’s white.
Launched in 2016 by McSweeney and The Breakfast Club co-host Laura Stylez, Improper Etiquette is in part themed on the hosts detailing the trials and travails of single women attempting to date in New York.
On the episode that went live on Tuesday, McSweeney explained, “I met a comedian, I’ve dealt with a few comedians. They are the worst, I don’t even know why I entertain this but I have to say, Michael Che is so arrogant and so rude and disrespectful that I cannot even believe that someone…You’re like a D-list celebrity to me, whatever, that’s why I don’t even care that I’m saying his name. I’m not like blowing up Jay-Z’s spot.”
She went on to add, “Why are you on a dating app if you hate women? Literally, you’ve never met me and you’re texting me like I’m a stupid bitch, texting me and being mad rude. He kept just texting me, going, ‘I’m fat. Does that turn you on?’ And I’m like, ‘You’re fat? I think I’ve seen you and you’re not fat, okay.'”
McSweeney, who founded streetwear brand Married to the Mob in 2004, then went in on Che’s outfit acumen. “You’re just a f*cking dork wearing Air Force 1s at the end of the day. Like, cause you’re sitting up there writing your jokes on a little card, trying to figure out what the fuck.
“His Netflix special [Michael Che Matters] is actually funny, arrogance is ignorance to me. You don’t know me, you don’t know nothing about me, you don’t know we have mad friends in common and like, you’re gonna treat me like some stupid bitch? Like fuck you. I just can’t deal.”
Che didn’t respond directly to McSweeney, but today Page Six published 16 screen captures of text exchanges between McSweeney and Che dated from December through January when Che let McSweeney know he wasn’t interested in meeting in person.
While Che didn’t say whether he sent the Page Six the screen grabs, he was quoted in the article. “For the record I am proud of my curves,” said Che, a reference to text exchanges in which Che referred to himself as fat. It’s not clear what other communication took place between McSweeney and Che outside of what was provided to Page Six.
In response to the story, McSweeney tweeted, “Michael che a little bitch for planting a story cus he’s mad. Take a joke dude. Ugh he’s worse then I thought!!”
The story gained further steam when blogger and author Luvvie Ajayi inserted herself into the story with a series of tweets, in which she accused McSweeney of believing Che owes her his attention because she is white. “I just have a problem w/ her attitude of being ENTITLED to this man’s interest. So he’s not that into you. AND? He doesn’t owe you interest,” she wrote.
Ajayi went on to compare McSweeney’s texts to the ones Lena Dunham wrote when she felt rebuffed by Odell Beckham at the Met Gala in September last year. “How can we forget when Lena Dunham created the story of Odell Beckham hating her just b/c he didn’t try to holler at her at a gala?” wrote Ajayi, who added, “Then you add the context of history, of the passive aggression of white women getting Black men killed. AND I AM NOT HERE FOR LEAH.”
McSweeney responded to Ajayi’s tweets by stating race was not an issue. “This insane woman literally turned a gossip bit into a race war of some sort. Gd help us with people like this in the world,” wrote McSweeney.
In an exchange with Jezebel, McSweeney responded to feedback that her podcast comments on Che could at the least be construed as lashing out in response to being rejected by Che.
McSweeney noted, “That’s a very one-dimensional way of looking at it. Yeah, it seems like the obvious but it wasn’t about the rejection at all. The way he went about it is crazy. You can say, ‘I’m not interested.'”
“Why are you even texting me back then? Why did you even give me your phone number? You told me to hit you up. I didn’t give you my phone number. I don’t even feel rejected by him. That’s like when you’re in a relationship and something goes wrong. That’s rejection. To me, not even knowing someone… I’m just like, ‘Dude, why are we texting? Are we going to meet up or not?'”
Given this was a simple bit on a podcast, it seems pretty incredible that Che felt the need to reach out to Page Six to retaliate. As well, without any context other than screen grabs provided by Che, it also seems Ayaji is jumping to a lot of conclusions about both Che and McSweeney’s character based entirely on their skin colors.
In reality, there is a ton that goes down in relationships between people of different colors that exists independently of one’s identity.
Sidenote: We don’t know anything about Che, but we do know McSweeney is a rock solid individual and accusations of her behaving like a privileged white girl are point, blank, period b.s.
We have reached out to Che for comment and are also seeking a picture of him wearing Air Force 1s to evaluate whether he is indeed a dork in Air Force 1s.
