Melissa Joan Hart Catches Heat for Tone-Deaf Griping About Hurricane Maria

ByElizabeth Licata

Life is full of little annoyances, and whinging about those can be fun. It is generally considered extremely bad form, however, to moan about something that is a petty annoyance to you, but a life-changing disaster for someone else. If 20 people die in a terrible train accident, don’t complain about how it affects your commute. That’s a lesson Melissa Joan Hart should have kept in mind this week, before she complained on Instagram that it was “such a bummer” that Hurricane Maria had ruined her vacation.

According to US Weekly, Hart deleted the Instagram not long after she posted it. People who saw it immediately started pointing out that it was a pretty tasteless thing to say.

Hart was reportedly about to go on a fun family vacation, but the weather made that impossible. She received a text alert on her phone that said: “Maria has officially made landfall on the Caribbean island of Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane.”

That’s horrible news. People are going to lose everything. Puerto Rico is entirely without power, possibly for months. So far, at least nine people have been killed by Hurricane Maria. Seven deaths were reported in Dominica, and two in Guadalupe. There will almost certainly be more.

Then, Hart took a screenshot of the weather alert about the hurricane in Dominica and posted it to Instagram.

“And just like that, our family vacation is canceled,” Hart wrote alongside the screenshot. “Such a bummer but we plan to hit the @nickresortpuntacana resort another time this year.”

https://twitter.com/peb1225/status/910280129762385920

Oh dear, that is not a good look.

It’s OK to feel disappointed or bummed at having a vacation canceled. But it’s tacky to complain about a situation like this to 625,000 people on Instagram.

People were quick to point out that Hart’s post was insensitive.

“Yea- you should take this down. Unless of course you want everyone to despise you,” one commenter wrote.

https://twitter.com/ou812usa/status/910612488282005504

https://twitter.com/joeinthejeep/status/910608591584931840

Hart took down the post and later added three Instagram posts about her thoughts and prayers being with hurricane victims in Puerto Rico and earthquake victims in Mexico. It seems like she realized how bad it looked to be complaining about not getting to go to a Nickelodeon resort when people were dying.

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(Image: Wikimedia Commons / Joella Marano)

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