Joe Jonas Has A Point But Is It The Right One?

It’s been a big weekend for Game of Thrones and ex-Jonas Brothers stans. News of Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas’ divorce and the subsequent PR spin against Sophie Turner as an ‘absentee’ mother and domestic partner quickly backfired as we all rallied behind the Queen in the North and declared ‘not in the year of Barbie’.

The finger pointing started as soon as the divorce was announced, with TMZ‘s sources sharing Sophie’s apparent penchant for “partying”— despite video evidence of her homebody status (see below) — as a reason for the split. TMZ‘s sources also mentioned Joe having to take care of his children “pretty much all of the time” (as a father probably should).

Rather than exposing Turner’s role in the divorce (many reckon this was the intention behind the sources’ comments), the whole sources thing blew up — and not in Jonas’ favour. Yep, much of the internet instead responded with complete and utter skepticism of the anti-Sophie stories, questioning the PR strategy behind the leaks, and where they came from. I’m pleased to report that any and all attempts to paint Sophie in a negative light using boomer PR tactics straight from the early 2000s were flops, and thank god. But I still have thoughts.

Now Jonas himself has taken to the stage, literally, to clear the air. “It’s been a tough week. I just wanna say: look, if you don’t hear it from these lips, don’t believe it. Okay?” he announced to the crowd at the Jonas Brothers’ show in LA.

“It’s been a tough week,” Joe Jonas says at the Jonas Brothers’ Dodger Stadium Show. “I just wanna say, look: if you don’t hear it from these lips, don’t believe it. Okay? Thank you everyone for your love and support. Me and my family love you guys.” pic.twitter.com/6BW4ugrQ5N

— Katcy Stephan (@katcystephan) September 10, 2023

Okay, so Joe is asking fans to ignore comments about his divorce that haven’t come from him directly. But isn’t that kinda irrelevant? This whole saga hinges on the fact that none of us do believe the comments, anyway — whether they came from Joe’s lips or from “sources with direct knowledge” of the situation.

If it is Joe’s PR team at the heart of the anti-Sophie Turner spin as many believe, they’re going to have to do better than that. And if all the negativity actually didn’t come from him at all, then the point still stands: are we still doing this in 2023? Regardless of where the information came from, it’s still trying to shift the blame onto Sophie with the age-old ‘bad mother’ trope. Jonas had an opportunity to say something, but I fear he might have missed the point.