Let me preface the following screed — and I warn you that it might get screedy — by declaring that I have been a Janet Jackson fan ever since she first appeared as brave, sad, little Penny on “Good Times” when I was 6. Since then, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee has been a music and style inspiration for me. I have seen her in concert. “Together Again” was one of my go-to karaoke songs. Just recently, I was pricing replicas of the military-style jacket she wore in the 1989 “Rhythm Nation” video for a potential Halloween costume.

But my decades-long admiration of Jackson does not mean I’m not going to notice and acknowledge when I think she’s done something dumb, which she recently did when repeating misinformation about Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial background.

I wish more members of various fandoms would do the same, because let’s be honest: Whether it’s Janet, Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, these celebrities don’t know you, and you don’t owe them your dignity and time protecting them from messes they jumped into with expensively shod feet. Many of my faves have done deeply stupid and, in some cases, actionable things, but the price of my fandom doesn’t include screaming at strangers on social media pretending they didn’t.

Jackson was quoted in The Guardian this past weekend as saying she’d “heard” it was discovered that Harris’ father was white, making Harris not Black. That’s absolutely, positively not true, but Jackson said it, out loud, in an interview. The general response was a collective, “Girl, what?”

Yet there was a large effort online to explain why a woman whose own career suffered because of public opinion would be so cavalier about spreading easily disprovable nonsense. So much so that a filmmaker who’d worked with Jackson literally issued an unapproved apology on her behalf, as if to save her from herself. (Her actual reps confirmed she hadn’t apologized at all, and a real mea culpa has not followed.)

Fans as prominent as Whoopi Goldberg have asked for “grace for the girl,” following the current culture of parasocial relationships between the famous and the ordinary people who love them. They probably love you for your devotion as a collective and think of you fondly, but they aren’t going to go on X and Instagram and talk out of the sides of their mouths in your stead at risk of their careers and actual real-life relationships.

The truth of the matter is that Janet Jackson is not a girl. She is an entire adult — a 58-year-old woman who has been famous for most of her life and has had her own scandals to combat. She chose to inject herself into a conversation, which is her right as an American, but it was commentary nobody was waiting for.

I get the impulse to want the celebrities you adore not to be knuckleheads. I was (temporarily) relieved when Jackson’s alleged apology was released, though I was admittedly suspicious that it hadn’t come directly from the singer, who is currently grieving the death of her brother Tito, along with the rest of the Jackson family. I also admit to wondering why a woman with many multiracial kids in her family, including her own, would be seemingly confused by the concept.

I’m sure my age also factors in to my reluctance to act a fool on behalf a person whose career I’ve supported yet could not pick me out of a lineup. I was not raised in the age of social media, where I could post evidence of my devotion on a virtual message board of sorts that my fave might not only see but respond to. There was an obvious wall erected between us. (Admittedly, there have always been slavishly committed Duran Duran and Prince fans my age who were a little too invested in those people’s dating histories, because believe me, Judith from Cleveland, you were never their next choice once they dumped that supermodel.)

I’ve had lots of practice in being a big fan of people who made huge mistakes. Actor Chris Noth was one of my favorite cast members on “Law and Order,” a show I love so much that its theme song is my ringtone, and was the charming bad boyfriend Mr. Big on “Sex and the City,” a series with which I was once obsessed.

But when credible sexual assault allegations surfaced against him, my fandom stopped. Ditto me skipping over the songs of singer Brian McKnight, whose work I admired but who has waged a bizarre war against the adult children from his first marriage, publicly calling them “a product of sin.” I can’t defend that, no matter how brilliant “Back at One” is.

I even temporarily stopped listening to the music of Bryan Adams, my undisputed teenage celebrity boyfriend, when the vegan Canadian superstar made COVID-related comments in 2020 about Chinese wet markets that many, including me, interpreted as wildly racist and xenophobic. Do you know how many of my running playlists “Summer of ’69″ is on? Still, I was able to admit two things at once: I enjoyed this person’s creative output, and they screwed up.

Pop culture is a wonderful thing to embrace. I’ve covered it for most of my career, and the pull artists have on us is rooted in emotion. I just want us to remember that we are closer in proximity and circumstance with the people we’re fighting online than these wealthy people whose careers would not exist without us. As it’s been said, Janet Jackson isn’t going to read your comments on Instagram. But your friends and family, including those who are multiracial, will. And their side eye will be more consequential than Jackson’s.

Because she isn’t going to give you side eye. She’d have to know you to do that.