Bradley Cooper's Ex, Jennifer Esposito, Blasts Critics of Her Response to His Lady Gaga Oscars Duet

Former "NCIS" star Jennifer Esposito may have thought David Spade's joke about the chemistry on display between Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga at the Oscars was funny, but she's not laughing anymore.

After being slammed, dragged and insulted by too many people on social media for what amounted to a two letter response on Sunday, Esposito had finally had enough, launching a much longer counter-attack of her own via an Instagram video on Tuesday.

"So many people have been commenting about something that I said was which was like this, ready? 'Ha!' That was it," Esposito said, emphasizing how ridiculous she believes the response has been. "I'm allowed to think something is funny."

"We have so many things going on in our country and our world that need attention and I wish that you'd spend even a minute of this insanity of nonsense on things that are really important," she said, before turning her attention to the women she's encountered who've made their attacks personal.

"For other females to come after another female for saying 'Ha' and how I'm an old lady and I need to feel relevant," she said. "I didn't watch the Oscars, I don't know what went on, I don't care what went on."

What she missed was Gaga and Cooper performing their Oscar-winning duet "Shallow" from their film "A Star Is Born." The performance was filled with the same kind of chemistry they displayed in the film, but it's led to all kinds of speculation about the two of them being an item now, despite the fact Cooper is very much with Irina Shayk, his baby mama who was also in the front row.

All she saw was Spade's joke, which came in the form of a caption to a pic of that performance Sunday night. He wrote, "Is there any chance these 2 aren't f-----g?" And she wrote, "Ha!"

"I commented on something that I thought was funny and somebody being bold enough to say what he said. And I laughed," Esposito explained. "And to find that people are making judgments calls about me or them -- or the people that the comment was about -- it's really psychotic."

She then took serious issue with Page Six for pulling an old quote from her 2014 memoir where she called an ex a "master manipulator," among other things. She did not identify who she was talking about.

"My book ... based on my journey with celiac disease after I almost died," Esposito said. "To bring it up about something so silly and demeaning and stupid as a relationship I had eleven years ago, f--k you!"

And even though she did laugh at Spade's joke, she insists it had nothing whatsoever to do with Cooper or Gaga. She just loved Spade's brazenness.

"I feel bad for those people that were involved on the other side of the 'Ha' because it wasn't at them," she said. "And I feel bad for you if you took your time to comment on such insanity today. The world is in a crazy place. Please, go do something positive."

On the one hand, it's frustrating to even think she felt the need to respond to all this criticism because this is what our modern world of social media trolling wants. Better to just let them cry out in a void and ignore them, right?

Well, Esposito could have done that, but she had her reasons for speaking out. "If you think I'm just going to sit quietly and not answer you because it will just go away," she said. "This is why people don't speak up on so many situations."

The problem is that you often find yourself backed into a corner. If the only voice is the voice of the troll community trashing you, than their message is more likely to be believed. At the same time, it's impossible to ever appease them so in many ways it's a lose-lose situation whether you engage or not.

Esposito called for people to be more productive with their time and seek out causes more worthy of their energy, but she was even hesitant to name a single one of those. "I could go through them, but I'm sure I'll have people come after me for those things," she said, instead.

This is the world we've created.

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