Star's war jibe attacked as 'ignorant, selfish'

Gwyneth Paltrow.

Gwyneth Paltrow's comparison of daily struggles with internet trolls with the "dehumanising" experience of soldiers at war brought a swift, angry response from Cindy McCain.

The wife of Arizona Senator John McCain took to Twitter, calling the actress "a joke" and saying: "My 2 sons serving in the military should talk to her." (McCain's son Jimmy served in Iraq as a Marine and her son Jack is a navy lieutenant.)

In an interview with HLN Now TV, McCain called Paltrow's comments "ignorant" and "selfish" and offered to take the actress to meet veterans.

"I would encourage Gwyneth Paltrow - and I would be happy to go with her - to go sit down with some troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq and talk to them about what really goes on, and perhaps meet some of the young men and women who have lost limbs from this," McCain said.

In a second tweet, she suggested the actress "should go out on patrol with some soldiers. Kind of like a Red Carpet, in her mind, I guess."

Paltrow, an Academy Award winner, made the comments this week at a technology conference that delved into internet culture.

"You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it's a very dehumanising thing. It's almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanising thing, and then something is defined out of it," Paltrow said.

Actress Charlize Theron also sparked a flurry of criticism after she compared media intrusion into her life to rape. When asked by a reporter if she ever entered her name in a search engine she said: "I don't do that, so that's my saving grace.

"When you start living in that world, and doing that, you start, I guess, feeling raped."