To me a sense of fairness and justice would involve recognizing that the jokes, however in poor taste they might have been, were made years ago and that he apologized for them at the time. And that they were in fact jokes, not an expression of his actual feelings on the matter as some in this thread seem to be suggesting.
Disney fires James Gunn from "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"
- Thread starter Lawrence B
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While you're so busy playing "Won't someone please think of the victims???!!!???" (and I do feel the hyperbolic punctuation is called for given the sheer number of posts you've made in this thread along these lines), I feel obligated to ask - have you actually asked any of the victims how they feel about the situation, or are you just presuming to speak for them? Hell, have any actual victims expressed views on this matter? And if the victims themselves don't care, would that have any bearing on your own feelings on the matter? How many victims would have to say "this doesn't bother me" before you would pause in your unmitigated condemnation of Gunn?
I've been a "victim" of Jewish and/or Gay jokes for forty years, sometimes with more intent to harm me than others. My reaction tended to range from brushing it off to thinking "well, my friend is kind of a jackass sometimes" to "okay, that wasn't cool", but I would hardly say it ever reached the level of trauma that you seem to be ascribing to Gunn's off-color humor, which we can already safely assume was not meant to inflict harm.
My issue with the whole Gunn firing is that it just shows that people who keep dredging this stuff up aren't looking for anything other than punishment. If there is no room for growth and to accept that yes this person said some disgusting things but they actually realise that and have apologised for it then whats the point?
Its called concern, instead of certain TrekBBS members performing morally bankrupt circus routines defending the "rights" of Gunn, while showing their true, politicized purpose here in shifting blame and outrage from the man behind it all--Gunn--to the source who exposed it. Dont see a serious problem with their cracked moral lens?
Have you?
I see some going the sandbox route flaming others about their concerns, and have not offered even a particle of it for the effects on anyone..except Gunn.
Volumes.
To your question, I have rape and molestation victims in my family, but one does not have to cite that to take the only rational, natural position about Gunn's history/ interests. To even question that suggests that there's an exception to what is the only human response to this issue. There's not. Just as there's no exception for white people who were outraged by Rosanne's racist "ape" tweet targeting Valerie Jarrett, despite not being black themselves.
Either one knows what is right, or they play the politicized game of shifting responsibility and/or their fake-assed outrage, like some of the Olympians of that kind of behavior in this thread screaming about conspiracies. Notice that is the focus of their oft-posted complaints.
You can assume anything you choose to, but Gunn's interests/acts do not have rubber bumpers attached to protect selected people; he took the deep dive in that direction because he did not give a damn about exploring his sick interests, or the common sense concern that you might be offending victims and/or anyone with a basic moral core, just as Joy Reid did not with her Jewish conspiracy posts about Wolf Blitzer or Barr did not with her "ape" slur against Valerie Jarrett.
Still, I see others are content to only pull on their outrage pants when it allows them to attack (for political reasons they hypocritically and habitually attack others for) the delivery rather than what was delivered--the only real issue here.
And, possibly, more time and effort on the Internet than Gunn spent posting his jokes.
This. Gunn lost his job, potentially millions of dollars, a loss of reputation. What more do you want, @TREK_GOD_1? He's apologized AGAIN for the jokes. He doesn't engage in that behavior anymore. He recognizes how awful it was and he has changed his ways. What more do you want?
A while back the debate was oriented around the odds of Disney rehiring him but that ship has sailed at this point.
None of us are in a direct position to decide what kind of punishment Gunn receives. All we can do is chatter on the sidelines and prospective employers will use that to get a feel for whether it's worth the risk to hire the guy anymore.
Yes, you've always been a champion of justice, empathy and decency. This certainly isn't as transparent as oxygen.
What victims? Do Hypothetical punchlines count as victims? Are we suppose to also feel bad for all those red shirts who have died over the years on Trek as well?
Jason
Liberals are always eating our own. We loose elections because of it. Granted it's different from one individual to the next but you can't tell me many people support Gunn for reasons other than they felt he got screwed. Especially in this day and age with the increase in PC outrage. Whenever I here about the latest outrage I have no idea anymore at first where it's coming form. In the old days if someone was outraged over tv and movies it's was always assumed to be some Ned Flanders old school conservative who would be behind it and it almost always was. It's harder make guesses and to be honest i'm pretty sure their is a huge number of liberals who want Gunn gone because we are all over the map on issue's because I think we do tend to have a diverse range of opinions for the most part. Republicans I think were like that as well for many but those guys have vanished in recent years. I have no idea where all the Andrew Sullivan, George Will's have gone to or even the Ned FLanders. Were are the decent but square ones at anymore?
Jason
Oh, I've read your posts, hence MY post.
I do like the "you fool" at the end. Classic Gary Mitchell.
Roseanne. That's what this is all about, it's what it's always been about. And no one's buying the fake outrage or phony concern for "the vicitms" that only materialized when it suited their political purposes. They want a pound of flesh from liberals. Nothing more.
No "possibly" about it.
That ship sailed the moment Disney fired him. They weren't going to change their minds. I feel like that was flights of hopeful fancy on the internets.
True.
He will be "worth the risk" to hire. There will be people who will scream that he should never work again. But, if Mel Gibson can work again--who never actually admitted what he did was wrong, who never really apologized for his behavior, Gunn will work again. And in some ways, it will be easier, he wasn't on camera talent. His fall from grace wasn't as dramatic as Gibson's.
He's already getting offers, WB really wants him. This won't hurt his career, it'll only hurt the Guardians films since he was so much of why those movies worked so well. He'll end up doing more films, probably some DC ones. Gunn has mentioned wanting to do a Metal Men movie.
I don't, Gunn made the jokes over a decade ago, and has since apologized and stopped. The jokes were in incredibly bad taste, but they weren't a secret, and they have absolutely nothing to do with anything Gunn is involved in today, so there was no reason to bring them back up now than to attack him and get him fired.
If this was an honest attempt to bring to light some sort of actual illegal or dangerous behavior, I could be a bit more supportive, but this was nothing but a political attack against Gunn meant to get him fired, just because a few right-wing dipshits didn't like some stuff he said somewhere. I'm not going to hide the fact that I think this is complete bullshit.
If this was current behavior, or if the jokes had been more outright attacks against a person or groups I might be upset, but from what I can remember, they aren't, so I'm not.
I think it says a lot that the only people getting upset about these comments are the same people who repeatedly vote for actual sexual predators, some of which are pedophiles in the case of Roy Moore. It's pure theater from some very bad actors.
"the only people getting upset about these comments"
You have no way of proving such generalizations, just like in the other thread you can't prove that "bots" are voting down the Star Wars Resistance trailer. I'm trying not to make this post read like an ad hominem, but this kind of language on your part is part and parcel of what perpetuates the political polarization. That was what I was trying to say by "it takes two to tango".
The hard left and the hard right are sort of locked together in a codependent embrace. They feed off the sense that they are holy warriors for their cause. They would lose their sense of purpose if they didn't have their precious hate of the other side, which is why so much of the language is caricature/strawmanning/boogeymanning.
You have no way of proving such generalizations, just like in the other thread you can't prove that "bots" are voting down the Star Wars Resistance trailer. I'm trying not to make this post read like an ad hominem, but this kind of language on your part is part and parcel of what perpetuates the political polarization. That was what I was trying to say by "it takes two to tango".
The hard left and the hard right are sort of locked together in a codependent embrace. They feed off the sense that they are holy warriors for their cause. They would lose their sense of purpose if they didn't have their precious hate of the other side, which is why so much of the language is caricature/strawmanning/boogeymanning.
I'm not at all sure about that assumption to be honest, the fact of a widespread political agenda doesn't discount the possibility of real impact for victims and caution should be the watchword in jumping to conclusions. I personally feel it's too easy to be dismissive in a way which simply reflects an opposing political agenda without considering there may well be truth to those concerns, whether raised in good faith or not. Regardless of political motivations those tweets were truly awful and we wouldn't defend jokes about racist or homophic assaults, so why not accept there may be some genuine offence at jokes about paedophilia?
The problem is the greater the publicity afforded this horrible mess the greater any genuine impact will be, by further raising the profile yet again we (collectively as a society) risk re victimising those people, not protecting them.
EDIT, typed synchronously with the above post
The problem is the greater the publicity afforded this horrible mess the greater any genuine impact will be, by further raising the profile yet again we (collectively as a society) risk re victimising those people, not protecting them.
EDIT, typed synchronously with the above post
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