Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
And the same guy who got Gunn fired was Cernovich, aka the guy who came up with pizzagate, routinely makes rape jokes and apologia, and is an actual rapist, having had his case plead down from rape to just assault to avoid a long prison sentence. And is a Neo Nazi who tried to get MSNBC reporter Sam Seder fired by portraying Seder’s tweets criticizing Roman Polanski as an endorsement of pedophilia.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Cernovich is a Nazi.
He's also irrelevant, unless we are now gauging the morality of people's actions based on which side of the political spectrum they're on. "F*ck Cernovich" is not a reasonable defense of James Gunn and speaks to the idea that winning is more important than doing the right thing.
That logic is the same logic that fuels Republicans when they cast their vote in ways like "Better a pedophile than a Democrat for Alabama!"
By all means, you can hate Nazis like Cernovich and still think that someone who likes to talk about having sex with little boys should not be working at Disney. There is no obligation to endorse one or the other.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 26th 2018 at 1:35:30 PM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
You have completely avoided the actual issue, it was a joke. Should comedians who engage in any comedy that isn't 100% family friendly be kicked out of the business just because an alt-right troll used it to raise a stink?
Congratulations you're part of the reason such tactics work.
Two new polls from reputable pollsters give the Democrats a significant lead
and the special elections suggest a significant gap of enthusiasm between the Republican and Democratic bases in favor of the Democrats
.
I am skeptical of people who are saying that the Democrats are having troubles.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 26th 2018 at 3:38:56 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
![]()
I guess my main issue with the Gunn situation is that the tweets were from a long time ago, he’d apologized in the past and obviously become a more mature person, and Disney knew about them before this incident but only took action when Cernovitch dragged it up.
When I was younger I believed some things I certainly don’t now, I grew up and became a more informed and mature person. I don’t think we should be punishing people for stuff they’ve already moved on from.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 26th 2018 at 12:38:16 PM
They should have sent a poet.
Exactly this, to act as if he was some kind of monster who deserved firing is simply for an off-color joke is ridiculous and frankly acting as a useful idiot for the alt-right.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 26th 2018 at 3:41:17 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang![]()
The tweets were offensive, they weren’t just off-color jokes. If he had tweeted them recently he would have deserved to be fired.
The thing is, he tweeted them ages ago and he’s obviously a different person now. Firing him because someone dragged them up to smear him doesn’t make any sense.
Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 26th 2018 at 12:43:32 PM
They should have sent a poet.![]()
I'm glad that I was never interested in social media when I was younger, it helped that I firmly understood that there isn't really true anonymity on the internet and anyone who's determined enough can see exactly what you post.
Booo
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 26th 2018 at 3:46:22 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangI don't believe 'it was a joke' is a workable defense, myself, as 'just a joke' is the defense used almost universally to excuse racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes as well. Of course, I'm aware that my personal barometer for such things isn't the standard we judge people by.
That said, putting all questions about the content or timeframes aside - what does Cernovich want from this? It's clearly not out of the goodness of his shriveled black heart. My guess is that it's a standard attempt at causing strife and possibly getting some big liberal names to "defend pedophilia" by speaking up for Gunn.
It's been fun.@Kaiseror: Whoever is saying that the democrats are in trouble this year is either a republican troll or an extreme pessimist who refuses to look at any poll because they already "know" the outcome.
@Gunn: I would usually care a bit more about a politically driven firing, but I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who jokes about rape like that. Let him be gone.
Life is unfair...I didn't just say it was a joke, I said it was a joke made years ago that he apologized over and Disney knew about when they hired him.
It's ridiculous to submit to alt-right trolls and fire him over this.
Ah yes because punitive punishment indifferent to actual context totally makes society better <rolls eyes>
He made the joke years ago and apologized about it, I see nothing reasonable about such an absolutist stance.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 26th 2018 at 3:59:21 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
That's because a corporation is nearly always going to choose profit over ethics. Now that it's out to the public, they reversed their decision and I fully support it, he's had more time in the limelight than he should actually.
I don't care who brings these things up, it doesn't stop the "victim" from being a homophobe/mysoginist/horrible person.
Life is unfair...And you think this is choosing ethics? They fired a man over something said years ago and that he had apologized over.
They are doing nothing more than cowardly capitulating to an alt-right hate mob thus setting the precedent that the alt-right should investigate every public figure who ever says anything bad about them or Trump because one bad tweet is apparently enough to sink them.
So you don't believe that people can ever change?
Once a horrible person always a horrible person?
Unless you are a perfect saint who has never said anything problematic the gall of arguing this is frankly incredible.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 26th 2018 at 4:02:56 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangNot to mention if companies are going to start firing people over things that they've apologized for years ago, it's going to send a message that there's no point in having or showing remorse for one's actions, since you're never going to be forgiven anyway, and that will have noticeable negative effects on our society.
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Jul 26th 2018 at 4:04:29 AM
i'm tired, my friendMoreover, going "well, racists and sexists use the "Just Joking" Justification to hide the fact they really feel that way" is a thousand percent bullshit false equivalence. It is not the same as calling someone a racial slur and going "Jeez, I'm joking. Can't take a joke, huh?" A comedian made some tasteless jokes, but they were clearly (and explicitly, given the use of a joke hashtag and being a part of a joke Twitter chain) Dead Baby Comedy, not advocating anything.
So seriously. If you think he should be sacked because someone who ever made that kind of tasteless jokes doesn't deserve the job, that's fine. That's your opinion. I can absolutely respect that.
If you think he should be fired because he's a secret pedophile, then you're just wrong.
Edited by Larkmarn on Jul 26th 2018 at 4:12:48 AM
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.@Tobias
I agree that house cleaning is usually the better way to go and it’s important. It’s best, however, to make sure it’s actually warranted. We shouldn’t be so eager to clean house that we make a mistake like Obama did with Shirley Sherrod, where an extreme right wing activist claimed she said something bad, Obama fired her in a rush in a desire to clean house and then oops, it turned out she said exactly the opposite of what was claimed and didn’t come back to work when her job was offered to her because she didn’t want to get jerked around like that again.
We should stick to our principles, but we also shouldn’t let our enemies dupe us into shooting ourselves in the foot. We’re talking about people who have no scruples when it comes to getting what they want. Remember ACORN, the planned parenthood video, and pretty much everything else in the history of right wing news and activism.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |@Grafite: The Democrats are in trouble in the senate because they have just about the worst possible map imaginable, and state level races may also end up being a problem. Things are looking fairly good in the House and in terms of governor races. The most likely outcome is a mixed bag with some good and some bad.
Disney did nothing wrong. We are not talking about some off-colour or slightly sexist jokes or unproven accusations from a questionable source. We are talking about James Gunn's own tweets in which he "jokes" that he wants to have sex with a little boy and that an action film makes him want to have sex with the boy beside him..and yes, I get the joke he was going for in the latter tweet, but that one would have worked just as well if not better if he had just replaced "boy" with "guy". But he didn't.
What exactly should Disney do in this situation? Disney has its own questionable moments and it employs a fair number of people which have been involved in a Skandal or two in the past, but if there is one thing which can't get connected to Disney every, it is paedophilia. And if some activist rape survivor would have brought the matter forward, we now would have a very different discussion.
Just because the far right likes to play the player instead of the ball, it doesn't mean that we should, too. Disney was put into an impossible situation and acted the only way it could.
And yes, it sucks. I would have liked to see more from James Gunn in the MCU. But that is not the question here, he doesn't deserve more defence simply because he is popular with the fans.
Plus, while I like his work it doesn't mean that I am ready to endorse James Gunn the person. Because I don't know him. I know that he is apparently quite popular with the people who worked with him. But I also know that the reason he stopped firing out the tweets was not because he had some sort of epiphany, but because he got hired by Disney and knew perfectly well that this wasn't a behaviour which was okay with this kind of employer. Maybe he has changed, but then, he also pretty much stole all the credit for the Got G from Nicole Perlman. In case you don't know, Nicole Perlman is a writer working for Marvel who, years ago, shifted through countless of lesser known Marvel comics, felt drawn to the Got G, picked the characters she considered the most interesting (from a fairly new and fairly short run at this point) and then write and penned the first script. Marvel decided to make a movie out of it, James Gunn was hired and in the end James Gunn claimed the whole Got G as his own, basically saying that it were his contribution which made Perlman's script even watchable.
Well, even if this were true (I doubt it, but I think we will be better able to gauge this notion considering that Perlman also wrote the script for Captain Marvel), she STILL deserves the credit for the groundwork. It wasn't right that he forcefully shoved her aside so that he could have the sole place in the limelight.
And don't get me wrong here...while this makes me doubt his character (well, that and that he apparently thought that edgelord humour was cool when he was already an grown a... man), I would have been perfectly fine with him getting his career based on what he did with Got G Vol 2. Hell, I am sure he will still have this career, just not with Disney, at least not for now. And I also wouldn't have necessarily complained if Disney had judged that they could weather the storm of paedophilia accusations. I would have been surprised, but that is for Disney to decide. But there is a part of me who thinks "Karma is a bitch". Maybe he now gets an idea how it is when your pet project is taken from you and claimed by somebody else.
There is no karma here, just the message that anything bad done once is enough to sink your career and that there's no point in doing better because rehabilitation doesn't exist.
Congratulations you are helping the alt-right.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 26th 2018 at 4:19:48 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang

Edited by LSBK on Jul 26th 2018 at 1:44:54 PM