While I could make a valid argument that the brain-trust of Twitter (and all social media sites generally) are fundamentally right-wing as profiting off the efforts of strangers is categorically not putting the needs of others first, that site particularly draws polarities. Liberals who felt unwelcome went off and created Mastodon, which is basically a smaller twitter of exclusive, life-hacking safe spaces where they can circle each other’s jerks. Conservatives who felt unwelcome went off and created Gab.ai, where all the frog-licking cuckolders hang out and scream bloody murder at each other. But it’s all ultimately dick-measuring when dick pics are just not kosher anymore in the #metoo world. As Christian as the far-right often claim to be they especially somehow avoided ever learning the Golden Rule.
Bloomberg has a fair summary of the story concerning Disney’s firing of popular film-maker James Gunn, but the last paragraph nails it in terms of suggesting Gunn’s ousting was indeed politically-motivated:
Disney is poised to complete the $71 billion acquisition of entertainment assets from 21st Century Fox Inc., whose Chairman Rupert Murdoch has forged close ties with Trump since the 2016 presidential election.
Disney could also have gotten some nudges from Marvel itself, considering the relationship shared between Trump and Ike Perlmutter. Chairman of Marvel Entertainment, Perlmutter was even on Trump’s Inauguration committee. The same ex-IDF billionaire Perlmutter who once shot at a comics fanboy, and who has had to settle numerous lawsuits concerning charges of racism and sexism out of court, although neither Marvel’s corporate board or anyone at Disney have ever told him where to fuck off. He may let some jabs against Trump float within the comics, but those are only seen by a few thousand people, whereas Gunn had somewhat more Twitter followers than that.
With the hoodoo surrounding the what, 5 or 6 articles about Disney’s James Gunn fiasco, and the implications of this impermanent internet holding an elephantine memory for parties well and beyond the NSA or GCHQ to enjoy and extort, I thought it would be fun to do a confessional. To save those hardworking over-eaters of the Wayback Machine some time from having to swipe without permission from so many websites they have no earthly claim of ownership to, let’s unzip our flies and let our junk air like proper animals.
To get the roll balling…
The first forum I really spent too much time on was over at Bleeding Cool, and I drank like a fish through those years, leading to lots of fun controversy that probably would have made the younger James Gunn turn red. By total coincidence this era of my life coincided with my most active years as a comics reviewer/interviewer/ghostwriter/script-doctor. I won’t defend the goings-on there, but I will say that I do try to explore a lot of what the world has to offer, including alternate perspectives, because firsthand experience pwns all else. And the site’s management, comprising the comics publisher Avatar’s inner circle, are malicious pricks anyhow so fuck them. But the BC bullshit was not the worst of my online conduct.
Back around ’07, maybe ’08, there was a site called TheyBannedMe, founded by one of the longer-running AICN contributors and his euro-trash cousin. Their motto was being the place for flamers, asshats, douchebags and trolls. It had a limited news section and later a variety of video games and other bits and pieces, but the perverse comradery of its boards was the foundation. We’d organize raiding parties on other forums, anything from stone-cutters to depressives anonymous to Disney crap. The site had a lot of activities within the forums, some of it surprisingly creative and artful, but the extracurricular attacks were the meat and potatoes, notably the occasions which called for weeks and weeks of work as a sleeper agent. It was more than a bit like what’s often said about prison, in that trolls would go there to fine-tune their craft and form alliances with other goons. I still remember a lot of individual posts made on various sites on their behalf, things that nobody on the planet should feel proud for.
The most incriminating was a thing at the actual TBM site, where we’d started a monthly “get to know your cellmate” sorta thing, with me being one of those first interviewed for the spotlight. Because I was one of the verifiable bad-asses. I have seen a copy saved of that talk elsewhere on the web, even though TBM was axed around ’09 or so. I earnestly stumbled across it and realized immediately I’d forgotten all about it. Likely a Freudian thing of a necessary black-out in action. But if anybody ever wants to get me fired from Disney, look for that.
Some corners of the internet are abuzz following the actual firing of James Gunn by his Disney employers, sudden though it was, purportedly for distasteful twits he twatted some 8 years past which he’d already apologized for through a number of different channels. His defense was that they represented his at the time younger mindset of trying to shock and awe for attention, and that he later realized how hurtful some of the lines may have struck certain persuasions. He had opted to leave those tweets publicly viewable however, for the sake of transparency. They were brought to limelight once again by right-wing pundit Mike Cernovich, who has been known to defend Neo-Nazi rallies in person, as well as making more than a few rape jokes of his own via Twitter. Where Gunn has shown quite a bit of remorse and embarrassment over his younger incarnation’s outbursts, Cernovich doubles down on his own remarks repeatedly, to this day.
Mark Twain, who was a real journalist and not some vlogging primadonna, once said that a man should not be judged by the clothes he wears but by the company he keeps, which is generally interpreted as meaning not by what someone says but by what they do. And where Cernovich pals around with Aryan mindfucks who love shouting in public things that violate the Terms and Conditions of the bigger online spots, Gunn hangs around with the more affable architects of modern pop culture. Only one of these two men goes out of his way (screaming across every public venue that will glance his way) to purposefully hurt other people. He proactively enables the grab ’em by the pussy guy to disunite the states of America, and global trade, while treating acts like making money for Disney as such a privilege worth safeguarding at whatever cost.
What Gunn is experiencing right now is the political equivalent of a smoking ban. Let him do his thing but allow the public to decide for themselves whether to support it or not. If enough bothered people affect ticket sales then the corporation could give him the pink slip. Free speech is supposed to be about legal protections for things said, but not protections from social ramifications, because mandating opinion is still going against the tenets of free speech. I’m not saying I agree with his old shite attempts at humor, but I vehemently believe he and anybody else has the fundamental legal right to say that and even far, far worse on any public platform, just as everyone else has the right to personally get in his space and punch his lights out should they take personal offense (or the safe-from-assault-charges route of boycotting). Personal accountability is a two-way street.
It could be argued that the only persons with any honest right in getting triggered in life are the carnies who get shot out of those giant circus cannons. There is some heavy duty shit going on in this world that is so incomprehensibly worse than mere words could ever be under any possible circumstances. Yet neither the promise of acceptance or the threat of complacency should be weaponized. Barnum had that line about ruin being the only thing won in this game of wanting to impress people, but he left out how the harshest damnation almost always comes from those persons insisting on being impressed.
Some believe this to be a hit against Gunn’s far more recent anti-Trump sentiments, as vengeance against the racist and pro-Trump sentiments expressed by Roseanne Barr which resulted in her own employment termination earlier this year by ABC, which is owned by Disney. I had issues with the Roseanne firing too. If she tried to push those comments in the show’s script then ABC might’ve had reason to fear audiences tuning out. But that’s not what happened, and either way the company deprived their audiences of deciding for themselves. People should feel insulted by that more than the comments she had posted mere days before. It wasn’t what Gunn said that prompted any gunning, obviously considering the years passed with those statements in the public noosphere, but his politics. Skeletons in his closet just made things convenient.
It is censorship in action no matter how you look at it, the lessening of language as mandated by law or corporate policy. Let people say whatever they want, but hand in hand have them understand they must also accept social ramifications for that. Castigate actions, by all means, but never opinion. Let people choose for themselves individually what their own fucking responses ought to be.
Even if Gunn made the tweets last week and he never apologized at all I don’ t think he should have been fired for them. But I do think that survivors of child molestation or anyone else personally offended should absolutely have the right to get up in his face about it themselves. I think that’s the real point I’m trying to make about this shit. Free speech should apply to reactions as well, and everyone should have that right to say whatever they want and to suffer the social consequences for it whether accepted or not, even if it means busted noses. Protected speech by default implies unprotected speech elsewhere. Those decisions should not be made for us, or else it’s demand produced to meet supplied syntax rather than versa vice. Leave the assholery to individuals whether as instigators or as reactionaries, but any variety of governing body absolutely must remain neutral, or some select interest will inevitably be promoted at the expense of another. That is not equality, no matter how values-driven the narrative pushed.
The inability to infringe on the rights of others is not an infringement of one’s rights. If people want to punch out fascists for lousy opinions they should have every earthly right. Free speech does not guarantee acceptance of lousy opinions. The opinions should still be allowed to be expressed though, but you cannot ethically or morally make someone accept the views of another. Not being liked is not a violation of rights. Asking others to abide by some humane value system is not the same as demanding for different people to be violently herded up and vanished. Asking others to not infringe on the rights of anyone is not the same as demanding that the rights of others be infringed upon. Equating the two is insane. Everyone deserves the right to fight for what they believe in, but good and evil are not subjective things.
All of this would be fixed (at least in the noosphere) if social media platforms and online forums had a majority rules algo, where if enough profiles felt bothered enough by a Roseanne political ideology or a James Gunn political ideology were to just block them, then after an “x” threshold gets crossed the account sporting the offending ideology would automatically have its plug pulled. Potential ad-clicks rule that out from happening though. Twitter killed my account for my saying these sorts of things, whereas Trump can’t go 24 hours without physically threatening half the planet. But money rules the day, just as political parties do not actually exist. It’s all down to competing billionaires. Having the billionaires ultimately running a governmental or corporate body decide what’s permissible, that holds a little more reach and impact than the reach or impact possible from some asshole, movie director or not. If those governmental/corporate bodies cared so much about what members of the public think, then why can’t they let us actually have our own say in these matters? Because they genuinely don’t care, at all. Putting the needs of others first propels not one soul in all of history into obtaining any degree of authority.
Any ideologue that can muster exceptions to keeping everybody alive, or to allowing everyone basic human rights and equal rights in particular regarding free speech, is only looking to enrich some private interest. And there are no exceptions to that.
If everyone is held accountable for the past then nobody would be allowed to work. People need to be given elbow room to grow and evolve. If redemption is meaningless then there is no incentive to change. It’s why I can permit violence when called for but remain vehemently anti war, anti-death penalty, etc. Keep your enemies alive so they might learn the error of their ways and ideally, find the logic in your argument.
Gunn did make one film I enjoyed, called Super. The main character had a powerful bit of dialogue in the finale, as seen here. Those few angry lines from Gunn’s Frank are more inspiring to me than anything I have ever heard a politician or political pundit say. We could even see it as Gunn wrestling his own angel, declaring the exact opposite of those sketchy tweets from years ago, noticeably coming from the hero of the story as though he (Gunn) is acknowledging in a voice louder than a tweet what is ultimately right. And with the obvious bad guy presenting the same self-centered, asshole mentality that led to those tweets, an ideology that is both venomous and self-destructive. Lessons learned on full display through pure art, for those who couldn’t be bothered to read a blog. Or anything more than the headline. Any mind that can construct that sentiment expressed in Frank’s words is okay by me. He broke some eggs but the omelette is divine. Maybe in the next film he can pull his punches shy of murder though.
The dead-to-us should be afforded the same fate as words from ago, the chance to live on and move on, to grow and evolve and find new meaning, instead of being shown the door and just going away from the here and now and tomorrow. It shows that ideas have the highest power.