How do you feel about James Gunn Situation?
This was recorded last week but anyway.
How do you feel about James Gunn now?
How do you feel about James Gunn Fired from Guardians 3? (YouTube)
Comments (30)
I agree with Danika. It is a shame but no way Disney was going to allow their reputation as a kid friendly company to be tarnish by Gun past twits. I am sure they have a clause in their contract about kicking people to the curb just for this type of issue.
Well, if we are going to scour the arts of people who say distasteful things, genocide trumps rape, so everyone who supports war, does USO shows, etc, has to go. Will there be anyone left?
You really think it’s just off-color humor? South Park uses “off-color humor” and I’m not offended. Have you read every one of those tweets? He was serious as a heart attack. Make no mistake.
Citing South Park as one example of your understanding of off-color humor isn't some sort of convincing barometer that determines when a statement goes too far for off-color humor.
I do know what that say.....and they’re right. If it looks like a pedophile, tweets like a pedophile....feel free to come to the obvious conclusion. Read every one of his tweets from start to finish and see if you feel sick to your stomach. I’m ready to die on this hill. He’s a predator and should be treated as such. It’s so sad that anyone could even think he was being satirical.
Satirical? It's off-color humor. It's in no way necessarily taken as factual lol.
If you think MSNBC is news then there’s probably nothing I can do to convince people here of what’s true and what’s not. Gunn’s Tweets were and are a direct reflection of what he thinks on a moment to moment basis. I’ll ask again. WHO HERE WOULD ALLOW JAMES GUNN TO BABYSIT THEIR KIDS?
Not sure how the only consideration of those tweets is that they were 100% truthful and literal. But you know what they say...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys. You have given me things to think about. I may talk more about this in the next post Dune Club Q&A. BTW, apologies if your comment was deleted here. It was an accident after the patreon app went off in my pocket today...
Hey “Mox”. Where in the name of all that’s holy did Cernovich come out as anti-humanity, pro-rape, pro-cancer, and all of the other ridiculous things you accused him of? A person is pro-cancer? Get real. You sound like an operative that’s just here to defend pedophiles. MARK MY WORDS, James Gunn will be revealed to be a pedophile in time. Everyone please re-read his tweets and try to say with a straight face that he’s “joking”. He’s not.
Got it from Cernovich. His own bias is at least consistent so a lot can be gleaned from what he says about himself. Read Cernovich's twitter feed. He's deleted some, but you can get a lot even without digging into backups. Do some API calls overnight and look for his views on breast-cancer, rape, assault/abuse, and allegations against him. Don't filter out racial slurs; you'll lose a lot of context. Just doing source research. Articles are too all over the place with biases on this particular story. Look for previous events he's weighed in on prior to this month.
Cernovich is full of it, he's a political operative using lowest common denominator tactics. He openly admits he's making it up and that the truth doesn't matter, only that he can score a win against the 'lib elite'. His attack on Sam Sedar similarly took things out of context and ignored the writer's sense of humor, getting him kicked off MSNBC. Maybe it wasn't the greatest tweet, but it also was meant as a joke. And I would like to see Gunn reinstated, just to show internet bullies that there is a limit to this stuff.
When the story first came out I understood where Disney was coming from, those jokes were pretty terrible and tasteless, and to me it hinted at the deeper problem in Hollywood. How many of these were just """jokes"""? But as it unfolded and his shared his reaction, it turns out he had apologized for them in the past and its seeming more and more like a right wing attempt at a take down (especially since they tried to do the same thing to Dan Harmon, but Adult Swim contains more nuance)... it was ten years ago. He doesn't stand by them, and who we are at different stages of our life does not always reflect on how far we've come since then. I feel like they're just tweets. They're not directed at anyone they're just terrible jokes. He's already been called out on it. There's no way that Disney didn't know about these tweets before hiring him. He should have deleted them when he was called out the first time.
I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on this. On the one hand, I am very pro free speech. Everybody makes mistakes/ dumb comments, but on the other hand I think pedophilia is the worst crime of all and personally don't find jokes about it funny. Now is this a case of "where there's smoke there's fire"? I don't know; I don't really know anything about James Gunn and no idea whether the are "edgy" jokes or evidence of something worse.
I agree with what Akira said on the podcast with Danika about if he had just been himself and not taken on the mantle of wokeness this would not have been such a problem. You can't really be surprised when you take the side of hard virtue signalling that someone isn't going to use your own tactics against you. I'm not saying I'm a fan of those tactics either, no matter who is using them. I can understand why Disney did what they did. But did they not look into his past at all? Seems like they would.
When the Gunn story first broke, I felt very torn about it. There is no question that those old tweets are disgusting and awful. And I’m sick and tired of the “I’m a different person now” excuse. In similar cases I have always said that people who think in hateful ways, particularly people who treat others without empathy, rarely change - they just get more politically savvy. As much as I love his work, I would be a hypocrite to judge James Gunn by a different standard just because I’m a huge fan. It’s not like he was a teenager when he tweeted about molesting kids and rape. He was old enough to know the effect of his tweets and to be held to account for it. And an apology, however sincere, doesn’t make up for the real pain victims of rape and child abuse must be feeling - now - to read those words from someone being lauded now as one of the good guys (shades of Jimmy Saville). Evil men are good at convincing people they are the opposite. But if there is more to this than words, it will come out soon. I mean, if he did molest kids 10 years ago, someone who knows will find a way to speak out. So I don’t know what to think or feel about it. Disney did the right thing, if perhaps not for the right reasons. And Gunn has a lot to prove. But I will wait, and try to reserve judgment for a time.
I was disappointed, but ultimately side with Disney after reading what he tweeted. As a mom with three boys, all his kid toucher tweets made me want to barf.
You really should look into him. I’m not his biggest fan, but he’s a decent guy. I’m not here to defend Cernovich, but when it comes to pedophilia he’s on the side of good. James Gunn is without a doubt a pedophile, as are many of the people in Hollywood. It’s disgusting and I refuse to contribute one cent to those types of people. They use comics and entertainment as a whole as a “medium” to make us relax towards the subject of pedophilia. It’s sick. Did you read at least a dozen of Gunn’s tweets? It’s like listening to the mind of a serial killer. He was never joking.
I definitely agree, people should look into Mike Cernovich. There's this old saying about not throwing stones in glass houses. Mike has been quite a bit anti-humanity in his tweets. Pro-abuse, pro-cancer, pro-rape, and dismissive of people and cultures he sees as beneath him. I guess you could say "he was obviously joking", but then that's a reason people don't believe James Gunn is a pedophile. Also note that there are no allegations against Gunn. James *did* make crude and disgusting jokes publicly, and Disney basically has to distance themselves as soon as they come to light. That's not gonna change. However, he's apologized publicly, and these tweets are firmly in the past. While I doubt he'll be back on GotG3, with his timeline in context, it makes sense to see him as a person moving towards better behavior. For the same to be said of Cernovich, he would give some recognition that people who don't agree with him are also people, deserving of the free speech he claims to defend and also, ideally, basic human decency.
Oh, and to Jesse J or anyone else who thinks that Mike Cernovich is “alt-right” needs to learn something. The alt-right HATES Cernovich. Just take a look at what actual alt-righter Richard Spencer has to say about him. People, PLEASE don’t go on record with an opinion that you haven’t actually researched. It’s just a waste of everyone’s time. If anyone here has the time to read “Dune” as a group, then there’s no excuse for not keeping up with current events. All this Pedo stuff has gone waaay too far. If the consensus here is to back James Gunn then I’m outta here. I know the difference between someone edgy and a full on pervert.
I haven't looked deep into him personally, most I read was that he also helped push the Pizza-Gate scandal.
I think the Gunn firing was wrong, he had in the recent past addressed the tweets, apologized for them and moved on. Maybe an argument could be made IF he was still tweeting things like that or making those kinds of jokes, but anyone being honest about the situation would know that's not the case. That being said, I think some of the people upset about this are being hypocritical. Pressuring Corporations to punish people that they don't agree with I think validates the amount of power that those corporations wield, when otherwise I think those people would oppose the size and influence of those same corporations. I pledged money to FightForTheFuture foundation last year to help them stop the repeal of net neutrality. I liked them fighting for freedom in the digital space. But when the situation with families being separated at the border came up, I then go an email from them asking me to email Tech Companies that provided services to ICE. The idea being that Microsoft should refuse to allow them to use their services until they change. I don't support the actions happening at the border at all, but I thought the point was that power belongs to the people, and fighting the influence of huge companies and asking for their help just don't go together.
Forgive my rant, I just wanted to get that off my chest.
James Gunn didn’t make just one or two tasteless jokes. There were hundreds of them. Anyone who thinks he was just “joking” was born yesterday. Would anyone on here let him babysit their kids?
Mike Cernovich is a human waste Golem, and Disney is doing his bidding, if the Westboro Baptist Church protests your funeral and Mike Cernovich hates you, you are probably an awesome person. I hope more people speak out in support of Gunn, Disney owns too much of Hollywood and they're going to stifle it, on-line sarcasm might be a bad idea due to the former brevity of Twitter, some people say sarcasm doesn't work so well with conservative I think it's below average people of all political stripes that can't grok sarcasm
I worry that people are too focused on who pushed the James Gunn firing. Obviously Mike Cernovich is an ACTUAL alt-right figure with very devious motivations, but using moral outrage to get people fired, especially after they acknowledged their mistakes and apologized is wrong regardless. I think Disney just wanted Gunn out for their own reasons and used this as a convenient excuse, which is terrible because they have given strength to future movements like this.
I have gotten tired of dealing with trolls that are calling him a pedophile and anyone that tries to defend him and not the tasteless joke as pedo protectors. I have never seen so many people that have no clue what they are talking about, be so belligerent and so proud about their own ignorance in my life and it is scary.
I understood Disney's reaction but it's interesting how it keeps evolving, for instance the pressure now building with the entire cast making a unified statement... Am watching with interest. I also wonder with more and more links coming out with Russian spies and the alt-right and their use of Facebook and Twitter to influence American culture... Makes me wonder how deep this rabbit hole goes. 🤔 Might seem off topic but it's not, here's a relevant podcast for interested ppl: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/630443485/reporter-shows-the-links-between-the-men-behind-brexit-and-the-trump-campaign" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/630443485/reporter-shows-the-links-between-the-men-behind-brexit-and-the-trump-campaign</a> Warning it starts off a bit boring but by then it shows the depth this all goes to. Crazy times!
The fact that what was uncovered was "jokes" that are pedophilic in nature is unfathomable for a person described the way Gunn is by people, regardless of who found it or when it was posted. Ultimately, Disney made the right decision from my perspective. It's impossible for me accept that if those tweets had been found on Trump's account he would be doubly damned, but somehow for some people they feel it's a-ok for Gunn.
Personally, I don’t think comedy (or attempts at comedy) should be lumped into the same category as an actual perpetrator of actual crimes. Comedy and statements made in comedic forms are not equivalent to actions which were committed, and which necessitate a removal of a person from a place in which they may commit more harm (Weinstein). Gunn has never been accused of any such harm, and deserves the same access to apology and redemption as any of us who never meant any actual harm.