When the Star Gets Fired

 

There’s an influential Hollywood website called The Ankler. It gets its name from “ankling”, a word coined by Variety, the ancient Bible of the business side of show business. Someone who “ankles” a studio is laid off, but leaves under their own power; a normal, unemotional job separation. The opposite, in Variety-ese, is getting “axed”—flat out fired, and escorted off the studio lot by security, with dueling lawyers sure to follow. It doesn’t often happen to the stars, but when it does, it’s a big, public, messy deal. This is particularly true when an entire show is shaped around them: Charlie Sheen, Jeremy Clarkson, and Roseanne Barr are recent examples. We’ll get to them.

Some actors are fired because of problems they caused on the set. Others, simply because they were miscast to begin with, or couldn’t seem to give the performance that the film or TV show needed. And with many others it simply came down to money.

On-set misbehavior got Clayne Crawford fired from the Lethal Weapon TV series, where he played Riggs, the character that Mel Gibson played in the film. Most of the show’s crew quietly applauded the move, but there is a contingent of Team Crawford that attributes the firing to reverse discrimination and political correctness. After all, they point out, his black co-star, Damon Wayans, was no shrinking violet either.

Wayans, not considered one of the warmest or friendliest of actors, was chilly and remote with co-workers, but professional. He knew his lines, hit his marks and went back to his trailer. By contrast, Crawford had screaming fits, one of them in full view of the public while the show was filming local locations. Christian Bale got away with it on the Terminator: Salvation set, but power-wise, Clayne Crawford is no Christian Bale.

A famous early case of on-set problems was Steven Hill, the first leader of the Mission: Impossible team. Show creator Bruce Geller fought to cast him; Desilu’s empress, Lucille Ball, had her doubts. Hill brought an impressively dark and brooding presence to the role. But he began to cause production to fall behind schedule because of his increasing observance of strict Jewish laws. He had to leave early on Fridays before sunset, a problem for filming as daylight hours dwindled in the winter. He wanted special linings sewn into his on-camera wardrobe. The demands started to raise hackles, which Hill interpreted as hostility to his religious faith.

The irony, of course, is he was surrounded by other Jews—Geller, Martin Landau, Barbara Bain, all of the writers, not to mention most of Desilu—who got fed up with him. There are common-sense exceptions to Sabbath rules for people whose roles in society require it—policemen, soldiers, doctors. By the Sixties, Hollywood’s large Jewish community had managed the issue for a half century, at least for Conservative and Reform Jews. But that wasn’t good enough for hyper-observant Steven Hill, so he was replaced by Peter Graves.

Sometimes it’s not the actor’s fault: they were miscast. Though it’s forgotten now, in 1975 Robert De Niro was fired from a movie that had already started shooting, Bogart Slept Here. According to Neil Simon, De Niro was a fine actor who simply wasn’t funny. Simon was able to rewrite the script, which two years later became The Goodbye Girl.

A similar case that’s much more familiar is Eric Stoltz’s firing from Back to the Future. This was a very difficult decision because it was six weeks into filming, requiring much of it to be totally redone. Sets had to be rebuilt, supporting actors brought back. It’s hard to find another example of a reshoot that major that doesn’t involve the sudden death of an actor, or an actor’s involvement in serious offscreen criminal scandal, like All the Money in the World and Kevin Spacey, or Frogman with O.J. Simpson.

It was also painful because there were no outside causes to blame, no diplomatic way to avoid the fact that Stoltz’s performance was the problem. And by all accounts it was a good performance; Christopher Lloyd (Doc) and Tom Wilson (Biff) attest to it. But it wasn’t funny, not even a little bit. Stoltz saw it as a straightforward science fiction story with a wistful, dreamlike Fifties setting. Bob Zemeckis, Bob Gale, and Steven Spielberg made one of the gutsiest decisions of their careers, and the results back them up.

Some actors are replaced over money disputes, and in those cases, making after-the-fact judgments about whether they were quit, fired, jumped or pushed is often harder. Crispin Glover (“George McFly”) didn’t come back to BTTF II, Richard Castellano (“fat Clemenza”) didn’t come back to The Godfather Part II, and Robert Duvall didn’t come back to The Godfather Part III, because the studio wouldn’t meet their salary demands.

Ditto Suzanne Somers (Three’s Company), Farrah Fawcett-Majors (Charlie’s Angels), Melina Kanakaredes (CSI:NY). In a rare case of the actors winning, the original Duke boys on The Dukes of Hazzard quit/were fired and replaced, but the ratings suffered so badly that they got rehired. But usually, the actors lose. George Eads and Jorja Fox tried it on CSI and came back without a raise. Hawaii Five-O’s Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim provocatively added a race card to their salary fight, but still lost.

Then there are star replacements that, deservedly or not, became public relations trainwrecks. Usually it’s a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back type of thing. Charlie Sheen was known to be trouble long before he was signed to star in Two and a Half Men. His character in that show, Charlie Harper, is a caricature of an amiable Malibu celebrity known chiefly for drinking, gambling, and bedding lots of women. In other words, he was playing himself.

Show creator Chuck Lorre knew that it was a calculated risk working with someone with Charlie’s erratic behavior, but for the first couple of years Sheen kept his real-life drug use and whoring off the front pages. Finally, he couldn’t resist testing the limits and exceeding them. Yet he was the star, and the role was him. What could Chuck do?

He fired him. Lorre knew that it would be tough to keep the show going with someone else. But at a certain point, he had to take the chance. He rolled the dice with Ashton Kutcher playing a different character, and won four more years of life for his show.

Jeremy Clarkson is a slightly different case; he isn’t an actor. Well, not really, although like fellow Brit reality show king Simon Cowell, Clarkson’s forceful personality made him a TV star. He had every reason to think he was the indispensable centerpiece of his show, Top Gear. But he was so obnoxious to his bosses, not to mention the show’s staff, that after a few too many wearying fights, they canned him. Yes, they knew it would be hard to retain a good part of the show’s audience without Clarkson. But after a certain point, the producers emphatically decided “life is too short”, far too short to keep putting up with him, so they came to a parting of the ways.

Both Sheen and Clarkson recovered, going right on to other, similarly-themed shows, Anger Management and The Grand Tour (and now Clarkson’s Farm) respectively. By all accounts, this time they showed up on time and did their jobs professionally. This can be taken as a rebuke to the people who fired them: See, you idiots, if you’d treated me right to begin with, I would have behaved. But it can also be read as the performer ruefully facing reality: If I hadn’t been a jerk, I’d still have that show. Probably there’s some of both.

In May 2018, there was the bizarre, out of nowhere drama of the ABC television network versus Roseanne Barr.

Barr sent an arguably racist Tweet about Valerie Jarrett, by then the all-but-obscure chief advisor to Barack Obama. Actually, it wasn’t just arguable: it was offensive, but cryptic enough to possibly skate by with excuses about sleeping pills or supposedly hacked phones. By 2018 Jarrett did seem a peculiar subject for a drug-hazed, multi-multi-millionairess TV star to be obsessing about at two in the morning. Unfortunately, for a crucial couple of days Roseanne wouldn’t back down. “I’m a comedian!” But she wasn’t making a discernable joke.

Yes, the wokesters had it in for her. No surprise. But the key thing is the normies didn’t see a reason why they should jump to her defense. Roseanne made a big splash with her newly revived show, but it was season one; she hadn’t rebuilt a mass audience yet.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake, for Roseanne and for ABC, but the network was too stiff-necked to quickly work out a backstage agreement, and Barr was too stiff-necked to make a real apology. She finally did after it was too late. For example, she could have made a well-publicized 3-week retreat to a rehab clinic, re-emerge in public life at the end of the month with an Oprah interview, and make a $50,000 contribution to a women’s group fighting Ambien addiction. There were plenty of ways she could have handled it and kept her show. But Roseanne was too much of an egomaniac to do any of that. She misjudged her strength and lost.

Some stray facts had a strong role in how this played out. It was the end of May, almost at the very end of the TV season, and before much had been done to prepare the next one. In short, strategically it was the weakest time of the year for any star to press her luck against a network, because season one’s production was about to shut down anyway and the show wasn’t due back on the air for three months.

Also, ABC wasn’t just any old network. It was a relatively small, if highly visible, part of The Walt Disney Company. Embarrassing problems can affect the image and income of the entire company, from theme parks to cruise ships, as it has learned to its chagrin. ABC likes to present itself as the family network, just as the CW features teenagers, and NBC favors urban singles. ABC has also made an effort to be perceived as the most black-friendly of broadcast networks. The head of programming was black. None of this was unknown to Roseanne. Once the Tweet became public—that is, instantly—ABC didn’t have the option of ignoring it.

Every time an actor is fired, there’s a whole branch of alternate reality: how different casting would have sometimes led to a different cultural reality. Suppose there had been no Archie Bunker. The real world of America’s 1970s was changed by the success of All in the Family and its offshoots. The real world of America’s 2020s could have been changed by the success of Roseanne, which was beginning to emerge as something unique, something different; a show set between the coasts with three-dimensional characters who earned laughs by acting out seldom acknowledged truths.

There was already an example of how to handle the situation. When Valerie Harper quit Valerie, she didn’t expect the studio and the network to be able to continue as Valerie’s Family, and then The Hogan Family. But they did. So it wasn’t unprecedented for ABC to take Roseanne and simply turn it into The Connor Family.

I wish there was a happy ending to the story. At the time, it looked like it might have turned into a case of “go woke, go broke”, but it didn’t: The Connor Family just got renewed for a fifth season.

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  1. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say.  I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual. 

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people.  If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people.  And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

     

    • #91
  2. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    • #92
  3. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    The claims people make that “someone who says something like that must be racist!” sounds like the case of the city businesses manager (or something) who was accused of being racist, and fired, because he used the word “niggardly.”

    • #93
  4. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Valerie Jarrett is black????  Who knew!

    • #94
  5. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Valerie Jarrett is black???? Who knew!

    My story is much worse.  When I was hearing about the stupid things Debbie Wasserman Schultz would say, like you’d expect to hear from Sheila Jackson Lee (also 3 names!) and Maxine Waters etc, I figured she couldn’t possibly be white.  But she is!

    • #95
  6. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Er….I said I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people.  Bolded in the original quote above.  ??

    • #96
  7. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Er….I said I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. Bolded in the original quote above. ??

    My mistake, sorry.

    • #97
  8. Internet's Hank Contributor
    Internet's Hank
    @HankRhody

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say.

    I wouldn’t.

    • #98
  9. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Er….I said I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. Bolded in the original quote above. ??

    You don’t think she is…?  You’re actually considering it.  You’re not saying: I’ve no reason to believe that she is, or There’s no evidence that she is.  That’s pretty light-weight regarding a career-ending accusation.

    • #99
  10. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Er….I said I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. Bolded in the original quote above. ??

    I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    Here, anti-Iranian attitudes here have less to do with Israel than with lasting memories of 1979-’80. Roseanne’s opinions about Israel and the Middle East are more or less mainstream in the United States, home to half of the Jews in the entire world. They would be considered very unbalanced in Europe and Africa, and shrugged at without approval or condemnation in much of Asia.

    IMHO, they don’t have much to do with her tweet or with race relations. She certainly wasn’t thinking particularly hard when she tweeted. In that fine old Irish expression, “that was the drink talking”. But even in an Irish bar, you can be called to account later for things you said or did under the influence.

    As a side issue, it’s quite possible to be against Israel, or against whatever Israel is doing in the news, without being anti-Semitic.

    (It’s also possible to be against the invasion of Ukraine without hating the Russian people.)

    • #100
  11. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Er….I said I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. Bolded in the original quote above. ??

    You don’t think she is…? You’re actually considering it. You’re not saying: I’ve no reason to believe that she is, or There’s no evidence that she is. That’s pretty light-weight regarding a career-ending accusation.

    Well, I considered it too. After a tweet like that, what was I supposed to think? How did she think it would come across? Why didn’t she clean this up right away? I have no idea if she’s a racist, but I do know what she typed into her phone before hitting “send”.

    So we’re all in agreement. None of us thinks she hates black people. So fix it, Roseanne. You didn’t want to lose all that money. ABC didn’t want to lose all that money.

    Career-ending? What a damn shame, but she did it to herself.

    EDIT: And even now, it doesn’t have to be the end of her career. She’s not without contacts and resources of her own.  The difficulty she’s going to have with most of the mainstream media companies isn’t “ooh, she said a racist sentence in the middle of the night”, it’ll be “from that crotch-grabbing national anthem on forward, she’s so erratic and unpredictable that she’s not worth a considerable financial risk”.

    I knew Roseanne Barr would be the part of the post with the most controversy; that’s why it’s the last anecdote. I softened this comment a little because, when you come down to it, almost all of us liked something about what she was trying to do.

    • #101
  12. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Er….I said I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. Bolded in the original quote above. ??

    You don’t think she is…? You’re actually considering it. You’re not saying: I’ve no reason to believe that she is, or There’s no evidence that she is. That’s pretty light-weight regarding a career-ending accusation.

    Well, yeah, Flicker, I considered it too. After a tweet like that, what was I supposed to think? How did she think it would come across? Why didn’t she clean this up right away? I have no idea if she’s a racist, but I do know what she typed into her phone before hitting “send”.

    So we’re all in agreement. None of us thinks she hates black people. So fix it, Roseanne. You didn’t want to lose all that money. ABC didn’t want to lose all that money.

    Career-ending? What a damn shame, but she did it to herself. No tears for Rosie.

    I hope no one ever compares Biden to the creepy deformed character in Lord of the Rings (but I think they look similar).

    Those characters never looked like apes anyway.  I suppose that if a politician, pundit, or news personality said Clarence Thomas looked like something out of planet of the apes, I’d be offended too, but I wouldn’t necessarily think the person was racist, but just an opportunistic ass-hoe.

    Nonetheless, to give any credence at all to insinuations, after all these years without a shred of any other evidence, that Barr’s a racist is inappropriate and defamatory.

    • #102
  13. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    As a side issue, it’s quite possible to be against Israel, or against whatever Israel is doing in the news, without being anti-Semitic.

    However, as the saying goes, that’s not the way you’d bet.

     

    • #103
  14. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say.

    Not hardly.  Black is a race, Islam is an ideology, and I am at liberty to detest any ideology which I find repugnant (and frankly, I can hate anybody I wish to for any reason I want, but I find that repugnant as well).

    Not all X are Y etc.  I can hate Islam and still evaluate individual Muslims on the same basis I would evaluate anybody else.  The tension is their problem, not mine.

    • #104
  15. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    As a side issue, it’s quite possible to be against Israel, or against whatever Israel is doing in the news, without being anti-Semitic.

    However, as the saying goes, that’s not the way you’d bet.

     

    It’s also possible that someone who sent Roseanne’s tweet is actually the noble Abraham Lincoln of millionaire sitcom queens, but that’s not the way I’d bet. 

    • #105
  16. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    BDB (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say.

    Not hardly. Black is a race, Islam is an ideology, and I am at liberty to detest any ideology which I find repugnant (and frankly, I can hate anybody I wish to for any reason I want, but I find that repugnant as well).

    Not all X are Y etc. I can hate Islam and still evaluate individual Muslims on the same basis I would evaluate anybody else. The tension is their problem, not mine.

    Sure, like people can hate Judaism but still evaluate individual Jews on the same basis they would evaluate anybody else?

    I guess.

    • #106
  17. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Zafar (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say.

    Not hardly. Black is a race, Islam is an ideology, and I am at liberty to detest any ideology which I find repugnant (and frankly, I can hate anybody I wish to for any reason I want, but I find that repugnant as well).

    Not all X are Y etc. I can hate Islam and still evaluate individual Muslims on the same basis I would evaluate anybody else. The tension is their problem, not mine.

    Sure, like people can hate Judaism but still evaluate individual Jews on the same basis they would evaluate anybody else?

    I guess.

    Judaism is a religion, Jewish is/can be/mostly an ethnicity.

    • #107
  18. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Zafar (View Comment):

    BDB (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):
    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say.

    Not hardly. Black is a race, Islam is an ideology, and I am at liberty to detest any ideology which I find repugnant (and frankly, I can hate anybody I wish to for any reason I want, but I find that repugnant as well).

    Not all X are Y etc. I can hate Islam and still evaluate individual Muslims on the same basis I would evaluate anybody else. The tension is their problem, not mine.

    Sure, like people can hate Judaism but still evaluate individual Jews on the same basis they would evaluate anybody else?

    I guess.

    Whatever.  I worked with brave and principled Muslim men in Afghanistan, men who risked much for little other than principles and hope.  Those are good men.  I still hate Islam.

    I don’t care for Catholicism either, but that’s no stain upon the many Catholics I know.  So yes.  Blame the Jew-hating fanatics of any color you like for their failure to understand the difference between a person and a people.  It’s not my problem.  I got enough trouble with the hate-whitey colonization and collapse of Western Civilization.  I have no patience for either “turnabout is fair play and you deserve it” or more nuanced version of the same argument.

    • #108
  19. Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw Member
    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw
    @MattBalzer

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Valerie Jarrett is black???? Who knew!

    My story is much worse. When I was hearing about the stupid things Debbie Wasserman Schultz would say, like you’d expect to hear from Sheila Jackson Lee (also 3 names!) and Maxine Waters etc, I figured she couldn’t possibly be white. But she is!

    Hmm. Not sure how racist it is but I dunno if I’ve ever heard of a black Debbie.

    • #109
  20. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Valerie Jarrett is black???? Who knew!

    My story is much worse. When I was hearing about the stupid things Debbie Wasserman Schultz would say, like you’d expect to hear from Sheila Jackson Lee (also 3 names!) and Maxine Waters etc, I figured she couldn’t possibly be white. But she is!

    Hmm. Not sure how racist it is but I dunno if I’ve ever heard of a black Debbie.

    You mean you think Little Debbie couldn’t be black?  Racist!

    • #110
  21. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Valerie Jarrett is black???? Who knew!

    My story is much worse. When I was hearing about the stupid things Debbie Wasserman Schultz would say, like you’d expect to hear from Sheila Jackson Lee (also 3 names!) and Maxine Waters etc, I figured she couldn’t possibly be white. But she is!

    Hmm. Not sure how racist it is but I dunno if I’ve ever heard of a black Debbie.

    You mean you think Little Debbie couldn’t be black? Racist!

    If she was black she would’ve been removed from the packaging.

    • #111
  22. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Matt Balzer, Imperialist Claw (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Zafar (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    I don’t think she was posing it as helping Israel, as much as she and her defenders were trying to drag in a cause that was popular, at least in the US, to offset the unpopular reason why she was suddenly in the spotlight.

    Opposition to the Iran Deal is all about Israel, I would say. I don’t think she was posing – or even thinking particularly hard when she tweeted – and I don’t think her opinion on the Iran Deal and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama Administration in general is that unusual.

    The big issue was that she said (typed) the silent part out loud, and in a way that came across as prejudiced against black people. If she’d managed to stay on point and just be prejudiced against Muslims and Iran I think she would have been fine.

    (Fwiw I don’t think she’s prejudiced against black people. And in Roseanne’s further defence Jarrett looks [to me] quite racially ambiguous in photographs.)

    Few things bother me more than completely unsubstantiated claims someone is a racist.
    I believe Roseanne has grandchildren who are mixed race and loves them dearly.
    You don’t know what, or who, you are talking about.

    Valerie Jarrett is black???? Who knew!

    My story is much worse. When I was hearing about the stupid things Debbie Wasserman Schultz would say, like you’d expect to hear from Sheila Jackson Lee (also 3 names!) and Maxine Waters etc, I figured she couldn’t possibly be white. But she is!

    Hmm. Not sure how racist it is but I dunno if I’ve ever heard of a black Debbie.

    You mean you think Little Debbie couldn’t be black? Racist!

    If she was black she would’ve been removed from the packaging.

    Or Indian.  (Feather, not Dot.)

    • #112
  23. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    This thread is now 72 hours old, a good time to thank anyone who made it this far! I can see a couple of possible follow-up posts.

    One would be When the Actor Dies, covering cases like the aforementioned James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Oliver Reed as well as others mentioned by commenters here, like Nancy Marchant on The Sopranos. I have to admit, kind of ruefully, that it would be less about the human factor, the families involved and the pain of loss, than it would be about the tough decisions that have to be made and the often-complicated logistics of completing the movie–or not.

    A grim subsection of this subject would be cases where the actor survives an accident, but with visible disfigurement. A mild example is Mark Hamill between Star Wars “IV” and “V”. (Decades in, I still have trouble using those numerals to refer to what I long regarded as “Star Wars one and two”.) A more serious problem was Montgomery Clift’s auto accident during the filming of Raintree County. After patching Monty up, he wasn’t the Frankenstinian spectacle that audiences ghoulishly expected, but he was no longer the actor he had once been, and the handful of Raintree scenes that had to intercut before-and-after shots as if they were made at the same time were obvious.  

    Another is about Movie Jail, and the way it can be anything from a probationary slap on the wrist, to Hollywood’s self-determined substitute for the real thing, the prison sentence that civil society was unable or unwilling to impose on a celebrity defendant. 

     

    • #113
  24. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    This thread is now 72 hours old, a good time to thank anyone who made it this far! I can see a couple of possible follow-up posts.

    One would be When the Actor Dies, covering cases like the aforementioned James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Oliver Reed as well as others mentioned by commenters here, like Nancy Marchant on The Sopranos. I have to admit, kind of ruefully, that it would be less about the human factor, the families involved and the pain of loss, than it would be about the tough decisions that have to be made and the often-complicated logistics of completing the movie–or not.

    A grim subsection of this subject would be cases where the actor survives an accident, but with visible disfigurement. A mild example is Mark Hamill between Star Wars “IV” and “V”. (Decades in, I still have trouble using those numerals to refer to what I long regarded as “Star Wars one and two”.) A more serious problem was Montgomery Clift’s auto accident during the filming of Raintree County. After patching Monty up, he wasn’t the Frankenstinian spectacle that audiences ghoulishly expected, but he was no longer the actor he had once been, and the handful of Raintree scenes that had to intercut before-and-after shots as if they were made at the same time were obvious.

    Another is about Movie Jail, and the way it can be anything from a probationary slap on the wrist, to Hollywood’s self-determined substitute for the real thing, the prison sentence that civil society was unable or unwilling to impose on a celebrity defendant.

     

    Eileen Brennan was in an accident, right?  And maybe Karen Black?  Not sure about her; might have been something else.

    • #114
  25. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Film studios are not always the most appealing objects of sympathy, but spare a sigh of relief for Warner Bros., producers of the Harry Potter series.

    It’s one thing when a company hires a 37 year old actor to be a new James Bond, hoping to get a dozen years, or a half dozen pictures out of him before they move on to the next Bond. It’s another thing when you’re hiring a twelve year old kid, hoping to do the same. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong over that agonizingly long climb onto a pyramid of billions of dollars. Sure, like the Bond series the Potter series could have been recast in the middle, and lesser roles were, but losing that particular star would have hurt.

    But Daniel Radcliffe stayed cheerful and sane, didn’t get tattooed up, didn’t do drugs, and basically kept his offscreen mouth shut.  

    • #115
  26. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Film studios are not always the most appealing objects of sympathy, but spare a sigh of relief for Warner Bros., producers of the Harry Potter series.

    It’s one thing when a company hires a 37 year old actor to be a new James Bond, hoping to get a dozen years, or a half dozen pictures out of him before they move on to the next Bond. It’s another thing when you’re hiring a twelve year old kid, hoping to do the same. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong over that agonizingly long climb onto a pyramid of billions of dollars. Sure, like the Bond series the Potter series could have been recast in the middle, and lesser roles were, but losing that particular star would have hurt.

    But Daniel Radcliffe stayed cheerful and sane, didn’t get tattooed up, didn’t do drugs, and basically kept his offscreen mouth shut.

    There are many YouTube videos devoted to the long list of rules the kids had to follow for the entire contract period.

    • #116
  27. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Film studios are not always the most appealing objects of sympathy, but spare a sigh of relief for Warner Bros., producers of the Harry Potter series.

    It’s one thing when a company hires a 37 year old actor to be a new James Bond, hoping to get a dozen years, or a half dozen pictures out of him before they move on to the next Bond. It’s another thing when you’re hiring a twelve year old kid, hoping to do the same. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong over that agonizingly long climb onto a pyramid of billions of dollars. Sure, like the Bond series the Potter series could have been recast in the middle, and lesser roles were, but losing that particular star would have hurt.

    But Daniel Radcliffe stayed cheerful and sane, didn’t get tattooed up, didn’t do drugs, and basically kept his offscreen mouth shut.

    There are many YouTube videos devoted to the long list of rules the kids had to follow for the entire contract period.

    https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/entertainment/a9983072/why-crabbe-replaced-last-harry-potter-film/

     

    • #117
  28. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Film studios are not always the most appealing objects of sympathy, but spare a sigh of relief for Warner Bros., producers of the Harry Potter series.

    It’s one thing when a company hires a 37 year old actor to be a new James Bond, hoping to get a dozen years, or a half dozen pictures out of him before they move on to the next Bond. It’s another thing when you’re hiring a twelve year old kid, hoping to do the same. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong over that agonizingly long climb onto a pyramid of billions of dollars. Sure, like the Bond series the Potter series could have been recast in the middle, and lesser roles were, but losing that particular star would have hurt.

    But Daniel Radcliffe stayed cheerful and sane, didn’t get tattooed up, didn’t do drugs, and basically kept his offscreen mouth shut.

    There are many YouTube videos devoted to the long list of rules the kids had to follow for the entire contract period.

    And they seem to have stuck to them better than the kids in Fifties TV shows like The Mickey Mouse Club or Father Knows Best. 

    • #118
  29. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Film studios are not always the most appealing objects of sympathy, but spare a sigh of relief for Warner Bros., producers of the Harry Potter series.

    It’s one thing when a company hires a 37 year old actor to be a new James Bond, hoping to get a dozen years, or a half dozen pictures out of him before they move on to the next Bond. It’s another thing when you’re hiring a twelve year old kid, hoping to do the same. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong over that agonizingly long climb onto a pyramid of billions of dollars. Sure, like the Bond series the Potter series could have been recast in the middle, and lesser roles were, but losing that particular star would have hurt.

    But Daniel Radcliffe stayed cheerful and sane, didn’t get tattooed up, didn’t do drugs, and basically kept his offscreen mouth shut.

    There are many YouTube videos devoted to the long list of rules the kids had to follow for the entire contract period.

    And they seem to have stuck to them better than the kids in Fifties TV shows like The Mickey Mouse Club or Father Knows Best.

    Or Wendy Ward of “Wendy Ward, Elephant Princess.”  (reference to the great show “Action!” starring Jay Mohr and others.)

    • #119
  30. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Well…I bet you can guess what time it is on the west coast of the USA…so I’ll take my leave and see you guys tomorrow. 

    • #120
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