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The Dangers of Debating the Debatable
Gina Carano is an interesting person. She’s extremely athletic (her father was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys) and she was a standout in mixed martial arts, competing very successfully in two professional leagues, with an overall professional record of 19-2-1. She is beautiful, and was featured in Maxim and ESPN The Magazine. She then moved into acting, where she has starred in Fast & Furious, Deadpool, and The Mandalorian, among other projects. The Mandalorian is a Lucasfilm spinoff of Star Wars and is turning into its own extremely successful franchise, which should pay Carano handsomely for years to come. Except it won’t, because Lucasfilm just fired her, because she’s an out of the closet conservative. Check out this explanation of her firing from an article on CNet:
Carano, who played Cara Dune for two seasons of The Mandalorian, has come under fire before for her political social media comments. Late last year, the actress mocked mask-wearing during the pandemic, suggested voter fraud had occurred during the 2020 presidential election, liked posts disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement and derided the use of pronouns on social media bios.
Let’s take those one at a time. Ok, so she mocked mask-wearing during the pandemic. Have masks helped reduce the spread of the disease? Perhaps, but the data on that is very unclear, and one can certainly understand the skepticism of some people. Japan wears masks religiously, and they’re getting hammered by COVID right now. I’m not defending either point of view, I’m just acknowledging that debate on this topic is understandable. It’s not allowed, but it’s understandable.
Next, she suggested that voter fraud had occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Considering the remarkable swings that took place in the weeks after election, in very specific districts of very specific states, one can understand why some might wonder about that. Perhaps there was voter fraud. Perhaps not. I’m not defending either point of view, I’m just acknowledging that debate on this topic is understandable. It’s not allowed, but it’s understandable.
Then, she liked posts disparaging the Black Lives Matter movement. One might think that any movement that used such ruthless and violent tactics to promote vague solutions to even more vague problems would open itself up to the occasional disparaging post. Did BLM act appropriately? Perhaps, I suppose, but that’s extremely questionable. I’m not defending either point of view, I’m just acknowledging that debate on this topic is understandable. It’s not allowed, but it’s understandable.
Lastly, Ms. Carano stands accused of deriding the use of pronouns. This sounds ridiculous, as I doubt that Ms. Carano has strong feelings against any part of speech. So whoever wrote this article is intentionally concealing Ms. Carano’s efforts to point out the silliness of the 137 genders and all their various pronouns, and suggesting instead that she is waging an absurd war on grammar. Now, one could make the case that our array of newly discovered genders is reasonable. I’m not defending either point of view, I’m just acknowledging that debate on this topic is understandable. It’s not allowed, but it’s understandable.
So Ms. Carano lost a multi-million dollar contract, and all the acting gigs that it might have led to, because she debated four things that are most certainly debatable. I haven’t read her actual Tweets. She may have been rude. I’m not sure. The article doesn’t suggest that she was. But even if she was, her points were fair.
And now she’s gone from being an extremely highly paid actress to being unemployed.
There is a reason I write behind a pseudonym. Heck, I recently considered just leaving Ricochet and keeping my head down. These are scary times. Ms. Carano tried to have an honest conversation, and openly stated what she thinks about things. You might agree with her. You might not. But she told you what she thinks about things. And her acting career is probably over.
Because you’re not allowed to think those things.
Even though these things are clearly debatable. In fact, I suspect that the left knows just how debatable these things really are, which is why they’ve outlawed debate. If they knew they were in the right, they would encourage debate. Because they know they’d win.
But because they know they’ll probably lose an honest debate, a pretty lady who doesn’t know her place is out millions of dollars, and a life of fame and excitement.
If you wonder why conservatives won’t stand up for themselves, this is why.
Published in General
Although she’s been under fire all last year (by the left wingnuts) the breaking point for Disney was that she allegedly Tweeted something anti-Semitic. Which is how all the left-wing rags are reporting it. But they’re not quoting what she said. They’re just saying “anti-Semitic Tweets.”
Here’s what she said:
Yeah, totally anti-Semitic, innit?
Lucasfilm’s excuse:
Wait? Are they mad that she was denigrating Nazis?
That’s Orewellian. Dang…
I heard an interview with her on a podcast (I think the Federalist) and IIRC she has been hounded for a while over comments on the multiple gender issue but said that Star Wars fans had still been very supportive. It’ll be very interesting if they push back.
BTW, her interview is well worth a listen. Her charm came through clearly. Some very funny stories about her mom buying her action figure at a toy store (this is my daughter!) and in her doctor’s waiting room as everyone whispered “that’s Gina’s mom”.
I already have a total crush on her so maybe I’m not the person to listen to.
I tried to click Triple-Like for every single paragraph of this article, but I am not very good with computers and couldn’t figure out how. But now you know what I think about it.
Ugh. This whole turn of events frustrates me. I’ve been a fan of Gina Carano’s for a while, mainly because she’s a successful, strong, opinionated woman who doesn’t play by Hollywood’s {insert a string of adjectives} rules.
With one foot in the business world and the other in the filmmaking world, I see firsthand, daily, where both are so heavily influenced and impacted (not in a good way) by sociopolitical issues and the “virtues” of being liberal. As a conservative it’s very difficult to hold my tongue in professional situations where (unbeknownst to the client) my beliefs are being ridiculed and insulted. But … business is business and, at the end of the day, my responsibility is to get the job done and make the money.
That said, I have been much more intentional over the past six months in seeking out like-minded people with whom to do business. Those efforts are starting to pay off, so here’s hoping our client mix will soon be less out of balance than it has been. Because this holding my tongue thing is getting old and I’m growing ever more ready to speak out — and for that, I am certain there will be consequences.
I assume Disney/Lucasfilm will only listen to the Wokefans. A very tiny percentage.
My teenage daughters really enjoy her on the show. This will be another opportunity to “red pill” them.
Yeah, I have been totally baffled by this “controversy.” More so than usual, I mean. Ordinarily, even if I think their views are irrational and wrongheaded, I can decipher the misguided logic of the progressive types to at least understand what nonsensical assertion they’re advancing. In this case, though, I’m at a loss. I have read and reread the text of Carano’s tweet, and I can’t even guess what they’re seeing in it that is in any way offensive. I am certain that they disagree with what she’s saying, and I get that; but where did she say anything that could possibly be interpreted as “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”?
It’s almost as if they were waiting for a good excuse to fire her, and lacking one, they just made one up. And just as with the “Trump is racist” trope, the leftists are perfectly willing to accept the conclusion without asking whether it’s supported by any data.
She made an analogy between Nazi Germany and America. Granted, her co-star did the same but he put pronouns in his bio (she used the pronouns “boop/bop/beep” which evidently are the only words that don’t count as valid pronouns).
Yeah, but Pedro Pascal was saying that Trump was a Nazi. So that’s okay with Disney.
(I think he also made crude comments about Trump voters, too. But again, that’s okay.)
I liked that they had a woman character who kicked butt and actually looked like she could kick your butt. Nothing wrong with watching Scarelett Johansson fight six guys at once, but you do need to suspend belief a bit.
Man, that’s disgusting. What have we become?
I don’t think that McCarthyism was ever this venomous. The left wants to destroy us. We’d better fight back.
I’d pay to see a film with Ms Carano in the cast.
But you, Disney? Not a groat, not a tuppence, not a ha’penny.
Speaking of using politically unacceptable Nazi comparisons on the internet, I’m practically at the point where I view anybody who says that Cancel Culture doesn’t exist in pretty much the same way as I view people who say that the holocaust didn’t happen.
This is exactly the sort of thing that led to the holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide.
In defense of McCarthyism, he was fighting to prevent the Commies from taking over and giving us this kind of cancel culture and RightThink and general Corporate Fascism.
Yes, yes it is.
I think you’re right; this looks like they wanted to get rid of her and found a flimsy excuse. It may or may not be politics behind it. When Jeremy Clarkson was fired from Top Gear, people were surprised; “surely, one minor incident of being a jerk didn’t cause a show to lose its top star”. And it didn’t; Clarkson had been an egotistical pain for years, but like Charlie Sheen, the costs of doing something about it seemed impossibly high until the moment when something snapped, and management decided, “Life is too short for this”.
If we already know everything there is to know about Carano, then I agree with Dr. Bastiat; this is ridiculous. I’m as hair-trigger sensitive to actual, genuine anti-Semitism as anyone else on here, and her quotes don’t even come close. As a factual matter, I disagree with her about a lot of this, probably much or most of what she’s said. But nothing approaches a firing offense, unless Disney has suddenly adopted a “no controversy” policy, which they haven’t.
The scary thing to me is, I don’t think this is a case of Hollywood being horrified by her remarks; it’s a case where they sincerely think the country as a whole is horrified by her remarks, and they’re just acting as protectors of the show’s popularity. The old Hollywood knew damn well that most of the country disagreed with them. The new crowd thinks everyone has the attitudes of 22 year old interns at The Atlantic.
Having said all that, I have some advice for fellow conservatives: Invoking slavery and/or the holocaust is usually a really stupid idea that, for some conservatives, seems like a really clever idea. If you’re going to reach that high for a comparison, there ought to be a damn good reason. It seldom is.
Ahhh… the power of Star Wars. I’ve seen what… five minutes of the Mandalorian?
I think firing her was wrong. At the same time, she had to know she was being the right-leaning squeaky wheel in a notoriously liberal hugbox company and fandom. Disney wants people talking about the show– not her twitter feed– and it seems she wanted people to talk about her twitter feed.
That said, what makes the firing quite troublesome isn’t the hypocrisy (we know the deck is stacked against right leaning thought). What makes the firing troublesome is that it seems the animus her tweet generated was generated by a misreading. She wasn’t saying anything anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish. She wasn’t saying Republicans were like holocaust survivors (some people said she was). She was just making a point about the value of accepting the humanity of those you disagree with, and the consequences of what happens when one doesn’t. Let’s grant it was made poorly. Still, her point isn’t even a properly partisan point. In a lot of ways its baffling.
She’s my latest hero.
I had never heard of this woman before today. I’m sorry to learn that this is happening again.
The beep/bop/boop thing is genuinely hilarious. I’ve been chuckling about it all morning.
My wife read this article. She liked it but said there is a typo. This got my competitive self fired up. (I don’t play sports any more, so competitive proofreading is what gets my juices flowing.)
I searched and searched for the error. There was no way I was going to ask for a hint where it was. After five minutes or so, though, I gave up. It still took me a while with her pointing to the paragraph to see it.
She got that knowing look. “I know why you couldn’t find it. It’s because of the picture right next to it.”
I had to admit she was right. I am usually a close reader, but I realized that every time I try to concentrate on the text of that paragraph, my eyes and my mind wandered.
I had to concede that under these circumstances, women are the superior sex as regards reading skills.
Also, the superior sex as regards being the subjects of photographs.
Help me out – I don’t see it.
Once I looked for it I saw it right away.
I’m multi-faceted that way. (hint)
If she’s an anti-Semite then every gay person who has compared their mistreatment to that of blacks is a racist. Of course such a comparison doesn’t mean that they are racists.
BTW, Carano’s character is retired military.
There was a time in America where we celebrated Christianity, military service, and other apple pie things. During that time we denigrated gays and, for lack of a better word, “marginalized” black people and Jews.
It is confusing to me that people can feel enlightened by switching who they marginalize, as opposed to, say, maybe not marginalizing anyone.
Martin Luther King was extremely careful about this. He understood that if he went down that road, he’d lose all his hard-fought moral authority. He repeatedly emphasized that he didn’t want revenge against whites. He wanted a colorblind society.
Now, the mere suggestion of a colorblind society makes one racist. How, you ask? It’s complicated…
Martin Luther King wanted freedom. The modern left wants control.
It’s an important distinction, which many people today seem to overlook.
My wife finds typos like the Electrolux does what it is famous for. I always thought that was because she inherited a brain that read every word while I read in large groups of words moving vertically down the page instead of horizontally word by word. An attractive photograph of a woman can certainly disrupt my gaze.
Yes, especially if the woman is also attractive.
This is the second time in the last two weeks I’ve seen it said that someone “liked” certain posts and shouldn’t have because doing so indicated some type of moral failing–that was what got Marjorie Taylor Greene in trouble too.
Who is researching people’s likes? How are they doing it? Why is anyone in the press accepting this as damning since it can’t be proven whether the targeted-for-persecution public figure actually pressed the button? It is easy to like something accidentally or to like something that you agree with a sentence of but not the whole thing. Furthermore, the owners of the social media platforms should have spelled this out in their terms of service, that they could sell your likes. I wonder if it is spelled out that way.
Do the persecutors have people reading posts that other people have written to see who has liked it? How is this search being done, I wonder. Are a person’s likes being stored with that person’s name? So once they find the person’s name, they can search for the posts that the person has liked?
Good grief.
At some point, Republicans will have to stand up to these persecutors, if not now, then later. This can’t go on.
One thing a lot of people don’t know is that the commenter owns the copyright to his or her comments as well as posts. I wonder if that’s true for likes as well, and I wonder if that could be some sort of angle of protection for people.
Republicans are kinda busy right now, purging Republicans from the Republican party. That will probably keep them occupied for a while.