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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
Fifteen year old daughter just learned this news. She’s not happy. We suggested she write to Disney about how they were wrong to fire a strong female character and role model for millions of girls like her.
And maybe put on the sad puppy dog eyes. Which always works on me.
Ah, yes – the puppy dog eyes (otherwise known as Bambi eyes). The infallible technique for getting dad to do what you want. However, Disney created Bambi, so I think they are immune to its effect.
More Kafkaesque IMO
If you believe Hollywood, McCarthyism was much worse. After all didn’t Walter White have to write a whole bunch of B movies from his bathtub because he was a communist? Or was it that Dalton Trumbo lost his health care for being a communist and had to cook meth…I get those confused.
BOOM. Cancelled them right back.
You know Bambi was a boy, right? Your daughter isn’t giving you “Bambi eyes”. Unless, of course, … never mind. /:
Those eyes transcend gender and species.
It works for both sexes until a certain age. Both my boys used them when they were toddlers; however, they have quite the opposite impact were they to use them now. My daughter, at 23, still uses them effectively, mainly because I am a sap.
Especially since her most recent tweet is an opportunity to explore the truth.
Plus, the crap that your kids watch on D+ is terrible for their developing brains.
Except Phineas & Ferb. Phineas & Ferb is unadulterated genius. And I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.
I absolutely hate that show. Truth. My nephew watched it. I had to exit the room.
Maybe it has a special draw for men?
Anyway, bring out the gloves. 😉
Reruns of the original Duck Tales are also good (the first episode of the remake was surprisingly decent, but I wasn’t willing to shell out money to watch the rest of them).
I might have to quit ricochet over this, I don’t know if I want to be associated with people who can’t appreciate P&F.
Twitter founder Jack “Weird Beard” Dorsey once described the founders’ vision of the new site as (emphasis mine):
Oh, theyz were the doze (all the way back in 2006 or so). I was around for the early days of the “home” and “end user” computing saga (mid 1970s onward) and I remember when the bearded fellows leading the charge actually were brilliant, transgressive, very genuine and often very grubby, young men whose overarching vision was to change the world–not to give dilettantes with nothing else to do a platform to share “short bursts of inconsequential information,” with people on their “buddy list.” It was a fun and exciting time.
And then it got serious, mostly because IBM
sashayedstomped into the arena with its corporate culture and its suits, and bigfooted the joy out of it, cancelling most of the upstarts, and imposing the conformity of what was, at the time, Big Tech on the new industry. Almost overnight, it seemed, the life went out of it, and we all fell in line.If there ever was joy in Twitter (I wouldn’t know) I expect that much of it had to do with the fact that one could simply sound off in 140 characters (120 really, because 20 was reserved for the name) or less, with whatever was on one’s mind. And that no-one really took what was said on it it all that seriously because then, as now, it wasn’t a majority of the population speaking.
But then something changed. And suddenly, Twitter was “a social network,” and there was “social pressure” and every spontaneous Tweet, was treated as oracular and consequential, just as every off-hand and juvenile remark anyone’s ever made has become a deal, a career, and a life-breaker. And the curators of the Internet impose judgment and sentence on all those who don’t meet their standards for…whatever their standards are at the time and on the day.
And people were ruined as a result.
And we all fell in line.
Now, Jack Dorsey, who’s in his fifth decade on this earth, looks and dresses like a vagrant (while he enjoys the $13B or so fruits of his labors) and lectures the rest of us on the perils of spreading “misinformation.” Spare me, please.
WRT Gina Carano (who I don’t know anything about, and not a moment of whose oeuvre I’ve ever witnessed): Yeah. I get it. Invoking the holocaust or Hitler probably isn’t ever helpful. But if her point (and she probably had one) was that the human face of evil works best when deployed by its agents not only from the top down, but also from the bottom up (friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor, red against blue, left against right, men against women, gay against straight, and so on), then I really have no argument with what she said.
I think it changed when cable “news” went from reporting, y’know, news, to just repeating whatever they were seeing on twitter, and actually showing tweets on air.
Very, very good point.
That’s even happening to local news. I guess there’s a big scandal over at UW-Eau Claire right now because some student said something racist on Snapchat. And the local news decided it was newsworthy, and to make sure everyone knew the offender’s name. And now we have to have sit-ins and struggle sessions, and the whole administration is fretting about what they can do to make sure there’s no racism on campus. As if its the administration’s job to police everyone’s social media to make sure that everyone is free of wrong-think. And the local news was all “What can we do to stop racism on campus?!” (to which I replied on their Facebook post: “Close the campus. It’s the only way.”)
All because somebody said something on Snapchat.
My kids are going to trade school.
Why does everyone focus on Disney drivel The Mandelorian??
She was in Deadpool, man. Now, that’s acting chops, right there.
I have not seen/heard that she made a big issue of her co-star making the same analogy to a politically correct view, which makes her a woman of character.
Probably because it’s the best Star Wars thing since the original.
But that’s because secret conservatives are working on it.
Agree wholeheartedly. The truly heinous past should be reserved for the truly heinous in the present. Which is why I took note upon hearing a man like Dennis Prager, who actively practices his Jewish faith, refer to post-Jan6 suppression as reminiscent of the Reichstag fire events. Nothing that’s happened since has made me think he was incorrect in his analogy.
I’m not watching the current impeachment. I am, however, aware that there is a direct and short distance from impeaching Donald Trump to labeling anyone who voted for him (or disagrees with the Left) as domestic terrorists to enacting legislation to monitor and silence those terrorists. Dems have already tipped their hand on it.
My take on Gina Carano’s “outrageous” comment (from the PIT):
haha. don’t go.
Funny, the only creatures who think bird chirps are irrelevant are creatures who don’t understand what birds have to say.
And maybe that is the biggest problem, every meaning is lost in some distorted translation, or complete lack of understanding. Or a complete refusal to acknowledge that all birds are allowed to chirp, and we understand which birds are malicious destroyers, like blue jays.
Haha, mockingbirds. 😅
Oh, they decided she was the wrong role model. Thank goodness she’s going to Daily Wire. I think I’ll sign up now . . .
Yep, my three daughters have me wrapped around their fingers. Oldest does this thing where she approaches me and says, “Daaaaaaaaddy?” That’s how I know she wants something . . .
In this family, it’s called “pushing the ‘Dad,’ button,” and daughters are never too old, too independent, or too married to enjoy its benefits.