Disney should rehire James Gun.

The online campaign that led to his firing was an orchestrated hit-job with purely political motivations. Gunn was a vocal liberal who used his voice and his standing to shout his opposition to the current administration and its defenders. This made him beloved by some and hated by others but it was politics and when attacked Conservative darling Ben Shapiro that was pebble that started the landslide. The Daily Caller then went and dug up old bad-taste humor from nearly a decade ago, jokes, posts, and tweets, that Gunn had address and apologized for years ago. After The Caller resurfaced these ‘issues’ it was picked up by two alt-right personalities, one of whom helped spread the insane ‘pizza-gate’ conspiracy, and they drummed up the alt-right into attack mode, scaring Disney, ever fearful of anything that might stain their ‘wholesome’ image, into firing Gunn.

This was not morality. This was not ‘standards of good taste.’ This was payback for standing against the administration and having a soapbox that allowed such standing to be seen by far too many people.

The Gunn Affair is no way analogous with what happened with Rosanne Barr. There are critical differences between the two cases. Rosanne’s offensive statements were not dug up from nearly a decade in the past but were reflections of her current mindset about what she deemed acceptable and what was not. Roseanne, already in the hot glare of the spotlight, riding a wave of intense publicity centered around her attitude and politics engaged in her inexcusable behavior and then when called out on her obnoxious attack on particular people instead of apologizing she attempted to hide her culpability behind prescription drugs. The most important difference between the two isn’t centered about when it happened, or the sufficiency of their apologies but rather is ground in this very simple fact; bad taste jokes about rape and bestiality are not rape and bestiality but racist jokes areracist. Rosanne Barr suffered the immediate effects of shouting vile, racist, personal attacks in the public sphere This is not at all what happened with James Gunn and his bad taste, (and frankly unfunny) jokes uttered many years ago.

I have heard the argument that really this is all because the ‘SJWs’ started this sort of public personal destruction. I guess, though it is not clear, that the intention of such a comment is to say that the true people are fault and who should shoulder the blame for this is are the ‘SJWs’ for unleashing this tactic. (Side note; I think anyone who utters ‘SJW’ as a pejorative is no better than those who toss about ‘teabagger’ in a similar fashion. It’s nothing but a cheap ad hominem.)

First off if that is your position I would think very carefully before deploying that line of reasoning. Applied to other social/political issues, laying the responsibility at the toolmakers versus the tool users leads guilty parties you would not want to be found culpable.

Second, I remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the conservative feeding frenzy against the country music group The Dixie Chicks. Fanning public outrage over a celebrity’s political beliefs is nothing new and not a tactic that can be ascribed as the fault of a single side in American politics. When a street criminal killed Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben Peter was not responsible, the gun manufacturer was not responsible, the street criminal bears all the blame. The conservative alt-right is responsible for this campaign against James Gunn and Disney is responsible for their cowardly caving.