3 unpopular opinions
Feeling contrary this morning. Have some unpopular fannish opinions.
1) I've quietly gritted my teeth and rolled my eyes at all the hoopla over Isaiah Washington these past months, because I expected it to blow over like any other celebrity gaffe. But now, the guy has been fired. I'm sure that makes a lot of people proud. I'm sure that people think they've pressured the network into setting some example against hate speech, but I say bull. I think it's pretty obvious that ABC is only firing him now because they think public opinion is against him, NOT because of what he did. Not showing up to work (a la Lindsay Lohan) is a fire-able offense, not getting into an argument with another member of the cast--no matter how stupid and offensive the argument itself (or language used) might have been. Whatever he did or did not do (and I think people have taken an awful lot of liberty with assuming connotations and context, perhaps the primary problem with adopting these celeb scandals for public debate), the man has obviously cooperated with the increasingly humiliating and just plain stupid demands of the network's PR machine (and still people blame him for participating in the whole media machine and pick apart his "attitude" when he tapes a PSA--of course it's canned and artificial, people!). Maybe it was a symptom of a larger problem with his reliability or work ethic or even attitude--I hope so, because otherwise, this world just got a lot more ridiculous--but it isn't fair for the network to dump it all on the "hate speech."
2) I don't think fandom should pull up and leave LJ. Yeah, they pulled a stupid move. Yeah, they offended a lot of us. The idea of leaving "en masse" is stupid, though, because it basically tells these people that they won, and, hey, we *are* ashamed of ourselves!
3) Related to the above, stop calling these watchdog groups "fundamentalist" and "right-wing" just to make your (unrelated) point. It's irritating to someone who identifies themselves as both right-wing AND fundamentalist but also strongly disagrees with their agenda and methods. Call them extremists and be done with it (it's not the same thing), or be more accurate and call them arrogant and misguided, because both of those fit.
1) I've quietly gritted my teeth and rolled my eyes at all the hoopla over Isaiah Washington these past months, because I expected it to blow over like any other celebrity gaffe. But now, the guy has been fired. I'm sure that makes a lot of people proud. I'm sure that people think they've pressured the network into setting some example against hate speech, but I say bull. I think it's pretty obvious that ABC is only firing him now because they think public opinion is against him, NOT because of what he did. Not showing up to work (a la Lindsay Lohan) is a fire-able offense, not getting into an argument with another member of the cast--no matter how stupid and offensive the argument itself (or language used) might have been. Whatever he did or did not do (and I think people have taken an awful lot of liberty with assuming connotations and context, perhaps the primary problem with adopting these celeb scandals for public debate), the man has obviously cooperated with the increasingly humiliating and just plain stupid demands of the network's PR machine (and still people blame him for participating in the whole media machine and pick apart his "attitude" when he tapes a PSA--of course it's canned and artificial, people!). Maybe it was a symptom of a larger problem with his reliability or work ethic or even attitude--I hope so, because otherwise, this world just got a lot more ridiculous--but it isn't fair for the network to dump it all on the "hate speech."
2) I don't think fandom should pull up and leave LJ. Yeah, they pulled a stupid move. Yeah, they offended a lot of us. The idea of leaving "en masse" is stupid, though, because it basically tells these people that they won, and, hey, we *are* ashamed of ourselves!
3) Related to the above, stop calling these watchdog groups "fundamentalist" and "right-wing" just to make your (unrelated) point. It's irritating to someone who identifies themselves as both right-wing AND fundamentalist but also strongly disagrees with their agenda and methods. Call them extremists and be done with it (it's not the same thing), or be more accurate and call them arrogant and misguided, because both of those fit.