James Gunn

There is a conservative propagandist who got James Gunn fired this week because of some stupid jokes about rape and pedopilia he made on Twitter years ago. He’s digging up old Tweets on a bunch of people he sees as enemies of the GOP agenda, trying to get them fired as well. He was one of the main instigators in the whole stupid Pizzagate fiasco. He isn’t really offended or upset, he’s just using any method he can to attack his foes, and playing on people’s emotions to do it.
Now the jokes James Gunn made were kind of dumb, and offensive, but they were just jokes. There was no hatred or malice behind them. But whatever, Disney has a right to hire or fire whomever they want, and to protect their image. I’m not really going to die on that hill, defending a grown man who made public jokes about taboo subjects he knew would cause controversy. You live by the sword, you die by the sword, lesson learned.
What really gets me is the absurdity of how no one gets context, or how outrage trumps logic. A guy who made some off color jokes about pedophiles is now not allowed to make a goofy movie about space that includes a talking raccoon and a tree, and because of this some people feel full of righteous pride and that justice was served. Meanwhile, Subway had an actual pedophile as their spokesperson, and became aware of it and tried to hide it, but they are still selling millions of sandwiches. The Catholic Church has been reeling from a sexual abuse scandal that they enabled and tried to cover up, and is still happening, yet millions of people still belong to it. Some of those same catholics are happy that James Gunn is getting punished for jokes while giving money to a religious organization that houses pedophiles. There are still plenty of people who are incensed that Penn State got hit with sanctions and the coach that oversaw a program that enabled someone to rape children got fired and had his legacy tarnished.
We are living in a time where words seem to have more weight than the actual atrocities they are referencing. We are more concerned with jokes about these subjects than the fact that every second children are being harmed. Physically and sexually abused, bullied and tormented, murdered in class by some deranged gunman, taken from their parents at the border, the list goes on and on. We sit and argue semantics, and trade propaganda, but still nothing gets done on those fronts. Maybe the reason some people get so offended by jokes on this subject is because the jokes remind us how ineffectual we are to do anything about the real problems. People can push stuff out of their mind that they find unpleasant, and being reminded that it’s there makes them uncomfortable. Maybe going after a comedian or writer makes them feel like they are doing something, I don’t know.
Like I said, I’m not going to spend a lot of time defending a guy who made some offensive jokes, that’s not really my battle. I just think it’s hilarious that people are so easily manipulated, and how much they love drama; meanwhile truly horrendous shit goes on everyday and they somehow find a way to justify it and live with it because it’s easier that way. A lot of things in the world are this way, and I figured out a while ago that very little of it matters. More correctly, a lot of it matters at the time, but it won’t in a week or so because something else will take its place. The things that really matter are constantly protected by bullshit, and smoke and mirrors, so getting exasperated and making yourself miserable because of it is a waste of time.
It’s all one big hilarious joke, and it’s on us, so why waste a lot of time chasing dragons and tilting at windmills and getting upset? Figure out what to do to change it if you can, but don’t let it drive you crazy, and don’t let the absurdity of life take all the fun out of it. Work smart, and you can’t do that if you’re constantly agitated and losing focus on what’s important. If you obsess over it, you usually end up losing sight of what you were upset about in the first place, and you just become part of the show, and why would you want that?