This post is an update on the firing (not cancellation) of Gina Carano and the seemingly endless whining by Reactionary Conservatives about “cancel” culture. It also concerns Ben Shapiro, who is now in a deal to make movies with her.
I won’t bother to detail any of Shapiro’s arguments supporting Carano as a victim of “cancel culture.” Instead, let me share a few thoughts on the conservative notion of “cancel” culture expressed by Shapiro (who goes on and on about this claim) and others.
Gina Carano was not “cancelled.” She was fired. And she was not fired because of her conservative views. She was fired because what she did and said was stupid.
-Carano is dishonest. If she was honest about her beliefs she would not have been working in Hollywood in the first place.
If Carano really is the proud, fierce, unapologetic conservative she claims, and if she really believed that conservatives are “cancelled” for their political beliefs, what the hell was she doing working in Hollywood? Why did she take the job at Lucasfilms and do two movies over several years with them?
She took the job because she wanted to be a movie star, and was happy to work with liberals because they made that possible. During her entire time making the Mandalorian movies the repulsive, Stalinist liberal agenda of Hollywood elitists did not bother her. In the same way, her very sincere conservative views didn’t bother Lucasfilms or Disney either. Ben Shapiro has made a big deal that Disney disclosed two weeks before the fact that they wanted her gone. But for two full years they employed her. She was kept on because her stupid mouth did not get in the way of her work.
If Gina Carano really believed that liberals hate conservatives just for their political beliefs then she should never have gone to Hollywood in the first place. Every conservative knows that Hollywood is run by liberals. Ah yes, but she wanted to be big star!
-Like every other ordinary employee, Carano was an at-will employee.
I covered this in the first post, but here is the same argument from the other side of the “cancellation.”
In the free market economy of America, private companies have great latitude to fire people for almost any reason they choose. This is what is known as at-will employment.
Companies can not fire an employee just for who they are. For instance, it is illegal to fire people just for being black, or Jewish, or Catholic or looking suspicious. And good luck trying to fire someone just for having conservative views. That will get you into a ton of trouble. But, they can fire people all the time - at will - for their actions.
Carano worked with Lucasfilms and Disney for two years - and never had a problem. Until she started doing and tweeting things that her employers felt reflected badly on them, embarrassed them, or got their viewers angry.
Did it never occur to Carano that making anti-transgender tweets would alienate a lot of people and bring criticism down on Disney? And did it not occur to her that it was her employers, Lucasfilms and Disney, that got to decide if her tweets sounded bigoted?
Disney is led by Robert Iger, a Jew. Lucasfilms is owned by George Lucas (a Methodist), who has close friends and collaborators such as Steven Spielberg (a Jew), and who uses directors like J.J. Abrams (a Jew, and the director of two Star Wars movies) and actors like Aaron Ehrenreich (a Jew who played the role of young Han Solo), and Harrison Ford (half Jewish), and actresses like Carrie Fisher (Jewish on her father’s side and even attended Orthodox services)?
Did Carano not understand that her employers and others might have thoughts and experiences that would make them believe her tweets about Jews and conservatives were anti-Semitic? And did it not occur to her that they get to decide if they are anti-Semitic or not? Did it not occur to her that the executives at UTA (her talent agency) and Hasbro Co.(who decided not to produce an action figure based on her) also might have been offended and angered.
In his Daily Wire program I could not get over the number of times that Shapiro kept trying to defend Carano by saying about her tweets “that’s not a cancellable thing,” and “that doesn’t deserve cancellation.”
Why can’t conservatives grasp this simple fact: if you work for someone they get to decide if your words and actions justify your firing. That is what an at-will employee has to face. You don’t decide - they do. It’s tough, but live with it!
-Carano needs to get rid of her sense of self entitlement.
Carano, like most conservatives, has a sense of entitlement that makes her think that she has a right to something when she has no right to it at all.
When you enter a bar or a restaurant, ever notice that little sign that says, “The management reserves the right to deny service to anyone.” That sign is to remind people that they are customers, not owners, of the establishment, and therefore have no right to receive food or drink there if the real management does not want them.
Regardless of what Shapiro and other Reactionary Conservatives want to believe, Carano was properly and legally cut loose from The Mandalorian. Know why? Because - wait for it - Lucasfilms and Disney are entitled to fire any employee at will for behavior they find to be contrary to their interest. That’s who has the entitlement! And you can not “cancel” out their right to do so!
The same thing is just as true for all the whiny Reactionaries who got kicked off of Twitter or Facebook and snivel about being “cancelled” (and being silenced, or muzzled or … whatever).
Get this straight: none of you is entitled to any platform or media outlet if the owners don’t want you. You are not entitled to their platform for your views if you don’t abide by their rules. Why? Because they are private companies in a free enterprise capitalistic society who are entitled to exercise their legal rights to kick you out. If Reactionary Conservatives can’t accept this reality then they should go to Russia, or China, or wherever there are no private companies and the state decides who gets a forum.
-Gina Carano, Ben Shapiro, and all other Reactionary Conservatives should shut up - because they are hypocrites.
Reactionary Conservatives may whine about how “cancel culture” is being used against them but they have a long and dirty history of practicing “cancel culture” against all kinds of people.
Their history of canceling people goes all the way back to the Jim Crow era when conservatives then found ways to “cancel” out the votes of newly freed black people by obstruction and intimidation.
This cancellation of voting rights continues today with the voter suppression laws conservatives use to make it difficult for minorities to vote. A good example of this are the raft of new voting rules that Reactionary Republicans in the Georgia Assembly are trying to force through their legislature. These new laws, to supposedly prevent voter fraud, would impose multiple barriers and inconveniences that would hamper and cripple voting by black and Latino people. And they are doing this even though their own Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, told everyone that in the last election there was no fraud and it was the cleanest one ever.
Reactionary Republicans practice “cancel culture” all the time. Even against their own. At the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) conference just past one of the black conservatives who was to be a featured speaker, Young Pharaoh, was “cancelled” because - get this - the organizers decided at the last moment that he was anti-Semitic. I guess that mob at CPAC wanted to “cancel” him because they thought that he was bad for their image. But, it is their conference, so they can do what they like. See how that works?
In fact, Reactionary Conservative groups of every type have been accusing each other for years for trying to “cancel” each other. And it has been pretty vicious stuff.
A good example of this has been the harsh war of words and accusations between Reactionary Conservative blogger and media scourge Michelle Malkin and Ben Shapiro himself.
It seems that Michelle Malkin, in standing up for some right-wing guys who were accused of being Holocaust Deniers, was fired from her gig as a speaker at the Young American for Freedom group. And she blames, among others, Ben Shapiro for supporting those people who cut her speaking gig by promoting the “lie” that conservatives don’t practice “cancel culture” on each other.
Michelle Malkin is no liberal. And her condemnation of Shapiro as a practitioner of “cancel culture” is pretty harsh. You can read the link and decide for yourself if Malkin is right in attacking Shapiro for practicing “cancel culture.”
To hell with the whole “cancel culture” nonsense of Reactionary Conservatives.
Live progressive, work progressive, and hold on for the next (Carano free) installment of The Mandalorian. I am sure it will be a good one.
Really, did she not realize her actions to defend her tweet equating the treatment of conservatives to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany was And really, did it not occur that many people in Hollywood would
to her that George Lucas, whose friend and collaborator Steven Spielberg,