Names and faces
Sony Pictures Classics is drawing criticism from Donald Trump Jr. over Sony’s decision to release its film Boundaries, in which Peter
Fonda has a minor role after the 78-year-old actor proposed Monday in a since-deleted tweet that 12-year-old Barron
Trump be taken from his mother, first lady Melania Trump, and “put in a cage with pedophiles.” While the company condemned Fonda’s tweets as “abhorrent, reckless and dangerous,” the company released a statement saying the film would debut today as planned with a “limited release of five theaters.” Fonda apologized Wednesday and hours later, Sony, the company behind the film, distanced itself from Fonda’s tweet. Donald Trump Jr., who repeatedly called on Sony Pictures to denounce Fonda, suggested that the company’s decision to still release the film, in which Fonda plays a supporting role, pointed to a double standard between conservative and liberal responses to culture controversies. “If you’re a conservative,” Trump Jr. wrote, “you’d face real consequences.” Trump Jr. wondered aloud on Twitter if Fonda would face the same fate as comedian Roseanne Barr, whose successful sitcom reboot was pulled from ABC after she compared Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to former President Barack Obama, to an ape. Fonda’s original tweet drew criticism from the first lady’s office and the Secret Service was notified. In his apology Wednesday, Fonda said that he was upset over children being separated from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border but “went way too far” and that his tweet was “highly inappropriate and vulgar.”
John Oliver, host of satirical news show Last Week Tonight, has been censored by one of China’s major social media platform’s for a 20-minute segment about China that aired Sunday in which Oliver brought up President Xi Jinping’s resemblance to Winnie the Pooh. “Apparently, Xi Jinping is very sensitive about his perceived resemblance to Winnie the Pooh,” Oliver said on the show. “And I’m not even sure it’s that strong a resemblance, to be honest. But the fact he’s annoyed about it means people will never stop bringing it up.” Besides joking about the Winnie the Pooh ban — which censors imposed after social media users began pointing out the resemblance — Oliver mentioned China’s human-rights record, including its “dystopian levels of surveillance and persecution” of Uighur Muslims and the imprisonment of dissidents. The comments seem to have touched a nerve in China: Attempts to create posts containing the words “John Oliver” on Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging platform, resulted in an error message Thursday saying the post may violate “rules and regulations.”