Outrage Mob’s a Joke
Don’t give in — call their bluff
THE outrage mob has claimed another scalp. Before they get another one, let’s make them earn it. Disney fired James Gunn, the director of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies, after a claque of critics dug up a series of tweets from years ago — long before he was a director of Marvel movies, back when he was an indie edgelord making horror films about snakes that enter your orifices and take over your mind. The jokes are gross, but they’re just jokes, and have nothing to do with the movies he’s making now.
Critics on the right suggested turnabout is fair play, given that Disney had recently canned Roseanne Barr after she posted a nasty, racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett. Barr, whose ratings dominance had caused much angst among a literati depressed that a Trump-friendly voice was given air time and attention, was ousted for her outré politics, supporters said.
Ironically enough, Gunn — a vocal anti-Trump voice who had recently denounced a fellow director for daring to say something nice about conservative writer Ben Shapiro — voiced his support for Barr’s firing, tweeting, “Roseanne is allowed to say whatever she wants. It doesn’t mean @ABCNetwork needs to continue funding her TV show if her words are considered abhorrent.” (Yes, about that, James . . .)
Gunn’s firing felt less like Roseanne’s, however, and more like Orson Scott Card’s removal from a Superman project in 2013. The hiring of the Mormon author of “Ender’s Game” caused much anxiety in the woke comic-book community since Card opposed gay marriage. Boycotts were threatened and the bestselling author’s story was shelved.
That’s a better fate than the one that befell Netflix’s Andy Yeatman. The streaming service fired him after a woman alleged she’d been assaulted by an actor in Netflix’s employ and said Yeatman had cruelly dismissed her complaints, suggesting the company didn’t believe her.
Of course, Yeatman — who had no power over the actor in question — had done this after being approached by a stranger, while he was out with his family, in the midst of coaching his daughter’s soccer team.
The Huffington Post published a story about his dismissive response to this unfamiliar person haranguing him while he was out with his family and doing decidedly non-Netflix-related work, the mob got its back up and he was fired.
I’d love for there to be an agreement that this sort of behavior is stupid and wrong and destructive to the very fabric of our polity, for everyone on all sides of the outrage wars to unilaterally disarm so no one will have to live in fear of an offhand comment destroying years of work. But this is a wish for the world as it should be, not the world as it is.
Here’s the problem: People are never going to stop being angry, and social media allows them to vent their displeasure with greater ease than ever before. Media outlets are never going to stop fanning the flames of these contretemps because they drive clicks and allow the reporters to feel like they are making a difference in our cruel, ugly world.
So allow me to suggest the following: The next time a major corporation is hit with threats of boycotts, instead of cowering in fear and caving immediately, make the aggrieved actually follow through with their threats.
Does anyone think “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3” would lose a single dollar upon release in 2020 because a few angry people dug up years-old tweets written by a director that 99 percent of the movie-going public couldn’t pick out of a lineup?
Does anyone think Roseanne’s numbers, which were poor on the coasts and strong in the heartland, would really take a dive because she tweeted something hateful (for which she apologized) about an Obama official?
Would Orson Scott Card’s authorship of a comic-book story really dent DC’s bottom line? Is any millennial going to give up his omnipresent entertainment-delivery-device because a dad being bothered at a soccer game gave an offthe-cuff answer?
I’m guessing probably not. But maybe they would! The point is: We have no idea. Corporations are so used to caving without a fight in order to avoid a few bad headlines that we don’t really have any idea if social-media boycott campaigns of mega-popular entities — an actual refusal to hand over money for goods and services — would really make a dent in anyone’s bottom line.
This will take a little backbone, and lord knows corporations don’t exactly have a surfeit of vertebrae. But it’s worth trying out if only as a means of breaking the cycle of stupidity. The next time a mob — conservative, liberal, nihilist, whatever — comes for one of your employees, refuse to play along until you see how serious they are.
I think we’ll all be pleasantly surprised.