Last week, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn was fired by Disney when old tweets surfaced in which Gunn joked about pedophilia. Since then numerous celebrities have commented about the firing with the situation even becoming a topic of conversation on ABC’s The View.
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On today’s episode of the talk show, Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Megan McCain all weighed on Gunn’s firing, but they also looked at the overall situation more broadly, talking about the idea that social media content from the past can follow people many years into the future. While none of the hosts directly commented whether they felt Gunn’s firing was just, they did note that what a person writes ten years in the past may not be reflective of who they are now. Hostin even specifically noted that Gunn had apologized for his words.
“Should he be fired? I’m on the fence on this because we’re talking 2008 so we’re talking about ten years ago,” Hostin said. “I don’t know what he means by he wanted to be provocative, but he’d since apologized and said I’m a different person now. So, do you lose your current position because of something you did ten years ago?”
The idea that people are often very different today than they were in the past seems to be a particularly significant part of Gunn’s situation. Since his firing celebrities from those who worked with him on Marvel’s Guardians films to even former Marvel Comics artist and Thanos creator Jim Starlin have come forward to talk about Gunn’s kindness and humanity with many noting that Gunn has come a long way from the person he was when the offensive tweets were written. There’s even a petition online to get Disney to reverse their decision.
On The View, though, the conversation turned from Gunn’s circumstance directly to ask the question of where the line is when it comes to when offensive behavior should have consequence with McCain expressing her confusion as to how some celebrities survive these scandals unscathed while others do not.
The goal marker is confusing for me because Joy Reid had a bunch of stuff that came out from her blog posts in the past that were very homophobic,” McCain said. “She still has a great job at MSNBC, has a voice on cable television and I am just confused exactly where the goal marker is for everyone…”
“It’s moving,” Haines added.
What do you think, about Gunn’s firing, the idea of social media coming back to haunt people, all of it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
