What do you mean |
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When I heard that people were protesting Tropic Thunder, I knew they were missing the point. Sure, Robert Downey Jr. was in modern day black-face, but I felt that the trailer clearly displayed that Downey wasn't disparaging black people nearly as much as he was disparaging white people that try to be black. And while I'm sure that comment alone may be enough to rile up some people - "what do you mean 'trying to be black'?" - it's going to get worse before it gets better. I planned to do this column from that moment and began researching exactly what people were so angry about and why.
That's when I realized that if anyone made a peep about Downey in black-face it was drowned out by retards who represent people with disabilities, offended that characters in Tropic Thunder would lead to bullying, reinforce negative stereotypes, and labeled quotes from the film as "hate speech". I say "retards" because if someone uses a word not directed at you and you take offense as if they had, you are labeling yourself as that word; in essence, you are giving the people you condemn power, just like the nappy-headed hoes from Rutgers. The fact that I'm going to spend the next 5 hours trying explain to the retards - either those born with disabilities or those that choose to live as if they were - why something like Tropic Thunder shouldn't be offensive pisses me off more than I could ever fully 
Hasn't George covered this? |
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express.
Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, I wonder what George Carlin would say if he wasn't dead - excuse me - if he hadn't passed on.
Bullying exists; the strong have always preyed on the weak, both physically and intellectually. Most people that I know have been subjected to some form or bullying in their life because they were fat, ugly, short, poor, and whatever else idiots can find to create an in-group/out-group dynamic. Films and Saturday Night Live skits abound reinforcing negative stereotypes for each of those characteristics. Critics keep hiding behind the skirts that Tropic Thunder is insulting actors that portray retards more so than retards themselves but I honestly don't give a shit.
You think that's insensitive? I don't give a shit about that either. Get over it. Learn to laugh at yourself or lean into the high fastball and take one for the team. You can say anything about me that you want; it's either true or it isn't. Either way, you're not going to tell me anything I don't already know. Like a prize-fighter, even if you hurt me I'd never give you the satisfaction.
Aside from the fact that we have become a nation boiling over with spoiled pseudo-intellectuals that have embraced their inner androgyny, we've started treating every single awkward silence like a nuclear standoff and subsequently have started transitioning our social 
In other news, Justin Forsett rushed for 136 yards on 15 carries. |
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conditioning to exclude anything that might be taken the wrong way by anyone, anywhere, ever.
We can't say something is gay or retarded anymore, but why stop there? Isn't calling something lame offensive to people that are actually lame? If I say that something raises a red flag do the, ahem, North American Indigenous Persons have the right to call for its ban? People might say that I'm presenting a straw man argument but I don't think so (hopefully offending no straw men in the process or straw women for their exclusion).
We're already to the point where we can't even talk about religion, politics, or sex anymore except in special little enclaves. Any history involves at least one of those three things, so that's out; no wonder Americans have no idea about what's going on in the world. The only thing left to talk about that interests me is football and most people in the tech biz resent football for breeding all their lunch-money-takers. Wouldn't it be fair to say that America, while I believe it to still be a great country with a potentially great future, is retarded?
Tropic Thunder makes fun of anyone that thinks that walking around in someone else's shoes for a day makes them any kind of authority on that person's life. Not only the actors, but the audience is likewise the butt of the joke. The idea that you could watch Private Ryan and think you have any clue what a 
We all know one. |
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soldier's experience is like is just as ridiculous as feeling the same way about a retard after watching My Left Foot, I Am Sam, or The Other Sister.
Other than this:
We all have our own disabilities, some not as visible as others. I don't know what it's like to be you any more than you know what it's like to be me. For me to imply that my burdens are any harder to bear than yours or vice versa is a pretentious circle of snakes, each one eating the other's tail. So in my code of ethics you laugh at everything or nothing - including yourself - and I won't live in a world where we laugh at nothing.
This idea that minorities or people with disabilities need to be treated differently is exactly what we shouldn't be doing. The idea that one group has had it worse than any other group is wrong thinking in two ways. One, it's pretentious as Hell; you don't know what other people have been through in their lives, and two, it implies that people are all broken into groups. We're all just people, some of which don't know how to take a joke.
I defend protestors' right to protest just as I defend the film's right to play. In this case at least some of the protestors don't share my view on freedom of speech as they carried signs that stated "ban the word," and "ban the movie".
I disagree.
Never go full retard.
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Every other Wednesday
Figure it out.
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| Thom Williams |
Thom is both a maker and lover of films. He loves, and makes, films of all kinds. He is often as surprised by what he likes as by what he creates himself; Thom entered film school with a distaste for silent, black and white, and foreign films, yet left having made one of each. He likes what he likes and make no apologies for his opinions.
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