Not sure how I fee about this overall, but the content of his tweets were pretty bad-one quipped what's the best thing about being raped-that great feeling you get when it's over because you are not being raped anymore, and several others dealt with pedophilia and molesting young boys.

I get that it was ten years ago and Gunn has possibly grown and changed as a person, but on the other hand, when you are a public figure and you go around lobbing stones as he has done a lot recently, you better make sure your social media past is not a house of glass.

Did Disney overreact? Most likely, but those tweets by Gunn's drew the ire of GLAAD in 2012 (3-4 years after he made the Tweets) and his reaction then was to be mockly offended there were consequences to his actions and showed little to no remorse or growth then, and they have come to bite him in the behind again, so in a sense he is reaping what he sowed. When you are apologetic only after the second time they are used against you, any potential growth can be suspect. And that's where Gunn finds himself now. Any apologies or claims of growth seem to ring hollow because there was none of that the first time around when the statements were brought up.

-M

That is batsh#t insane.

I’m 54 now. I distinctly remember how I was a hardcore anti-american when I was twelve, having read about Hiroshima and the Vietnam war. Had twitter existed back then, I would have certainly written about what %@# Americans were and how cool the Soviets were. In college, I was editor of the students journal. I was fiercely anti-socialist, because of the Afghanistan invasion by the Russians and the grotesque Marxist attitude of our philosophy teachers. A little later I had my religious integrist phase, in which I was resolutely, loudly, anti-abortion. I was also offended by homosexuality being offered as something normal.

Years later, I lived in the U.S. and loved the people there so much that I considered becoming American myself. Back in Canada, I was so much in favour of gay marriage that I would have backed the Quebec separatist movement if the rest of Canada had turned its back on it. I’m also quite O.K. with early abortion, for reasons that would be better explained more fully elsewhere. So over the years I was anti-American, pro-American, anti-gay, pro-gay, anti-abortion, pro-abortion, and s9 on and so forth.

My point is that people change. It is not fair to condemn them for views they held decades ago, if they clearly no longer hold them. It is also not fair to judge people’s past acts or sayings according to today’s values. I mean, are we going to remove every mention of Thomas Jefferson from public buildings because he owned slaves? Are we going to dig up the corpse of John Ritter and hang it from a tree because of the somewhat sexist, somewhat homophobic nature of Three’s Company’s jokes?

This oversensitivity, and the manipulation thereof by people with evil intent, HAS to be resisted. At worst, it should the alleged offenders to say “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again”, which is exactly what Gunn did (whatever it is that he did). No more than that.

I read a terrific joke online two weeks ago. It was in the darkest vein one could imagine. It was also remarkably funny, because it pushed boundaries and made one think “Oh, God, how could ANYONE come up with that?” - I’m pretty sure many people managed to be offended by it, of course, and would demand the joke’s creator’s head on a plate if they could. That, to me, is a new form of puritanism to be loathed as much as that featured in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

The bottom line is that there is zero forgiveness being exhibited by BOTH sides of the political spectrum. I'm glad there wasn't any social media around when I was young and dumb. 

They've been trying...

Been thinking about this all day, so I'm going to roll this ball out there and see who wants to play:

In 2005, Donald Trump, who at that time was the host/producer/whatever of The Apprentice (so, essentially, a game show host), made a crude comment on Access Hollywood about being able to grab women by the pu$$y whenever he wanted to.  No one cared about this comment for over a decade until he ran for president, when it was unearthed and made a central part of the argument against him.  Mind you, one comment.

Around a decade ago, James Gunn made multiple comments about pedophilia, raping little boys, and getting off on watching pubescent girls touch themselves.  No one cared about his comments for over a decade, but when they were brought to light and his employer, Disney, who owns multiple theme parks aimed at families and children fired him because he's bad for their brand, there are folks defending him, saying that they were just jokes, that he was trying to shock his audience, that a conservative dug them up because he criticized Donald Trump, but that he's different now and not really like that.  Mind you, repeated comments, not one.

So, why is there so much outrage over what Trump said, who was playing to a specific audience at the time he made the comment about groping grown women, but so little outrage over the comments made by Gunn, who was playing to a specific audience at the time he made the comments about molesting underage children?

As well, liberals are fond of saying that while there may be freedom of speech, there is not freedom from the consequences of that speech (see: Papa John, or any person who utters any syllable that is offensive to some protected or minority group), except here, where Gunn should be left alone and rehired by Disney and not made to live with the consequences of making comments, jokingly or not, about pedophilia.

Please understand, I'm not defending Trump in the least, who is an odious human being and is an absolute disgrace to the Office of the President of the United States and who I would actually have to think long and hard about spitting on were he on fire.  Rather, I'm simply wondering why there seems to be a huge disconnect between how liberals view one of their own, complaining that it was only because a nasty conservative took the time to hunt down some old tweets (but not being able to deny that Gunn made those disgusting comments, "jokes" or not), and how they view someone on the other side who did basically the same thing.

You may have thought about this all day, but you're IMHO missing the crucial elements of this scandal :

- Trump indeed made a comment. Gunn didn't : he made jokes, not based in reality. And Gunn has never sought a position in public office.

- Trump made one comment as you say, one that was caught on tape. But no one was really surprised by this, because we know this is who he was, and probably still is.

- You claim there was more outrage around Trump than around Gunn? Again, Gunn isn't running for office, he is an entertainer. And... how is there less outrage around him, since he's the one who got fired?
Trump faced no real consequence for bragging of a disgusting behaviour (and he made excuses for it, as if tis was how all men actually behave), when Gunn get's sacked for jokes in no way related to his actual reality, ones he appologies for and owns.

- The Papa John guy expressed an opinion - while employed by his company - a racist one, and not a joke. And he wasn't fired : he resigned, for the good of the company he owns stock options from.

If Gunn had made those jokes today, you'd see no support for him. If those had been opinions, even ten years ago, there would have been no support for him. When you understand that, your wondering should be answered : there is no disconnect here, just far right mud peddlers comparing apples and oranges.
When you say they're "basically the same thing", I'm sorry to say, but that becomes manipulative. I'm sure tat wasn't your intention, ut this is the kind of rhetoric most liberals have to face all the time.