Also, I think attitudes around jokes of certain kinds have changed dramatically in very recent years, and if Gunn isn’t an asshole (which I don’t know) then he’s actually listened and changed his ways. Which I actually believe is possible for an adult man of any age, but then I’m an optimist.
Pedo jokes have never been cool and his tweets were edgelord junk I’d expect to hear during Xbox Live chat.
If his tweets were racist, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Nobody would believe that he’s a better person now.
Well I think pedo jokes have gotten considerably less cool in recent years (though honestly you can still find lots of professional comedic content that still has jokes like that now, not just on Xbox live).
Also, the comparison to racist jokes is more complicated, because not all “racist” jokes are necessarily racist or rooted in racism (with some the target of the joke being racism itself). If they were jokes that displayed that he was racist, then obviously we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But making pedo jokes doesn’t make you a pedo.
So if someone unearths 10,000 race-based jokes on some other entertainer’s social media account tomorrow, you’ll be reviewing those jokes on their own merit and potentially defending them because the jokes weren’t actually “rooted in racism”?
Did Barr’s joke prove her to be a racist? If you believe her story about not knowing the target of her joke was black (and why wouldn’t you…you’re an optimist), then her joke wouldn’t be inherently racist, her apology would have been sincere, and her firing wouldn’t have been justified. Correct?