Liam Neeson: Rape, Revenge, and Race Relations

[The Grand Nudger]

More fun.

Michelle Rodriguez has weighed in, leaving her defense of neeson, personally, aside..I don't think she's as familiar with racists as she imagines.

Dude, have you watched Widows? His tongue was so far down Viola Davis’s throat,

Racists have a long history of sticking their tongues down throats, and just generally splitting the dark oak.  The racist taboo breeds all manner of perversion and slave mistress fantasies.  So, you know..Rule 34.

[Rev. Rye]

Yeah, I'm willing to accept that Neeson has changed and his race relations in the decades since that incident have softened, but "racists don't kiss the race they hate" is still a pretty damn weak defense. Maybe if she pointed out that, well, Viola Davis is not the sort of dark oak many people would fantasise about splitting, it might make more sense, but even then, given how rape can still be pretty divorced from sexual desire (and how backhanded it would be towards Viola Davis), that's still far from perfect.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Yeah, Rodriguez' defense is pretty weak.  I think the best argument for Liam Neeson not being a racist is that he doesn't behave like a racist.

Boru

[EgoDeath]

The backlash is understandable but a bit excessive. The entire point of Neeson telling the story was that he realized how wrong his thinking was and was appalled by his own behavior.

We need to stop burning people for thousands of years for making a mistake that lasted one moment, so to speak. People should be allowed to redeem themselves, but the folks who subscribe to this outrage culture don't seem to think anyone should ever be able to be forgiven once they've done something wrong and that's ridiculous in my opinion.

So yea, I understand the backlash but it's completely over the top.

[The Grand Nudger]

People who trade in public perception aren't entitled to their status.  I'll still watch his movies.  If enough other people won't that he cant turn a dime in acting..then so what, go get another job like everyone else. He straight up told people that his entire brand identity was built around an understanding that came from attempting to commit a hate crime, lol.

If I told people that I'd spent some time trying to find someone to poison... folks might think twice about buying produce from me, too.

[Rev. Rye]

Well, here’s Trevor Noah’s take on the incident, and honestly, literally the only thing I think he should have done differently (besides the fact that I’m not sure an Oprah interview would have gone the way he described), is that he should have had that Better Call Saul clip from the OP ready.





The impulse that drives cancellation culture makes sense on some level; if someone’s unrepentant about their wrongdoing (or if their repentance comes from a context where it’s very likely to be insincere), it’s understandable that one wants to take power from bad people with the power, especially if they’re just going to use that power to hurt other people. Harvey Weinstein, R Kelly, even Mel Gibson, that shit makes sense.

But the case of Liam Neeson makes the severe backlash far less defensible. Unlike those three men, Hell, unlike in the vast majority of scandals like this, he wasn’t caught out and his remarks about it are just him trying to cover his ass. Nobody of any consequence knew about it before he told the press about it, and in that interview, even as he described it, he sounded horrified that he ever thought that way. While his understanding of it in the context of American race relations is clearly less than perfect, it seems clear to me that he’s fully aware that what he did was horrible and it’s very likely he feels remorse for it, even though he had the good sense to stop before the worst actually happened. And, if this is true and our response is to treat him the same as those people who aren’t sorry, then, in terms of actually trying to fix our broken race relations, what the fuck are we even doing?

These are huge, systemic problems, and there’s almost certainly a lot of people who felt the way Liam did at some point. This absolute zero tolerance policy only makes sense if our main goal is, to paraphrase Ninotchka, “fewer and better Americans.” That line was making light of the Stalinist purges that were going on at the time of the film’s release, and even in comparison to that, at least Stalin’s purges made sense in terms of cause and effect: take the people undermining Stalin’s ideals and get rid of them. Kill them. If at all possible, erase them from existence. In this case, it’s what, socially ostracizing them and leaving them to just fester? How does this make sense, especially given that now, we have a thriving movement of literal Nazis with almost no standards (I would call them vultures, but I have far too much respect for vultures to do such a thing; no, that isn't an exaggeration) willing to stick up for them just to spite you? I can’t be sure that if this shit keeps happening, he’ll become one of those Alt-Righters out of obligation to the people who defended him, but given the choice of accepting that he might actually have reformed, and the prospect of him deciding “if a racist monster is all they’ll bother to see, then why bother being anything else?” The choice is clear to me.

Society needs to change, and for that to happen, the people within it need to change, and the only way people really change is if they want to change. And the zero-tolerance approach that social media hive minds seem to have towards wrongdoing (treating the repentant the same as the unrepentant) seems to destroy any incentive to even want to change.

[EgoDeath]

People who trade in public perception aren't entitled to their status.  I'll still watch his movies.  If enough other people won't that he cant turn a dime in acting..then so what, go get another job like everyone else.  He straight up told people that his entire brand identity was built around an understanding that came from attempting to commit a hate crime, lol.

If I told people that I'd spent some time trying to find someone to poison... folks might think twice about buying produce from me, too.

Is this supposed to be in response to my post?

[bennyboy]

He shed valuable insight on racism-- anger and a tribal instinct led him to do something wrong. He's said he doesn't hold those feelings now, and regrets them.

I think people have to be able to talk about their dark moments-- then we can understand how they are arrived at, and better understand how to prevent them.

---

splitting the dark oak

I don't know dafuq this means, but for some reason my pants are getting a little tighter down there.

[EgoDeath]

He shed valuable insight on racism-- anger and a tribal instinct led him to do something wrong.  He's said he doesn't hold those feelings now, and regrets them.

I think people have to be able to talk about their dark moments-- then we can understand how they are arrived at, and better understand how to prevent them.

Correct. Instead of taking the opportunity to morally grandstand over someone about how you've never had racist thoughts and never will because you're so much purer than the dreaded racist you should applaud this man, not for his thoughts or actions during those dark times, but for his willingness to be honest about such a terrible moment in his life and about the way he was thinking. The more we are transparent in these discussions, when we have said discussions, the more progress we will actually make as a society.

Of course, it's terrible to think that Neeson almost killed an innocent black man out of anger or out of some strange sense of having to "defend" his friend who was raped. But, that's the entire point of Neeson telling the story... that it was terrible that he, at one point in life, thought that way. Now, even though he says he no longer thinks that way and understands how terrible it was that he ever thought that way, you STILL have people wanting to label him as a racist, boycott his movies, attempt to keep him out Hollywood, so on and so forth.

Neeson OPENLY says he no longer thinks that way, but the people who want him crucified refuse to take his word for it, ignoring the fact that if he truly wanted to hide the fact that he was a racist, he never would've told the fucking story in the first place. To them, he must've "slipped up" and is now just lying after the fact to cover his ass. This is nonsense because he was doing a recorded interview with a journalist, not spouting off an old story at the bar with friends.

People should be allowed to redeem themselves and today's outrage culture refuses to allow that, though I think they fail in most cases because any person with an ounce of critical thinking can denounce their nonsense. There is no way you can honestly believe that one mistake in someone's past should dictate a lifelong punishment, save for crimes like rape, murder, terrorism, etc. In this case, Neeson was the one willingly telling us about his mistake. He wasn't "caught," it wasn't a "gotcha" moment, it was a conscious decision to tell a story to illustrate the dark side of what revenge and racism really is.

But the professional "I'm offended" crowd doesn't want to hear that. They want the man's head on a stake and his body burned in the fire pit.

It's ridiculous.

[bennyboy]

This is the irony of PC. It pretends to minimize intolerance and oppression, but it does so by presenting a cult-like requirement for total conformity-- you are told exactly what to think on every position, and if you disagree with those commandments, then you are immediately disqualified-- no matter how much good you've done, or how hard you've worked to be a good person.

Not too put too fine a point on it, but you wouldn't find less tolerance in North Korea or in the 1940's era Nazi party than you would in a Starbucks coffee shop if these fuckers think you've taken a step outside their circle of acceptance.