Plan B Forum

In keeping consistent with my lack of sympathy for people who seem to enjoy being victims and after watching Don Lemon whining about Kevin Hart last night on CNN, I went and signed up for Twitter and responded to him. I told him and the Twitter world that I'm tired of hearing from "Retro-Victims" - people who go back years to find something to be offended about today.

Before I offend any victims here, you should realize that I'm not talking about people who finally speak out about being sexually molested years ago. I'm talking about people like Don Lemon and people who agree with him that find it necessary to go back ten years to be offended by something that someone said or wrote and then expressing outrage and demanding action today.

That's it. How long do you think it will take for "Retro-Victim" to be picked up by the internet and media? I know they're listening to me. My walls have ears in them. The cyber-world is always stealing my material.

I've been waiting for weeks for someone to post about this and prove that, as usual, most straight people simply don't have the lived experience to understand how dangerous the venom that Hart spewed actually was, and why, even far more recently, his attempts to dismiss past behaviour as something he did when people were not as "sensitive" showed that he still carries around the attitudes that spawned it, whatever he might protest to the contrary. He didn't stop telling those "jokes" because of some Damascus road conversion that led him to believe he was wrong. He stopped telling them because, as his career began to take off, he knew they weren't going to fly with the audiences he was now trying to reach.

You don't see anything wrong with what Hart said, fine. If you do, but you think the passage of time should absolve all, fine. But don't presume to have any right to dictate the reactions of those who actually had to grow up with the prospect of having the crap kicked out of them by their parents or others in their lives, as Hart used to advocate as the appropriate response to learning that a child is gay.

I certainly have seen no one suggest that Hart should become a target of the sort of violence he preached should be visited on gay children. But if he suddenly sees his career under threat, maybe he's getting a taste of what gay entertainers had to fear from someone digging into their backgrounds, while he was making a name for himself by telling "jokes" at their expense.

Scooter wrote:I've been waiting for weeks for someone to post about this and prove that, as usual, most straight people simply don't have the lived experience to understand how dangerous the venom that Hart spewed actually was, and why, even far more recently, his attempts to dismiss past behaviour as something he did when people were not as "sensitive" showed that he still carries around the attitudes that spawned it, whatever he might protest to the contrary. He didn't stop telling those "jokes" because of some Damascus road conversion that led him to believe he was wrong. He stopped telling them because, as his career began to take off, he knew they weren't going to fly with the audiences he was now trying to reach.

Comedians change their acts based based on what is "funny" now vs what was "funny" earlier in their careers. You might be right that Hart hasn't changed his opinion on gays but you might be wrong. He isn't claiming to hate gays and others. Why should anyone assume that he does?

Scooter wrote:You don't see anything wrong with what Hart said, fine. If you do, but you think the passage of time should absolve all, fine. But don't presume to have any right to dictate the reactions of those who actually had to grow up with the prospect of having the crap kicked out of them by their parents or others in their lives, as Hart used to advocate as the appropriate response to learning that a child is gay.

Who's fault is it that his tweets and comments from 10 years ago resurfaced? It's obvious that someone who doesn't like him wants others to feel the same way.

Scooter wrote:I certainly have seen no one suggest that Hart should become a target of the sort of violence he preached should be visited on gay children. But if he suddenly sees his career under threat, maybe he's getting a taste of what gay entertainers had to fear from someone digging into their backgrounds, while he was making a name for himself by telling "jokes" at their expense.

Hart said he would break a toy over his child's head if he saw him playing with a doll house. It's called exaggeration, and it's not a call to others to break children's toys over their heads. It probably got a lot of laughs from the audience too. Should everyone who laughed be outed for it?

As I've said here many times and been criticized for it, people should quit looking for negativity to complain about and instead focus on now and how to move forward. Whining now about the past isn't going to get my sympathy. I already know that many things said and done in the past were unfair and even criminal to Women, Gays, Black people, Italians, Irish and others. It's well documented.

Joe Guy wrote:He isn't claiming to hate gays and others. Why should anyone assume that he does?

Gee, I can't imagine. Oh wait, how about threatening to do physical harm to his own children if he found out they were gay. I guess in your universe that means he's ready to found and run a new PFLAG chapter.

Who's fault is it that his tweets and comments from 10 years ago resurfaced?

It's his fault that they exist, and that from the time they were made until they resurfaced, he had really done nothing to repudiate them. Now you're starting to sound like Chicken Steve, who would blame people for "quote mining" whenever his own words came back to haunt him.

It's obvious that someone who doesn't like him wants others to feel the same way.

You're making it sound as if someone went digging for dirt that had never previously seen the light of day. The controversy over his comments goes back to the time he made them. The only reason you have no consciousness of it is that it wasn't anything you saw as having any relevance to you. Not your ox being gored, so as usual you didn't give a flying fuck. As you don't now.

Whining now about the past isn't going to get my sympathy.

No one is asking you, or anyone sharing your attitude, for a single g.d. thing, because they already know not to expect anything, and the reason is that you are NEVER willing to step back and try to imagine a situation from a point of view that is foreign to your own experience.

People are complicated. Life is complicated. Historians base their professional life on the assumption that human nature is a constant and people ten years ago or ten centuries ago did things for the same reason that people today, in similar circumstances, do them. Christianity by contrast, is based on the assumption that human nature is changeable and perfectible. Real life seems to me to have touches of both. 200 years ago here in Bear Delaware, a white male had the right to kill his male slave or rape his female slave, just as he could kill his own dog. Not so today, on all three counts. I am not prepared to say what is the root cause of the change, but I think it is a change for the better. I do enjoy reading and re-reading Huckleberry Finn.I find much in it that I laud. Others object now that because the book uses the N-word in a way that today offends thus today nobody should read this book with anything but condemnation. I do not declare that objection has no merit.

Scooter, I agree with your statement that straights cannot understand the pain. I don't understand. But I do observe that there is now a married couple in my church home that were married about a year ago and they both have the word 'male' on their birth certificates. Their sacramental marriage ceremony was conducted by a woman who has been an ordained minister in this group for about 20 years. These two men are welcome and an integrated part of our faith community.

I don't understand the pain my own daughter went through because she had an abortion. It was an ectopic pregnancy. She was hounded for years after by her insurance company with bills for this 'voluntary' procedure. I am a straight male, who will never be pregnant. I cannot share the meaning of abortion and reproductive choice in the way that it impacts on any woman. I cannot share the emotional experience of those who are not straight. I cannot share the experience of not having white male privilege.

But I do see life is getting better for many situations that in past of my own lifetime now look to have been unspeakable cruelty. So Happy New Year.

snailgate.

Joe Guy wrote:He isn't claiming to hate gays and others. Why should anyone assume that he does?

Scooter wrote:Gee, I can't imagine. Oh wait, how about threatening to do physical harm to his own children if he found out they were gay. I guess in your universe that means he's ready to found and run a new PFLAG chapter.

No. I explained the "threatening" in my last post. You left it out because it would invalidate your reason for your outrage.

Joe Guy wrote:Who's fault is it that his tweets and comments from 10 years ago resurfaced?

Scooter wrote:It's his fault that they exist, and that from the time they were made until they resurfaced, he had really done nothing to repudiate them. Now you're starting to sound like Chicken Steve, who would blame people for "quote mining" whenever his own words came back to haunt him.

Kevin Hart made the mistaken assumption that people wouldn't go back into his tweeting history in order to portray him as a child abusing homophobe.

Joe Guy wrote:It's obvious that someone who doesn't like him wants others to feel the same way.

Scooter wrote:You're making it sound as if someone went digging for dirt that had never previously seen the light of day. The controversy over his comments goes back to the time he made them. The only reason you have no consciousness of it is that it wasn't anything you saw as having any relevance to you. Not your ox being gored, so as usual you didn't give a flying fuck. As you don't now.

Did you know about his statements before this was brought up by a Kevin Hart hater?

Joe Guy wrote:Whining now about the past isn't going to get my sympathy.

Scooter wrote:No one is asking you, or anyone sharing your attitude, for a single g.d. thing, because they already know not to expect anything, and the reason is that you are NEVER willing to step back and try to imagine a situation from a point of view that is foreign to your own experience.

You're wrong about me but you need to assume I'm hateful because it supports your retro-victim position.

I never said you were hateful, just indifferent and clueless.

I see you're also buying into Hart's victim narrative, using the term "Kevin Hart hater" as if this was only about targeting him personally and wouldn't also have been an issue no matter who had said the same things.

He is being targeted personally. If somebody else had said the same things, that person would also be targeted personally.

Then don't say "Kevin Hart hater" as if someone woke up one morning and said, "hey, let's figure out how we can derail Kevin Hart's career...oh, look, here is some homophobic stuff he said that we can use against him."

It was what he said that made it objectionable, not who said it.

Maybe I got the story wrong but I thought all of this started after it was announced that he was going to be the next Oscar host. It sounds like someone was focused on him.

Scooter wrote:It was what he said that made it objectionable, not who said it.

If that were true, we wouldn't be talking about Kevin Hart.

Joe Guy wrote:Maybe I got the story wrong but I thought all of this started after it was announced that he was going to be the next Oscar host.

You're correct, you got it wrong. The latest iteration of it started in conjunction with the announcement that he was hosting the Oscars, but it had come up repeatedly through the years over which he made the comments, and afterwards. Why would Hart be whining about having to apologize over and over again (which he hasn't, in actuality) if the issue had never arisen before now?

Scooter wrote:It was what he said that made it objectionable, not who said it.

If that were true, we wouldn't be talking about Kevin Hart.

We would be talking about whoever had made the comments. Are you aware of some other celebrity who talked about beating the crap out of their gay children who was given a pass for it?

And since you're clearly on your way into Mickey the Dunce mode, I'm done here.

Scooter, you want to be -- or need to be -- gay, that's fine. As long as you don't try to come on to me, I'm cool with it. Just spare me your high indignation when some of the other seven-plus billion people who inhabit this big blue marble along with you maybe aren't quite as non-judgmental as I might be on the matter.

-"BB"-

Well, that was proof that some people will simply never get it.

This board is inhabited by some real dinosaurs.

Can I say "Live and let live" without fear of being ostracized?

I don't have to love everybody, but I do have to make an effort to get along with as many as I can.

Peace.

I beg to differ. I believe that I do "get it". I just refuse to let it occupy my life. I have enough troubles and concerns of my own to deal with without looking around and getting all het up over the problems being faced by someone scheduled to host the Oscar ceremony ... or, for that matter, the movies, the actors/actresses and their lives and relationships, the award ceremony itself, or the entertainment industry in general -- any of which, quite frankly, do not affect me even one millionth of an iota.

And it did seem, at least to me, that Scooter was being a little strident about something that did not directly affect him ... other than the fact that he, Scooter, is gay and Kevin Hart (a person who, up until now, I had been blissfully unaware of) made a remark during a comedy performance some time ago which indicated he most definitely was not, and said remark has resurfaced, apparently resurrected by someone else who is also gay and feels that Kevin Hart has not shown the proper abject contrition for his earlier remarks or given a proper acknowledgment of and deference to their existence.

To which I say, big deal! How many times have parents said, "If my kid married a __________ (fill in the blank) ... or someone not of the same religion, or did drugs, or got arrested, or knocked someone up/got knocked up themselves, I'd kill 'em?" It's just words. Hyperbole. Sounding off. Venting. Nothing more.

So if that makes me a dinosaur, then so be it. But remember this ... even today, some 65 million years after they went extinct, people still find dinosaurs to be interesting.

-"BB"-

Isn’t it dinosaurs that are burning and melting the planet?

At both ends.

People who come forward after years of keeping silent about being raped or abused have suffered and have finally gotten the strength to attempt to bring the accused to justice.

People who bring up what a comedian said 10 years ago in his act and voice their outrage and how they and people like them are suffering because of it are only seeking revenge. I guess they don't have enough current things to complain about.

Should I be complaining about how my ancestors were traumatized by others because of where they were born or the language that they spoke? Or how people told jokes about them?

Does everyone alive today have to apologize for what they've said in the past?

Wouldn't you get a little tired of me if I always found a way to fit into a conversation how difficult it was for me growing up? Many people are so self-absorbed that they seem to think that nobody else has suffered injustice or abuse. Especially white heterosexual males. None of them have ever had anything bad happen to them. They should just shut up and listen to everyone else's problems.