Gary Oldman likes the Double Standard Word Police about as much as I do

Since I got condemned by all the Social Justice Warriors for calling John Scalzi a pussy, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Super Actor Gary Oldman, who is also sick of the Word Police and their idiotic double standards

Warning, it on the Playboy webpage, so obviously NSFW.

http://www.playboy.com/playground/view/gary-oldman-playboy-interview

In the article Oldman talks about his craft and making movies, but it gets really interesting when he gets political. He talks about the silencing of some groups in entertainment, the double standards, and the career sabotage. He also calls Nancy Pelosi names, and that always makes for a good time.

How awesome is Gary Oldman? So awesome that you really do read Playboy for the articles.

 

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67 thoughts on “Gary Oldman likes the Double Standard Word Police about as much as I do”

    1. True story, my daughter was in school with Pelosi’s grandson from K-8th grade at a Catholic school. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was grandparents’ day and when my daughter was in 3rd grade Pelosi was in for that day. Because of the increased attendance at the mass, they brought in Father Charlie who was retired and only slightly younger than Methuselah (he was always there for the Christmas Eve vigil as well). When it came time for communion she was in the line where Father Charlie was providing the host. When she came up, he refused to give it to her because of her stand on abortion and told her she was not within the teachings of the Church. One of the younger priests ultimately provided her communion, but I still cherish the look on her face as Father Charlie admonished her.

      1. Good for Father Charlie. We need more men and women like him, not afraid to stand up for the truth no matter what the cost might be. And that younger priest failed to understand communion.

      2. Unless I grossly misunderstand Catholic doctrine, that younger priest was doing her no favors. By offering her the Host while she was defiantly in sin against the Church, he was helping Pelosi damn herself.

  1. Alas, he’s about to find out how a normal person is treated when everyone else is a pod person. Let’s hope it doesn’t hurt his career too much.

    And it’s about time someone called out Bill Maher’s fake libertarianism. Guy’s a liberal, straight up.

    1. I got the impression that Gary Oldman has gotten some of the first tastes of that and doesn’t care if he gets more. IIRC he said he has “enough money” to live on and still gets jobs. From what he said, he’s just “missing out” on the Hollywood social scene and that doesn’t bother him.

  2. Reblogged this on Enlightening, i'n't it? and commented:
    i know i talk some shit about political correctness. i do wish people would use different words sometimes, i hate the whole damn notion. everything is so damn public now, we worry about everyone liking us, and then we don’t say what we really mean. but it is so hard to know what we mean when every group of people intolerant to diversity (you must be like us) has their own definition or connotation of every word.

    1. “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

      – Theodore Dalrymple

      1. Darymple is confusing PC with toeing a political line and the suppression and censorship of speech in order to maintain an official narrative. Right now in Egypt, columnists are leaving their columns and a political comedy show that mercilessly pranked the Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi without censorship has “voluntarily” shut down under the new president El-Sisi. Obviously anyone who replaces them will tell “good news.” That is not political correctness. We have seen the same rollback in Russia under Putin.

        Political correctness is a social construct originally embraced by social justice activists outside gov’t and media but quickly adopted by them so as not to give the appearance of lacking in “compassion,” and by compassion I mean mostly racism and sometimes sexism. PC is a race and gender-based form of politeness where one must not say Guatemala or Africa is inferior to America even while no one is running there to raise their families, embracing their armies to protect us or using their non-existent technologies. To do otherwise is racism.

        One must pretend a “nuclear family” now embraces gay and single-parent as equal to the traditional nuclear family to avoid seeming disparagement of gays or women. To do otherwise is homophobia and misogyny.

        PC is grass roots censorship that embraces a wide variety of one-sided hypocrisies from “Orientalism” to “cultural appropriation. PC is illusion, delusion and lying that treats the entire world as if it is a cocktail party where everyone is beautiful, athletic, reasonable and smart no matter how ugly, fat, crazy or stupid they are.

        The group in the West that has most exploited PC and turned its every ramification into actual rules and theories to explain away the superiority of Western white straight males is of course intersectional QUILTBAGgery, which is little more than an excuse factory with notes from the teacher dating back 5,000 years. QUILTBAGs specialize in explaining why what happened didn’t and how science fiction literature would’ve exploded in Africa if not for slavery and colonialism and yada yada. “Privilege” takes the place of talent and of course the opposite of that is suppressing talent. PC is the closest we’ve ever come to institutionalizing self-pity and racial and sexual low self-esteem. Intersectionalism is non-stop woulda, coulda, shoulda, blame and complaint.

        Fourth place becomes first place just because, and first place become jerks that John Scalzi, the “THE BASIC STANDARD OF DECENCY” has to make apologies for while baring his throat and saying “Bless me QUILTBAGs cuz I have sinned…”

        Scalzi was dumb enough to ask us to “bone up on the concept of intersectionality” and then ludicrously linked us to a PDF that listed oppression/privilege as “age, attractiveness, body type, caste, citizenship, education, ethnicity, height and weight assessments, immigration status, income, marital status, mental health status, nationality, occupation, physical ability, religion, sex, sexual orientation.”

        To say these people are lame retarded morons that symbolize failure is an understatement.

      2. Political Correct Speech, aka PCism, was brought to our shores in the mid 30’s by traveling acolytes of the School of Marxism at Frankfurt.

        The stated purpose of PCism was, and still is, to force persons into so controlling what they’ll allow themselves to say that it becomes possible to control what they allow themselves to think.

        It is very much part and parcel of commiescumism and the efforts and works of same to corrode, erode and destroy their targeted populations from the inside out.

        There are many forms which censorship can take. PCism is a form of actively mutating censorship. We’re seeing even devotees of PCism hauled up and burned at the stake, court of public opinion wise, for something done in full support of PCism only later to be found guilty because the PCism changed.

        That is another of PCism’s purposes. Create and maintain confusion. Keep people at each other’s throats. Even within the Useful Idiot allies of commiescumism, there can be no lasting cohesion, because it is well known that Useful Idiots are always among the first against the wall of non-metaphorical firing squads due to their demonstrated willingness to believe bullshit.

  3. I live in Australia, and have no idea as to who Nancy Peolosi is. I had to Google her to find out she’s a politician. Should have really guessed that one, and not wasted my time. Also, on the same page there was a link to the Washington post, giving Gary Oldman a bit of a slap around the head and over the wrist for being so plain spoken. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2014/06/24/actor-gary-oldman-takes-on-nancy-pelosi-and-hillary-clinton-in-expletive-laced-playboy-interview/)

    1. She represents San Francisco in the federal house of representatives. San Francisco is well known for having a lot of homosexuals.

      Apparently, she keeps getting re-elected because she keeps the San Francisco homosexuals satisfied with her.

      Otherwise, there has long been reason to think that she ruins everything she touches.

      Recently, when the Democrats controlled the house, she was chief. During this period of time, she passed the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act. This last may prove noisy enough for you to hear about.

    2. She’s prominent in the US because she was speaker of the house for several years, making her one of the 4 or 5 most powerful individuals in the country.

    3. Pelosi is an immortal shape-shifting vampire famous for being one of the last holdouts when Constantinople fell in 1453. From there she went to Spain and Italy where she was 23 Borgias in a row and then came to San Francisco.

      1. I can’t look at her without picturing the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Germans open the Ark and start melting.

      2. Hmmm. A doppelgänger vampire. That would make her at least an elder vampire, definitely not a master. I wonder what the PUFF bounty on that would be?

  4. And now we have his apology for comments regarding Jews in Hollywood.

    *shrug*

    I thought they were off color, but I think it leaves a worse taste in my mouth seeing another person pushed to an apology. I’ve reached the point where I’m less bothered by off color remarks (as opposed to open vitriol and hate) than I am by the word police. I think it happened when things went from exercising a legitimate right to complain about what others say, to a directed mob intimidating people with implied threats of character assassination and career destruction.

    1. As a Jew, I agree regarding the apology thing.

      The phrase “run by Jews” leaves a bad taste in my mouth. However, I also feel that he has a point about hypocrisy and the fact that human beings often say things that they regret and should not be hounded for them or have their life and reputation destroyed.

      1. To be fair WAY above average percentage of folks of Jewish extraction (not necessarily faith but actual heritage), in management positions, and in positions of power in Hollywood. Statistically speaking y’all do run a much higher than representative percentage relative to general population density. But one could also say the same thing about South East Asians in IT departments and Native Americans in High Steel construction and African Americans in Athletics.

    2. “Run by Jews” was moronic. There may be a Hollywood culture top-heavy in Jewish folks but that’s not the same as “run by.” Accidental demographics is not a conspiracy to maintain ethnic “centrality” and nor is cultural success. The NBA is top-heavy in black players and Jewish bureaucrats – so what? Do all the black players have each other’s phone numbers?

      We’ve heard too much of the same thing about Golden Age SF “run by” straight white males, with the implication being it was a supremacist literary KKK fascinated by its own “whiteness” and “maleness” and interested in maintaining white male power.

      1. That’s egregiously mendacious. If a firm’s C-level spots and top management are all graduates of the same university, we would all say the firm is run by graduates of that university. It doesn’t matter if they went to separate colleges or graduated 30 years apart and never met at alumni reunions. Likewise, if a large majority of top-level managers in Hollywood are of Jewish ethnicity, the industry is run by Jews. The same way that most of corporate American is run by white men. No, of course this does not imply some sort of secret cabal. That’s not what “run by” means. You’re deliberately misinterpreting a phrase with a common and very obvious meaning.

        You’re the one who is making up the fantasy of a secret society of manipulative Judim running Hollywood, and then you pusillanimously put this into the mouth of a subject who said no such thing. It’s a disgusting behavior and you ought to stop it.

      2. It only has a common and obvious meaning in your head, since I don’t share it. “Run by” implies some kind of tacit solidarity rather than an accidental demographic.

        A university is a different matter, since it implies a shared loyalty or even established relationships. Jews are not a university. Hollywood is not run by Jews or corporate America run by white men unless there are some winks, nods and secret handshakes.

        As for your last paragraph, all I can say is it was swine-ariffic and made no sense to los que hablan ingles.

    3. Oldman’s comments were nothing compared to the non-stop vitriol about straight white males that comes from intersectionalist so-called “feminists” like tech guru Shanley Kane who has written “the tech industry is built on cultural appropriation, privilege, abuse, whiteness, maleness,” and “The people who run the tech industry are abusive, sexist, racist, cowardly white men. And they need to be removed from power.”

      If Kane wrote that about Jews she’d be run out of California. Kane’s comments are no different from the non-stop defamation of ethnic European males that ranges from two presidents of the SFWA to multiple Nebula Award nominees. That’s why I say QUILTBAG intersectionalism is neo-Nazi in all but name and that the SFWA supports hate speech – because it’s true – they just have slightly different targets.

      Intersectionalists carefully avoid mentioning Jews specifically cuz they know it’d be the end of them. Even so, the quotes revealed throughout the SFF industry have probably put more than a few writing careers in a twilight zone in the last few months without them being the least aware of it.

  5. The website wasn’t that NSFW. Or maybe my window was set narrow and didn’t show the side-bars? I’m just saying, in case someone didn’t dare to click the link. Oldman F-bombs every other sentence, but we’re all adults.

    1. If you go to playboy.com at work, your IT guys are going to want to talk to you – assuming the filtering software doesn’t simply blacklist the entire domain.

      1. Exactly. I mean, it’s probably blocked at my work (but then, what isn’t?)

        Maybe I’ll read it at home.

      2. Well, yes… if you’re AT work. But I usually pass on NSFW sites simply because I don’t want to risk seeing, oh, exposed girl-parts… which aren’t really my “thing”.

    1. rather good ones sometimes they do get a fair number of rather good reporters there Not sure how or why.

      1. for me it’s basically blah, blah, blah…NAKED WOMEN…blah, blah, blah. a very successful formula I must admit

  6. I have to say, not only am I sad that Gary Oldman, an actor I admire (most of the time – actually, one of the few things I like about this interview is that he agrees with me that The Fifth Element is trash) is doing interviews with Playboy, but also that, whatever his opinions, he’s being such a jerk about them. I agree with his opposition to most of the things and people he attacks, but I think there is an important difference between opposition and attacking. The latter tends to dehumanize our opponents, and however much they may deserve it, I don’t think it’s good for the people doing the dehumanizing.

    1. So basically, Oldman’s responses weren’t PC enough for you? Did you even comprehend what he was saying and what most people were agreeing with him about?

      1. There’s a difference between PC and common courtesy. Name calling is a violation of the latter, whether or not it’s a violation of the former.

        Clearly, however, as someone who “agree[s] with his opposition to most of the things and people he attacks,” I must be a member of the PC thought police.

      1. I disagree: it is a comedy which is more than aware of itself. The editing goes far beyond mere view changes and uses it as a clever narrative in spots. Chris Tucker and Milla Jovovich give Oscar quality performances and the cast is first rate, so is the design. It is a clever and amazing barn-burner of a film. Oldman gives a unique performance. We could use a heck of a lot more SF films that are such unique and colorful visions instead of blunted crap like Oblivion and Ender’s Game.

      2. It’s also one of the best SF universes in which to live. Great medical tech. Apparent relative freedom of speech. Scanners indicate owning weapons isn’t uncommon. Luxury space travel appears to be the kind of thing you can win on a radio show. Humans and aliens get along about as well as humans and other humans. Cosmic forces of death are opposed by cosmic forces of life, and even this seems limited to a planetary scale. Go where you want, judging by methods of transport available. Live more or less how you like, judging by variety of clothing styles and apparent religious freedom. Law and order are present, but not invasive enough to prevent people from doing dumb stuff like smoking. Crime exists and is perpetrated by the usual suspects, which frankly I find comforting to a degree.

        Compared to others it’s a reasonably fun, free, future. Beats Star Wars hands down. Star Trek’s Federation is a padded room with safety locks from what I can tell. Most others have angry space gods, perpetual war, or are dystopias.

      3. Multipass. Haha. That’s a great scene. The actors in that film are so fully engaged and having fun it’s just great to watch. I still can’t get over where Chris Tucker pulled that performance from. He is amazing every second he is on screen in that film. He should’ve been nominated for an Oscar, and Jovovich too.

    2. I have to say, not only am I sad that Gary Oldman, an actor I admire (most of the time – actually, one of the few things I like about this interview is that he agrees with me that The Fifth Element is trash) is doing interviews with Playboy,

      …How young are you? Coz I’m in my thirties and even I’m aware that for a long time getting an interview in Playboy was a big thing; and because it was one of the magazines that paid writers a lot, it had a lot of draw for fiction and articles. Have a tvtrope that’s truth in television.

      Well, not so much these days and I believe the decline really got around in the 90s, which makes me rather sad.

      Seriously, being in the list of interviewees that includes Martin Luther King Jr. in its’ roster (and if I’m not mistaken, Bill Cosby as well) is not a bad thing.

      1. Late 20s. I am fully aware that Playboy had and still has prestige in terms of articles, interviews, and creative pieces. Heck, a lot of my favorite early scifi stories were published there. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me sad because what what Playboy stands for. You can argue that it’s about serious conversation, but if it didn’t have the porn, would people still care about it?

        1. Having read the classic Playboy magazines, I actually wonder why it was considered porn. The women displayed there were beautiful, and their nakedness did not seem different to me from the naked women painted or displayed as statues in museums. Certainly they looked about the same – tasteful, pretty, nude, idealized. (Which is the difference between Penthouse and Playboy for me.)

          So by your implied argument (naked women = porn thus not good) museums should be considered not a valid source of serious discussion or art? Nudity is porn? Sensual looking beautiful naked women = verboten and ick?

          See, we were talking about an interview Oldman did; you’re the one with a problem about where he did it at, and the way he presented his views, implying that it is disappointing for you that he did so.

          It does not diminish the reality that Playboy does still have the prestige regards the quality articles and interviews, which is WHY it’s held in high regard despite the naked women, contra your dismay.

          What does Playboy ‘stand for’ that you find so specifically offensive? Coz I googled around, and found this interview:

          AA: Is there a double standard for women’s magazines? Cosmopolitan may not have nudity, but it has very frank sexual discussions. Yet it isn’t as controversial.

          Mr. Hefner: No question there’s a double standard. Cosmopolitan is simply a female version of Playboy. That’s what Helen Gurley Brown created, and said so. And we helped her do it.

          AA: Why didn’t you do it?

          Mr. Hefner: As a matter of fact, she came to me before she went to Hearst, and we had just started a show-business magazine that had cost more to launch than I was prepared for and so we were in the process of recovering from that and I was just not in a place to really start a magazine.

          AA: What would happen if Playboy dropped the nudity? What if you decided to make it a smaller-circulation, general-interest men’s magazine?

          Mr. Hefner: I think of it as exactly that. And it would be an incredible hypocrisy to leave out the one thing that mainstream men are most interested in. My feeling from the very beginning was not that we were creating a sex magazine. It’s a magazine the focus of which is a romantic relationship between a man and woman [and] the lifestyle surrounding it.

          When a magazine starts to become uncertain as to who they are-that’s what you see with Esquire and other magazines, as well-you lose your identity. What would one prove by taking the nudes out? Would we reach advertisers? Yes. But that’s just making money. My motivation has never been just making money. I have lived my life for a very specific purpose with-from my perspective-a tremendous success. I wanted to make a difference and I’ve made it. It isn’t just another magazine. It is, in the men’s field, the magazine and maybe even a little something more than that. Entire generations grew up with this magazine and they remember as if it was a first love those first centerfolds, those first images, those covers and specific features.

          AA: What does Playboy stand for as a brand?

          Mr. Hefner: It represents a sense of personal freedom and economic freedom, but has a kind of sophisticated, sexually liberated cachet. Just the kind of cachet that one looks for to move everything from a men’s cologne to cars to clothing. It’s being physically attractive and particularly attracted to the opposite sex, and it’s what drives advertising. We’re talking about the center of the target here.

          1. Nowhere did I say that “nude=porn.” Pornography doesn’t even have to contain nudity – it is sexually explicit material whose chief purpose is to excite sexual arousal. Hefner claims that his magazine is about “a romantic relationship between a man and a woman” – but, in fact, it’s about the fantasy life between the reader and all the women who are photographed in it, not a concrete relationship between two people who have to live with each other. It’s the play part of the Playboy that bothers me – there’s no sense that this romantic relationship requires the kind of work that adults have to take responsibility for.

            You seem to be arguing that the nudity is artistic, that it’s chief purpose is to celebrate the beauty of the human form. I’ve heard that before – but that does not seem to be the primary reason most of the people I’ve talked to about it read Playboy. If that is the case for a reader, I don’t per se have a problem with that.

            However, since I am a conservative Baptist, that kind of approach is fairly alien to me. And I don’t have a problem being disappointed with people who choose to associate with Playboy, whatever their reputation.

          2. Ah, well then, that answers my question. Let our opinions differ. I’d always liked the older Playboy pictures because they seemed to me, a woman, more focused on the beauty of the woman than the bits which actual porn mags focused on, but the pictures were less interesting to me than the articles, because while I can appreciate both male and female beauty, I just don’t swing that way.

  7. I think Oldman is off base here. It’s not PC to condemn a real racist, sexist anti-Semite like Mel Gibson. (I agree that Baldwin got a bad rap. Using that word shouldn’t even equate to being anti-gay; see Louis CK’s great bit about the proper use of the word ‘fag.’)

    Anyway, whether or not Oldman has the common sense to realize that not everyone has done the kind of insane shit that Mel Gibson has been caught on tape doing… I’m looking forward to Smiley’s People, which I expect will be a great movie. And this reminds me, I’ve been meaning to watch The Beaver.

  8. So after a rant criticizing people for being too easily offended and not endorsing the constraints of PC speech he is now on an apology tour because people are too easily offended and his interview wasn’t PC.

    There’s bound to be some irony lurking in the shadows on this one.

    I can appreciate that his remark about Jews could have been better phrased or omitted but it seems the director of ADL believes Oldman’s apology is “insufficient and not satisfactory.”. Which of course raises the question, what would be sufficient and satisfactory?

    In the modern age one is probably better off not even apologizing – such things only serve to fuel additional outrage. Perhaps it’s analogous to exposing one’s soft underbelly? It’s like blood in the water for those who derive sustenance from their own outrage.

  9. I like Gary Oldman as an actor, and I enjoyed the shoot-from-the-hip style of his interview.

    But . . .

    FWIW & IMHO I think that using the C-word to describe Ms Pelosi is crude and offensive. And pragmatically it enables her to dismiss any justified criticism against her as just jerks spouting rude words, it’s far harder to dismiss articulated and reasoned criticism. “A town run by Jews.” Oh dear. Next up will be “the international banking system is run by Jewish Bolsheviks!” -sorry- PC is a cancer on free-speech. But that doesn’t mean that non-PC talk has to consist of juvenile name-calling and (getting close to) border line anti-Semitism.

    Remember if you shoot from the hip you can miss your target and embarrass yourself as a bullet sails over the backstop.

  10. It’s so nice to hear one of my favorite actors say something that doesn’t make me want to drive nails through concrete with my head. I’m going to go watch the Dark Knight Trilogy again to celebrate!

  11. Dang. He never should have apologized. He should have stuck to his guns and pointed out that this is proof of what he was saying. Never, ever apologize to liberals. You are just digging your grave.

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