Okay, come at me: I am not a huge Star Wars fan.

Ouch! Arrgh! Urk! Okay, I get it. I’m just not. I loved the original movie when I saw it, by myself, in one of the last theaters that had just the one screen. The theater was large, fairly ornate, and when I went to the film, months after it was released, I was the only soul in the house. It was fucking magnificent.

I saw The Empire Strikes Back shortly after it came out and liked it even more, because it had snappier dialogue (thank you, Leigh Brackett) and better storylines. Return of the Jedi was a letdown, as hard as it tried, and don’t get me started on the prequel trilogy. The only three things I liked about those movies were Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul and Mace Windu, and the stupid bastards killed them off way too quickly. The others? I don’t care.

Then came The Mandalorian. I got Disney Plus for WandaVision (so fucking good, but I am an MCU fanboi, so yeah), and with the Star Wars TV show just sitting there daring me to watch it, I did.

I’m most of the way through Season One. It is very, very good.

One of the better secondary characters is, or was, Cara Dune, who was a good-guy mercenary who helped the Mandalorian out of a number of jams and worked her way into being a fan favorite. She was even said to have landed a starring role in an upcoming Star Wars TV show, Rangers of the New Republic.

Not anymore, she isn’t. Why? Because the actress, popular MMA fighter Gina Carano, is one of the most viciously stupid people in Hollywood.

Lucasfilm said in a statement:

Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.

“Abhorrent and unacceptable”? Well, yeah, because she apparently is a virulent Trumper who doesn’t think she has to exercise any restraint and decorum on social media platforms.

Carano has a history of deriding mask wearing, insisting that Trump had the election stolen from him by a towering liberal conspiracy, insulting Black Lives Matter protesters, and mocking the idea that trans men and women might want to use pronouns that describe who they actually are and not what they were born as. She also became a minor fixture on Parler.

All of that resulted in a hashtag, #FireGinaCarano, which has been trending on Twitter for months.

But on February 10, she did herself in with a post on Instagram that compared the Holocaust to the “suffering” experienced by Trump supporters.

Can’t read it?

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers, but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them for simply being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?

She illustrated it with a photo of German Jews being pursued by Nazi soldiers. Just, no. She deleted it shortly thereafter, but we know how well that works.

(Tim Allen said much the same thing in 2017. Didn’t do his career any good, either, and unlike Carano, he was an established star.)

The pushback was fierce.

Trust me, there’s a lot more of that on Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram, and and and. Of course she has her defenders, slinging LOL icons and derision as fast as they can scoop their swill, but Lucasfilm isn’t listening to them. (I think that will become a trend.)

Posting Nazi propaganda on Instagram is not a good idea if you want to be part of a huge comic or science fiction franchise. Ask James Gunn what happens to a beloved Marvel director whose homophobic and pedophiliac Tweets are unearthed. (He managed to claw his way back into Marvel’s good graces. Carano won’t.)

Carano could have become an icon in Star Wars fandom, and who knows what else? (She already had a minor but memorable role in the first Deadpool movie. I doubt she will be asked to reprise that role.) Instead, she decided to be a transphobic, QAnon-slinging anti-Semitic shitposter in public. As her reward, she gets to be a footnote in Star Wars history who will likely never work again in any major production.

Tots and pears for her abortive film career.

I just hate knowing that I’m going to see her Trumpy ass in several more episodes of The Mandalorian. Grr.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. By odd coincidence, I also saw Star Wars, by myself, and in a mostly empty theater. I think there were maybe 10-15 people in the entire place. I brought a little picnic, lox and bagels and cream soda, and had myself a feast and fell in love with Star Wars. I fell so in love with it, that the very next day I drove down to Denver to see it again, on the big 70mm screen at the Cinerama, I think it was called. It was the only 70mm screen for quite a ways around. This was 1978,, remember.

    I don’t know The Mandalorian at all. I lost interest in Star Wars after the prequels. I saw one sequel that I don’t even remember the name of, it was so boring to me. But I loved the first three movies, and was okay with the prequels and then I don’t even know what came next. I have no idea who this actress is, but she sounds like a complete moron.

    • The Mandalorian is extremely good, not the least because (so far) it exists almost completely out of the typical Star Wars flow. No Jedi, no Sith, no Dark Side, no light sabers, no lofty bullshit. The Mando is very much of a “Man with No Name” figure, except he has chosen to protect this “Child” who is probably more than he seems, but mostly (so far) just burbles and eats frogs. Carano is an idiot. She could have gotten old and fat working the Star Wars universe. She was just too stupid to keep her hate to herself.

  2. Hmm. I’m no Trumper. I’d like to see him convicted in the current impeachment trial (but he won’t be ?).Worst. Pesident. Ever. And you can see the ‘however’ coming.

    I’m lovin’ Mandalorian. Way smarter than most other Star Wars movie writing and acting (but I enjoy them all).

    If I hadn’t seen this article, I wouldn’t have known Carrano’s politics. Looking at this example, anyway, I’m not outraged. Show me more examples, maybe, but they’d have to rise above the level of the average True Believer. Here, she’s not a Holocost denier. She’s making an over-the-top comparison in whiny victimhood, but I don’t think that should be career-ending.

    The Right is fond of telling us that the political views of our TV/Movie favorites. – mostly lefties – are irrelevant and they should shut up. I don’t agree. They get to use their soapbox, and, yes, they will be held responsible for what they say on it. The handful of right-wingers get that privilege, too.

    The Trumpian Right is accusing the Left of ‘cancel culture’ intolerance. They understand correctly that we abhore their political beliefs. I’m afraid they’re also correct in assessing our willingness to shut them up and punish them for believing and expressing. We punish people for actions, not words (with a few exceptions… a line Trump managed to cross).

    So again show me something beyond some True Believe tweets, especially more heinous than this fairly mild one, and I’ll get on board.

    • Whatever happens to her is of her own doing. No one told her to mock transgendered people, or COVID victims. No one told her to take the side of the seditionists. She’s lucky she didn’t get kicked from Disney months ago. And you’re g0ddamned right we’re ready to shut them up and punish them — but for their actions, not their beliefs. It’s one thing to mock QAnon idiots for what they say. It’s another thing to seek justice after they invade the Capitol building, stalk Congressional members, murder police officers, and smear the walls with their own shit.

  3. Just heard about this one this morning myself. On that deep level I no longer question, I have never liked Carano though on the surface, she seemed like exactly my type (no judging, please…we all have our bents). Now I know why that was so.

    On a less serious note, I wanted to like Mandalorian and just…couldn’t (as Bob Chipman said, “Panderlorian” is a little closer to the mark on my impression). Star Wars as a whole was alright–came out when I was a kid and so have a fondness–but my go-to movie back then was Clash of The Titans, Ray Harryhausen OG version. But Wandavision…ooooh. I’m already ride or die when it comes to MCU but that one is something special. It’s made me look forward to Fridays again.

    • The Mandalorian is very well done, for what it is. One thing I like is the absolute dearth of Jedi, Sith, the Force, lightsabers, pompous bullshit masquerading as philosophy, etc. It tells simple stories with strong characters. But WandaVision…that’s something else entirely. I am all in on that one.

  4. Gary Pearce has a good point. This post of hers does not compare the Holocaust with being Republican. She points out that the Nazis got average Germans to hate their Jewish neighbors just for being Jewish before they did the cattle car thing, and asks how that’s different from Democrats hating their MAGA neighbors because they’re MAGA. She may well be a stupid, vile, homo/transphobic, intolerant person, but she actually has a point here. And doing the Cancel Culture thing to her for this specific post is kind of silly. If she’s to be shut down, shut her down for something actually bad she’s said.

    • Actually, your point is taken but to me what has been happening is the opposite of what she is saying. That is, Trump has spent the last 4 years getting his MAGAts to believe those of us who identify as liberals or progressives are to be mocked, looked down upon and kicked around whenever possible. After all, just where did the now common epithets of “snow flake”, “libtards”, “elites”, “deep state”, et.al. come from? Trump and his MAGAts, egging on his followers to be more vocal, aggressive, in your face. Pretty much what she was saying only from the opposite point of view. So here we are, a divided nation. And for what it’s worth, I have no idea who she is and have never watched a Star Wars movie all the way thru. Make of that what you will 🙂

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