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    From the Seán Connery school of acting and accents, and seemingly also of being a terrible person.

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      There's also the issue that he's probably exposed the identity of a rape victim just to make it all about himself and his racist revenge issues.

      Yet somehow I feel some empathy for him because
      a) I show in my classes an interview with him about bereavement (loss of his wife)
      b) I have a history of oversharing and self-sabotage

      I don't think Hollywood will shun him but film financers might feel his oversharing mouth and clearly violent background is too big a risk.

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        I'm not sure I get all this opprobrium. The man's trying to be honest and candid about having horrible thoughts following a horrible incident. And he's trying to understand them and learn from them. This isn't someone dressing up in blackface, but rather trying to learn from feelings he didn't (and maybe still doesn't) comprehend.

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          Is this likely though to affect the audiences of the type of movies he makes now? Which seem to be entirely about a baby boomer snapping and killing hundreds of heavily armed well trained young people? I mean there's a reason that I haven't watched a movie of his since Star Wars: The one about trade sanctions

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            I partly agree with WOM. I have no problem (well, yes, I do obviously) with him thinking such stupid and racist thoughts when he was younger. I think a large proportion of us possibly had ridiculously stupid and/or bigoted views when we were younger. What I find questionable, to say the least, is him bringing this up in an interview publicising a movie. Firstly, it is, as mentioned, not the greatest place to bring it up but, more importantly, it offends people where there was no real need. He might have assuaged his own guilt somewhat but at what cost to others.

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              Surprised he didn’t want to cosh an adolescent boy after Love Actually. I know I did.

              <joke>

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                I know he's had grief in his life, but this might be good stuff to get out with his therapist, not in an interview where racists are going to feel validated and identify with his 'tough guy' movie persona, rather than with the real, troubled Liam Neeson. Obviously he gets that it was bad, but racists are going to be punching the air.

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                  Um...yeah, I don't know about that. "Yeah...Liam Neeson's one of us! First Trump and now....etc."

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                    Trump would not express remorse, though. I still feel that discussing a rape in a way that may expose the victim's identity is the biggest deal here. I have to assume that Neeson did not plan to make this revelation because he has not thought through the consequences. His narcissism ran away with him.

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                      I think that, thus far, Satchmo and Bored are the nearest to my thinking on this. Making such an admission might be viewed as 'brave' elsewhere, but this was completely inappropriate for the interview (as borne out by his co-star's reaction) - and, yes, will have caused completely unnecessary offence.

                      If Neeson needs to deal with this - which clearly he does - then he'd be better of doing so by means of private therapy. Such a public outpouring looks very unwieldy, and possibly throws up more questions about him than it ought to.

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                        Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                        I think that, thus far, Satchmo and Bored are the nearest to my thinking on this. Making such an admission might be viewed as 'brave' elsewhere, but this was completely inappropriate for the interview (as borne out by his co-star's reaction) - and, yes, will have caused completely unnecessary offence.

                        If Neeson needs to deal with this - which clearly he does - then he'd be better of doing so by means of private therapy. Such a public outpouring looks very unwieldy, and possibly throws up more questions about him than it ought to.
                        OTF posters, please consider this before giving him a pass.
                        I and people close to me have been wronged by white people all my life. I have never once picked up a weapon, gone to a white area and looked for a random white person to pick a fight with. Nor have I even considered doing so.

                        Thats the kind of mindset that leads to mass killings or racially motivated murders.
                        He is an ignorant bigot who had always harboured a visceral hatred towards black people and this rape story was his trigger to do something.
                        But like most bigots he is a fucking coward and despite being well over 6ft tall and well armed, he probably didn't see a black person who he felt he could take down easily.

                        I also didn't see anything in the article where he has said he has addressed his anti-black hatred btw......

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                          Nobody's 'giving him a pass' as far as I can see. What he said is reprehensible and he needs to sort his sh*t out, is what I'm saying.

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                            Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                            Nobody's 'giving him a pass' as far as I can see. What he said is reprehensible and he needs to sort his sh*t out, is what I'm saying.
                            Fair point, would "sympathetic hearing" suffice?

                            To use an analogy, if he said something like, "my senile old granny was swindled in a property deal and lost most of her money. I asked my old man, what did the guy look like and he said, oh he was a jew........"

                            Let's just say his career would be toast.....

                            Actually, It's good that this has come out. It allows him to confront these feelings if he chooses to do so and us to condemn him if he doesn't.

                            Many people keep these things to themselves and by the time we realise they harbour these feelings its too late like when acts of racially motivated murders take place or they get on juries and acquit these race soldiers.
                            Last edited by Tactical Genius; 05-02-2019, 13:07.

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                              While I take on board some of your other points, I'm not sure I'd equate swindle with rape.

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                                Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                                While I take on board some of your other points, I'm not sure I'd equate swindle with rape.
                                To be clear, and I am not trying to equate the two as equal crimes.

                                My point is the mindset of collective punishment which is prevalent amongst extremists. The feeling that you were slighted by "one of them" justifies doing out and exacting disproportionate revenge against anyone looking vaguely like the perpetrator. The crime is irrelevant, I can understand the feeling for revenge against the perpetrator not against random people.

                                I am sure Dylann Roof had his reasons for what he has done, did anyone in that Church personally offend him, probably not and nor does anyone care.

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                                  Well, the crime is relevant in that rape will always prompt an angrier response - which is then more likely to result in less-coherent behaviour. (His psychological issues notwithstanding, Dylann Roof was/is a f*ck-up - Liam Neeson is clearly a person of high intelligence and achievement, which makes his already-regrettable admissions highly problematic.)

                                  I totally get your overall point, I just don't think that the analogy was an appropriate one.

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                                    Originally posted by WOM View Post
                                    Um...yeah, I don't know about that. "Yeah...Liam Neeson's one of us! First Trump and now....etc."
                                    I think it will be used as an example quite easily by people trying to justify racial bias/having "un-PC" thoughts about crimes committed by black people. "Look, even liberal movie stars feel this way, it's a natural response."

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                                      Long read for the WTF thread, but interesting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-of-deceptions

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                                        Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                        Long read for the WTF thread, but interesting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-of-deceptions
                                        I started that last night. The New Yorker has had a few pieces over the years about frauds/cons, I always enjoy those.

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                                          Read that on the train today. Brilliant.

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                                            Contemporary US publishing seems to be especially susceptible to these charlatans.

                                            James Frey, J T LeRoy, Margaret Jones, the list is long.

                                            And I’m left wondering whether his familiarity with that world made it much easier to pull the con off.

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                                              Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                              Long read for the WTF thread, but interesting https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-of-deceptions
                                              I do like that the persona he created, with all its illnesses and personal challenges and unsung accomplishments, is so incredibly trite. A complete hack, his life stands as his magnum opus.

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                                                Thats the kind of mindset that leads to mass killings or racially motivated murders.

                                                The bizarre thing about this whole story, is that is the point he thought he was making. If you look at his "Word salad" that's definitely in there. Somewhere along the line of movie stardom and living in a world of sycophancy, he's lost the plot to the extent that he thought that this would work out well. His clear intent is to say that he understands the impulse for revenge, blurts out a story about going out looking for revenge, and copping the fuck on and feeling foolish because he's seen how that kind of thinking destroys society. The problem is in the story he tells, which he thinks is massively less problematic than it is. I mean if he could see the front cover of Irish newspapers today, he probably wouldn't have told this story. This whole thing is a massive can of worms. and if he did understand, he might have told the story in a one on one interview, longer form interview rather than just blurting it out in one of those movie promotional interviews.

                                                My point is the mindset of collective punishment which is prevalent amongst extremists. The feeling that you were slighted by "one of them" justifies doing out and exacting disproportionate revenge against anyone looking vaguely like the perpetrator. The crime is irrelevant, I can understand the feeling for revenge against the perpetrator not against random people.

                                                You're completely right, but you're also not a Northern Irish Pensioner though. He grew up a Catholic in the 50's and 60's in the Same town as Ian Paisley, at a time where Paisley was waging a one man campaign to start the troubles, by relentlessly hammering on about the disloyalty of Catholics, whipping up people (And policemen) to attack civil rights marchers, all the way up to the Pogroms that lead to the army being sent in to protect belfast Catholics from the police. Picking out a random member of an entire community for punishment for some sort of revenge was really super popular in Northern Ireland at the time. it was so common that literally thousands of people died. This attitude of collective punishment was so common there that it could barely be called extremist when it was so culturally normal. and it wasn't just confined to Northern Ireland either. This story also probably comes from the early eighties when he was a Northern Irish catholic living in London (because before that he lived in Ballymena, Belfast, Newcastle, and Dublin, which are not places renowned for having black areas to wander around looking for the slightest provocation to be Charles fucking Bronson). I'm not saying it's in any way justifiable, but it's also not massively surprising. Bearing that in mind, he's also managed to construct a situation where it seems like he's talking about one person in particular.

                                                He did a pretty bizarre interview on ABC where he basically said if the person had said Scottish or irish or lithuanian he would have gone to those areas, and I genuinely believe that aspect of things. However it does bring us right back to the real nub of the issue, which was why was he so quick to ask what colour the assailant was? That's the one that he hasn't addressed in his floundering. That's the nugget of shit at the heart of this thing.




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                                                  Got most of the way through the first graf before I realised that you weren’t talking about the novelist.

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                                                    hah.

                                                    I'd like to see the full clip of this interview. John Barnes was only building up a head of steam by the time it cuts off.

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