Yeah, it's like that old saying: "any publicity is good publicity." The more controversial a person is the better their career ends up. Gary Oldman is a good actor but he isn't a guy that is in the mind of most people on any given day. After his interview was published he got into the headlines for a week. This was definitely a net positive for him.

Definitely a positive impact.

Yet lashing out at the Jews of Hollywood.. probably will have a long term negative impact.

Jews care more about money than being villainized.

We'll see. Short term it was a good thing.

While your reasoning seems solid, I think we're all underestimating the creativity of publicists, managers and studio heads to react to a situation and spin things the way they want in order to generate sales. Given what we're saying about the nature of publicity (that there IS no bad publicity), it makes sense that experts in the world of marketing and media would be able to manipulate anything short of pedophilia into a win-win scenario.

Sounds reasonable, but I highly doubt Gary Oldman was doing that.

His rant was very specific, it's not like he JUST said fag or something. He had a long interview railing against political correctness.

Plus, Oldman apologized on Kimmel, but his written apology to The ADL was great trolling.

Nah not in most cases. A guy like Gary Oldman doesn't need or want that kind of fame. He is an old, well established actor who has been doing Hollywood movies for like 30 years.

The only examples that fit your theory are when reality tv personalities like Spencer Pratt do shocking things to get attention, then apologize for them. The majority of celebrities are not fame-whores and aren't doing this on purpose. They may capitalize on it, but it isn't a big conspiracy with celebs and the media trying to play us. Generally, fame-whoring is quite easily detected. Shia Labouef, Paris Hilton, Kardashians, etc.

He seems to be going crazy in exactly the same way as Martin Lawrence did a decade ago- yelling and being belligerent in the streets with commoners.

I wonder what the deal is? Some people just mentally fucked up and get famous and can't handle it?

It's an interesting theory, but I don't agree that it's for publicity.

What we're seeing is a modern form of what Monty Python parodied in Life of Brian, where people want to queue up to stone people for blasphemy. Stoning people, burning them at the stake, banishing them, lynch mobs, etc. A lot of people really like being part of that. Human beings have being doing it in different forms for centuries, and now technology makes it easy for everybody to do.

There's something really rotten about it. Like if somebody has lived a lifetime of non racist actions, but makes an inappropriate racial comment either with hate, or in a different context, the lynch mob ignores the context, ignores the lifetime of actions, and sees the comment itself as proof that they've been living a lie. Which is absolutely irrational of course, but these are irrational people.

If I was a celebrity, and ran a marathon for disabled children, but called someone on twitter a retard when he was being a retard I would be accused of living a lie just for using that word. There'd be a whole twitter campaign against me. People would harass my employers and my sponsors to have me dropped or fired. My family would probably be harassed.

My marathon would be seen as just "a cover" for my real secret bigoted views. Again, completely fucking bonkers. I might actually care about disabled children a great deal, hence the charity work, but I may also view the word "retard" in a different way than they do. it's completely bonkers, but lynch mobs cannot be reasoned with. They don't want to see people as a whole, or assume anything good about them. They have a very very distorted view of human beings.

The celebrities are apologizing maybe for fear of future income, and maybe because lynch mobs really are scary, but I think most of all that celebrities are probably decent people, have children\family who love them and are really terrified that people might view them as being "bad people". Can you imagine waking up one day and the world's media is pouring hatred and disgust at you for using some word. You'd be afraid of what your family and friends would think. You'd be humiliated even if you did nothing wrong. Even if you're a good person and just made a stupid joke you are terrified that people would view you as a disgusting person.

If it's easier to just say sorry for something you shouldn't have to say sorry for, then people will probably just do it. Why bother try and rationalize with irrational people? Why try and explain the context to people who began

Standing up to a lynch mob is hard, and it takes more than just "fuck you" money.

The boondocks had a great episode recently about the apology culture.

there are new episodes of the boondocks? my mind just fucking exploded. thank you

Aaron macgruder has nothing to do with the new season tho...

That could be either good or bad.

Well put.

I had no idea and also don't believe.

It's called Identity Politics. Look it up. It's a strategy.

Sounds reasonable.

Except that it doesn't just go away, at least not quickly.

What was the last big Mel Gibson movie? He apologized, and still he's an outcast.

The same shit happened to Tracy Morgan with that Son of No One garbage after his "I'd stab the little faggot" bit(In his FUCKING stand-up). He had to play a molested, mentally ill(or what-the-fuck-ever) guy. Patrice NAILED it when he spoke about fame.

Patrice also nailed it when he said Tracy would survive it because he had a liberal and gay friendly protector in Tina Fey who would keep Hollywood from ostracizing him. After doing his penance, Tracy came back. Almost none of the crash coverage mentioned that incident and all of phony Hollywood wished him a speedy recovery. Patrice was a genius.

Honestly, Gary Oldman was on to something

upvotes for making me laugh

I don't think it's planned, or a coincidence, it's just that without the movie/show/etc nobody is going to hear about, or care about what they do, and they don't have to apologize.

Could be. It does seem to be a trend. It could be a "social burp" in the digestion of how things change, and even at that, the "trend" would certainly be used to the most advantage if possible.

Lurked here for a while, just signed up to weigh in on something.

Erik?

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The term you're looking for is 'publicity stunt' and yes, sometimes, it's possible. It rarely shows these fools in a good light, but they say any publicity is good publicity, so who knows. I wouldn't be surprised.

yuck

Oh alright