Pop-culture news outlet Popdust has become the latest voice to join the call for Gina Carano to be fired from her role on The Mandalorian for her political views, with a new piece denouncing both the actress and conservatives for their “wrong-headed and dangerously ignorant views.”
On November 23rd, Popdust staff writer Keith Baldwin published an article asking, “Can Disney Fire Gina Carano From The Mandalorian for Being Depressingly Normal?”, asserting in the article’s subheading that “Gina Carano’s political views are upsetting and ignorant, but they are not unusual.”
In the opening to his piece, Baldwin disingenuously summarizes the recent controversies involving Carano’s social media presence, such as her refusal to bow to a mob demanding she add pronouns to her bio or the backlash to her call for businesses to reopen while taking whatever COVID-19 precautions they wished, and her creation of a Parler account, as “moments of apparent ignorance “ meant to, worst of all, “anger or alienate Left-leaning fans”.
It should be noted, that while Carano’s publicly professed beliefs are shared more widely by those on the American right than on the left, she has never outright confirmed her adherence to any particular political party or ideology.
“Gina Carano has revealed herself to harbor some wrong-headed and dangerously ignorant views,” accuses Baldwin. “But they are views that are common enough to be completely ordinary in 2020. In large swaths of the country, they are undoubtedly much more common than the alternative.”
Baldwin then turns his attentions to President Trump, criticizing both events that factually occurred, such as his banning of transgender individuals from enlisting in the military, and those that did not, most notably his insisting that there were “very fine people” on both sides at the infamous 2017 Charlottesville Unite The Right rally, before asserting that “after four years with a president who has normalized and amplified conspiratorial and divisive views, it’s easy to say that Gina Carano’s behavior on Twitter has been offensive and disturbing.”
“But what we can’t claim is that any of it is particularly surprising,” Baldwin adds.
At this point in his piece, Baldwin proceeds to generalize various political opinions, such as those which believe “that concerns over pronoun use are silly, that Black Lives Matter protests are dangerous, that mask mandates are unnecessary, and that fraudulent votes flipped the 2020 election to Joe Biden “ as being held by a singular political strawman, asserting that “if, tomorrow, every American company fired every employee who believes these things, the unemployment rate would shoot up by about 30% overnight.”
“We can acknowledge that these views are wrong and dangerous,” moralizes Baldwin. “But on some level we have to confront the fact that around 74 million Americans voted to reelect a president who endorses the same awful views,” again reducing the complicated and various reasons that voters cast their ballot for President Trump to nothing more than a simple, easy-to-digest ‘bad guy’.
Related: The Mandalorian Star Gina Carano Calls To “Fix” The Election Process
This political and social generalization continues into the conclusion of Baldwin’s piece, as its final paragraphs excoriate Carano and his strawman-version of an American ‘conservative’, claiming that Carano uses “her platform to spread ignorant and dangerous views,” and ironically mocking any backlash against her firing as a result of her views as “Conservative voices [who] are always eager to play the victim and accuse the Left of intolerance -for not accepting a “diversity of thought” so broad that it would include lies and hate speech.”
“Carano has already shown a tendency toward this type of thinking, a stubbornly refusing to support good causes if random people on Twitter are rude about them,” Baldwin writes in criticism of the actress. “It’s likely that Disney firing her would launch her to a new level of celebrity as a conservative pundit and victim of “cancel culture. This may serve to push her and others like her even further into Right-wing misinformation, intolerance, and conspiracism.”
“But what choice is there when the alternative is to continue adding to her profile and her ability to spread destructive messages? Just because her views are normal, doesn’t make them okay.”
What do you make of Baldwin’s arguments? Let us know your thoughts on social media or in the comments down below!