Some Thoughts on Liam Nesson....

Hmmm...My first reaction was just like everyone else's... What a racist sack of shit !! He literally took the bad actions of one person and was ready to murder some innocent person who shared a superficial trait.... Interesting that he used the word "primal" in describing his feelings. Is that how it works with white people? Isn't that the exact mentality behind lynchings? The way he enunciated "blaCK BASTARD!!" Clearly he's still working through some issues. I never really liked any of his movies anyway... FUCK HIM!

So I took a few to think on it... Don't we all have primal urges from time to time? I've never been harmed by someone and wanted to take it out on an innocent person because they shared a superficial trait... at least on a conscious level. Ultimately, he didn't do it. The most damning thing about his comments was that he was so brutally honest about it... How he eventually overcame racism... and learned from it. Is that something we should discourage?

I honestly don't kow what to think. Anybody else have any thoughts?

He was describing something that happened decades ago, while saying that he now regarded his actions as wrong. So while he may have been racist at the time, he surely isn't now.

As with so many of these things, the backlash is ridiculous. People should not have their careers ruined over what amounts to thoughtcrime.
But given the climate he was naive to think that there wouldn't be a backlash

Kinda sorta reminiscent of the Shirley Sherrod fiasco a few years ago...but without the right wing media lying about it and making it worse.

I had to google what a "cosh" was! It's a club/truncheon. I've only heard the word one other time, in a Clash song from 1979 or so.
Anyway good thing he didn't go and kill somebody who didn't deserve it! Now if he could have tracked down the actual rapist........and beat his ass to death without getting caught.....that would have been sweet!

I agree. I could understand being angry at the person but why would you be angry at totally unrelated people. This is, of course, assuming there was no racial angle to the original attack.

He said he thought about seeking revenge after he was attacked but didn't actually do anything about it because he thought better of it. He should be praised not slandered for doing the right thing.

Then I'm not like everyone else.


He volunteered this information, it wasn't dug up about him, and he admitted it was bad, he realized it was bad within the story, and it was a growing experience for him, and he passed it on obviously hoping others could learn from it.

If this were someone like Dayton or Marso telling the story, there'd be no "what the fuck am I doing?", moment.
They're never gonna have that "what the fuck am I doing?", moment.
Don't wait or it.

and you can guarantee their behavior? You can see into the future?

If they ever turn good, I'll give you a Hershey's miniature.
A Krackel.

I don’t understand why you’d even bring this up and why you’d go after some random person?

Yes. like it says magical girl motherfucker, and that comes with seeing obvious future events. I side gig as captain obvious, don't tell anyone.

I've never understood the reasoning behind it, but it happens all the fucking time.

Happened right after 9/11, assholes attacking Muslims and Sikhs, and they had nothing to do with it.

Witch trials, pretty much every lynching, on and on, people taking out their anger over something on some innocent scapegoat.

That's not racism as I understand it- just a predictable emotional reaction. He basically said if the rape victim claimed attacker was a cripple, or wore robes, he'd have gone out looking for a cripple or robed priest to strike back against. He acknowledged that it was a purely emotional reaction.

When I think of racism it ranges across a spectrum from the most benign (talk down to, soft bigotry of low expectations) to the most extreme (supremacist fuckers), with a few steps in between (like Archie Bunker, or people who feel more comfortable being among their "like kinds"). And that last category includes non-racist versions of the same basic tribalism between chess geeks, teachers, theatre/music/artist groups or (multi-racial) jewish or K. of C. type clubs.

I agree with your gut about philosophy of forgiving under reasonable circumstances. But damn it would be a lot less entertaining.

recognizing how horrifically wrong he was now?
Good. People do tend to learn from horrible mistakes.

BUT
think of it this way: if she had aid she was raped by a white guy would he have taken the same walk looking for a random white dude to shoot?
No.

Thus, whatever happened since, it was very much motivated by racism even if it didn't seem so to him in the heat of anger.

Wait, what? Please clarify your position. Am I to understand that you're claiming that everything Liam Nesson has done in the intervening years was motivated by racism? Being racist does not have to be a perpetual state of being. Like I mentioned the other day, George C. Wallace did some absolutely horrible things while he was a judge and during his first two terms as Governor of the State of Alabama. But, I believe he grew to regret those decisions and changed his ways. It's a fact that he wouldn't have won his third term in office without the support of the black citizens of the state, before which he figuratively prostrated himself and begged forgiveness.

Maybe Qui-Gon shouldn’t have said any of this shit.

Shes talking about Neeson likely having biased thoughts about black men already before the attack.

Like Diacanu said, he volunteered this info and he's not making excuses for it. But I don't blame people for not dealing with him anymore after this.

Personally, we need more people talking about ugly biases like this.

Maybe I'm stepping out to far, but I think that's troubling. The entire point, the overarching context, of 1 Corinithians is that a man within the church was having sexual relations with his own stepmother and the church wasn't doing anything about it. Paul demanded that the church act on this motivated by love for these people that had gone astray. The entire point, the overarching context, of the follow-up letter of 2 Corinthians was to tell the church in Corinth to not hold a grudge. That the people involved had repented and Paul instructed the church to forgive and let them return to fellowship. In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus said much the same thing. If a brother (or sister) does something wrong, go to them motivated out of love for them (not to point a finger or say, "gotcha") and correct them. If they repent, forgive them, and move on.

Liam didn't have to reveal any of this. He did so on his own. He's admitted that he was wrong and it is something he deeply regrets. If he changed and has demonstrated a pattern of change, I say we hold him up as a success story.

I'd love for all of it to be out in the open: our racism, bigotry, sexism, whatever it is that drives the darker part of us pulled out into the open, laid bare, and an actual, truly honest to god conversation happen because of it. People need to stop being afraid and ashamed, to realize that all of us are guilty of thoughts and biases, that we all have prejudices that we learned growing up, or adopted because we thought they were true. It won't lead to a utopia, but it might just get us to understand one another a little better, and it might just erode some of that "us vs them" mentality that ignorance thrives upon.

Liam Neeson: "Many years ago, I had a horribly racist impulse that I'm very ashamed of."

Villagers with Pitchforks: "Racist! Destroy him!"

No.
I'm saying that even if one fairly postulates that everything since has been redemptive, that specific act was obviously racist.

That's why i don't want him vilified - the conversations need to happen and they won't if people feel they can never open up about them.

People want to have a conversation about racism but those same people want to burn Liam Neeson alive for offering up a talking point for that conversation. I don’t know. Maybe white people should go back to denying racism exists anymore. Would that be preferable?

Yeah. There are people out there calling for him to be digitally erased from the new MIB movie.

He's 66 according to his bio and this rape incident thing happened 40 years ago.

Is Neeson the same person he was when he was 26? I'd seriously doubt it.

Has he shown any type of racist behavior in the last forty years? There is none that I know of though I do admit that I don't follow him closely enough to say for sure.

I'm not seeing this as anything more than a confession of pure stupidity on his part when he was a young man and that he's ashamed of it having taken place.

Thing is, very few black folks have ever met many true, non racist white folks. I agree it's a good story with lessons to be learned. I personally take him at his word that he's changed. But that's easy for someone like me that grew up around white folks and have several in my family tree. If all people's interactions with white folks have involved harrassment from cops and shot ass teachers like Dayton telling them they need to accept that white people will be their bosses, they're just gonna stop as "I wanted to hurt black men" and leave it at that.

Is it right? Maybe not, but neither is a world where blacks can get shot for wear hoodies and fitting the profile and where I get scared anytime a cop is behind me despite never being pulled over for so much as a speeding ticket once. Four years ago, when I was with my friend on a Vegas trip, her terrible weaving in traffic in a bright yellow ass MINI she got pulled over and she was scared shitless. Me, I thought she was overreacting--but I lived on the West Coast my whole life--in a city that voted 80 percent Trump, but still nothing like the stories I was told by other sailors from other parts of the country.

If I had those kinds of run-ins I'd have no love for Liam Neeson, either, honestly.

I think it says more about how he and many like are him are raised that his first impulse was to immediately go out and kill someone in an act of revenge. It's blind rage targeted at someone as if they were a violent animal that needed to be put down and not a person who needs to be caught and punished by the law. His phrasing seems like he was looking for anyone just to unleash his anger and not the specific man who raped his friend.

It's just horribly common that black people face more vigilant "justice" than other groups and a lot of white people don't even question why they feel that way. We'll even condemn it in cases like lynching where it was almost always innocent people, but many find it fine if they "knew" they were guilty as if they actually deserve it. I grew up hearing it in such a casual manner. Even now my mom is also interested in the race of someone who commits a crime as if that matters and she even tells me that it doesn't but she can't say why she asked that. It's like being programmed to immediately suspect black people of doing something wrong.

That's part of why I no longer support the death penalty. when you hear how many suspect cases there are and shaky evidence, it's hard to justify that, even for the horrendous ones that are without a doubt guilty.

Yeah, plus we've seen so many death row convictions get overturned as new evidence came in. What really work me up to that was the West Memphis Three where they were convicted on the fact that they were the weird kids in a small town. It just hit me how that could happen anywhere and to anyone who didn't fit into the majority in some way. I took a deep dive into reading about it and just became horrified by all of it. Just thinking about all the people who went to their deaths and were completely innocent just wrecks me.

This is a prime example of what I was talking about in another thread when it comes to some of the kindest most forgiving people I know of being Christians, and how some of the non-religious can be every bit as hateful and bigoted as they accuse religious people of being. And I say that as an atheist.

The problem I have with that line of reasoning is it characterises the comments he made in a press junkett as being some painful admission of a truth which has been troubling him. I'd have no complaints about that if I were actually convinced it were the case (or even sufficiently unsure as to give the benefit of the doubt).

Not to put too fine a point on it I spend a lot of time sitting with people trying to decide what is a genuine expression of remorse for their crimes and what is something more cynically masquerading as such and this just isn't washing when I listen to it. It's too pat, too convenient, too perfectly packaged for the soundbite a junkett becomes and too thematically perfect for marketing the film.

He didn't once mention remorse at the racial element , didn't address it in the slightest in fact , nor did it seem to have occurred to him to do so. He only talked about the futility of revenge. Nor did he address the fact he was making the story about him and his quest, not the actual victim whose feelings on this revelation seem not to factor into his thinking.

Furthermore he did so in the context of explaining why people should watch the film, a film which clearly lacks the kind of depth he was seemingly trying to lend it with the anecdote. One doesn't bare ones' soul, so to speak, on cue in a couple of minutes with a journalist whilst selling a product. On the contrary one looks at the product and tries to find ways to personalise its' value and worth and that's how it comes across to me. Someone looking for an anecdote from their own life to link to the product but not realising how he is portraying himself.

Ineterstingly people have picked up on the overt racism (which I think it's hard to miss), but have said little about the implied sexism of appropriating this girls' suffering as a justification for his actions and a (IMHO) quite false exploration of his own feelings.