The Overdue but Perfect Response to the Outrage of the Minority
It doesn’t seem to take much to uphold Charlie Cox’s good-guy reputation, and when Digital Spy asked Cox what he made of people getting upset over the “walk of shame” that Daredevil did the morning after having a really great night with She-Hulk, he said, very kindly, “If She-Hulk’s not your thing, then don’t watch it. Watch something else.”
James Gunn has issued a statement addressing fan concerns over the direction of the DC Universe after the announcement of Henry Cavill’s exit as Superman and the harassment he and co-head Peter Safran have received online.
“One of the things Peter & I were aware of when we took the job as heads of DC Studios was a certain minority of people online that could be, well, uproarious & unkind, to say the least. Our choices for the DCU are based upon what we believe is best for the story & best for the DC characters who have been around for nearly 85 years. Perhaps these choices are great, perhaps not, but they are made with sincere hearts & integrity & always with the story in mind,” Gunn explained.
“No one loves to be harassed or called names — but, to be frank, we’ve been through significantly worse. Disrespectful outcry will never, ever affect our actions."
The term minority tends to mean in the minds of most people non-white people. That's reasonable given how the word is used but it's also a misdirect. Minority is simply that part of any group that is a smaller section of the whole than the majority. Globally, we're all the minority in comparison to the Chinese population. Men, when it comes to college admissions, are in the minority in comparison to women. Both the extreme Left and Right politically are in the minority in comparison to Exhausted Center.
Based strictly on numbers, those who hate the MCU are in the minority as are those who use Twitter and have their toilet paper pull from under the roll. Bidet users? Minority. Vegans? Minority. People who bought one of those Trump NFTs? Stupid minority. And, you know, there's no "I" in stupid.
As much as the debacle of Kevin McCarthy struggling to become Speaker of the House was a pleasure to view, he was up against the outrage of the minority within his party.
From Yahoo News:
"With a narrowly divided chamber, 222-to-212, the new speaker has shown the far-right wing of his caucus that they can get their way through obstruction — a recipe for nonstop hostage-taking by small factions going forward.
The problem for Congress, however, is that McCarthy will probably have to continue prostrating himself in order to keep his new job. Why? Because in the process of winning their votes, he awarded his captors nearly every demand on their wishlist — empowering them to continue to obstruct business whenever it suits their purposes."
The conundrum lies in the fact that we love it when our minority voices obstruct their majority but can't seem to be able to stand it when their minority is afforded the same. We talk a lot about gridlock and a dysfunctional Congress but we have to grasp that the gridlock part of the equation is the very intent of the Constitutional framers. Laws that are easy to pass cannot possibly be pragmatic or enforceable to an entire country comprised of individuals maintaining their often false belief in their own autonomy. It's supposed to be contentious.
It is not supposed to be dysfunctional. Allowing the minority to make unreasoning demands and granting them time and time again creates dysfunction and really bad governance (regardless of which ideological yard you play in). Accepting petty, shallow, outraged behavior and capitulating to it encourages more of it resulting in an era where screaming and throwing a tantrum on a plane can result in the plane being rerouted and punishing the entire flight. Pretending that civil disobedience is simply destroying the counter of a Burger King because you did not, in fact, get to have it your way emboldens the childish tendency in all of us.
The balance lies in being able to distinguish the difference between a genuine issue and a tantrum. Here's a clue: if the minority is screaming and crying, claiming obvious distortions of harm and violence where there are none, destroying things to get attention, and behaving like an angry child? Tantrum.
When you reward the tantrums, you are guaranteed to be subjected to more tantrums. If you reasonably say "Disrespectful outcry will never, ever affect our actions," you set the stage for grownup discourse. Kevin McCarthy will wish he had not conceded to the tantrums of the minority in days to come.
