Only those of us who still aspire to waking up in a hotel room in Bangkok with a dead hooker. The closest I’ve come is Cleveland, and honestly, it was hard to tell if she was dead or just from Ohio.
This issue came up a couple of months ago in this thread: Should David Gregory be charged with violating DC’s ban on high capacity gun magazines?
Here’s what I posted there in response:
[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
[QUOTE=gunchris]
DC law mirrors CA law in many ways, it could be illegal to have a prop if you’re not a certified armorer for a film production company. The story is similar to the outrage when Marky Mark Wahlberg made the movie “Shooter”
They had him actually shoot real guns during production, the problem being he is a violent felon and prohibited. Nothing happens because the law is not fairly applied, we have the elite and we have the peasants. If some unimportant liberal facebooker had done the same thing she would be arrested.
[/QUOTE]
I hadn’t heard of all this outrage, so I did a bit of googling. Two interesting points came out:
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Skimming through various gun supporter forums, it appears that there is some dispute whether the crimes that Wahlberg committed were actually felonies. If not, the felony prohibition does not apply. I don’t know what the answer is, but there appears to be uncertainty on this point.
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In any event, the “life-time” prohibition on felons owning guns is actually quite fluid. The federal prohibition links to state laws; if the state in question allows felons to regain the right to have firearms, then the federal prohibition also ceases. Over the past 20 or so years, many state legislatures have made it easier and easier for felons to re-acquire their right to own guns. The impetus for those relaxed laws to help convicted criminals get guns is apparently the good folks at the NRA, as outlined in this interesting article: Felons Finding It Easy to Regain Gun Rights. So, the fact that Wahlberg was convicted of some violent crimes does not automatically bar him from owning guns; he may have been able to regain the right under state law.
[/QUOTE]
Wahlberg has now asked for a pardon in Massachusetts: http://us.cnn.com/2014/12/05/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/mark-wahlberg-pardon/?cid=ob_articlesidebarall&iref=obnetwork
If it was my decision, I wouldn’t give him the pardon.
Based on what I’ve read of what Wahlberg’s said about his past, it seems to me he’s primarily changed his ways because he recognized it was in his own best interests to do so. That’s fine. But in my opinion it doesn’t justify forgiving him for the crimes he committed before he straightened out. It’s not enough to just stop committing new crimes; for a pardon you need to go back and try to fix the damage caused by your past crimes and do some positive good above and beyond that.
Since this popped back up, addressing something from before…
Cite that showing an item you purchases equals publication. I don’t think it does. I can buy a book off the shelf, show it to my neighbor, that isn’t publication. If I charge my neighbor, that might be copyright infringement, but publication?
As Spoke says, it’s a moral obligation, not a legal one. There is the legal obligation to the state, which was paid by his time served for the conviction. There is a moral obligation to somehow try to make right the permanent injury to the man, i.e. partial blinding. How can you make that right? I don’t know, but dismissing it as already accounted for by serving 42 days in jail or whatever is certainly lacking. Some attempt at financial restitution, especially since Wahlberg has gone on to such financial and career success since then.
There wasn’t snark. NitroPress asked two questions, or phrased his question two different ways that were actually opposite.
[QUOTE=NitroPress]
Hmm. I know felons aren’t permitted to own or possess guns, but are they forbidden from handling them - that is, could a felon go to a shooting range and rent a weapon for target practice?
[/QUOTE]
Are they forbidden from handling them? Yes.
Can they go to a range and rent one for target practice? No.
Can they hold a gun in their hands that is unloaded and owned by someone else? ?
bobot was snarking himself.
I agree with your statements of what it takes to justify a pardon. When I heard this on the TV I was at first opposed, and fairly questioning of his need for a pardon.
Have you read his application? Fixing the damage caused by his past crimes is perhaps weak, but doing positive good above and beyond that is covered.
He discusses his numerous charity activities, including creating the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation to help inner city youth (like he was). Also active role in Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Wounded Warriors Project, and Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Youth Foundation.
The interview from 2010 quoting his bar fight incidents does not help his cause.
His stated reasons for seeking pardon are threefold.
(a) To allow him to further his restaurant chain in trying to take it nationwide. In some states like California, he could be denied the concessionaire’s license to sell alcohol.
(b) To allow him to become more active in law enforcement, specifically working with at risk youth. He mentions parole or probation officer.
(c) It would serve as a symbol for troubled youth that they can turn their lives around and become accepted back into society.
I suppose one could scrutinize the stated reasons and evaluate the sincerity of them.
I think I would like to see him make some attempt at restitution to the man he blinded, but I think he makes a strong argument that he has turned his life around and is striving to improve the lives of others and make a difference to other troubled youth like he was.
This seems a cop-out. Many films would be improved by the thought some actors could be shot at in actualité.
I think there were encouraging trends in the first few decades of Hollywood when Directors basically thought of actors as cattle.
Anyway, about this person, I dunno why people keep saying Asian when the poor victim was Vietnamese. Maybe the actor had something against Vietnamese people and had no grief with Asians generally: who can tell ? Prolly not the disgusting coked-up offender by now.
Further in the wiki:
Wahlberg is a committed Roman Catholic and attends church daily. His wife converted from Baptist to Catholic. Wahlberg said, “Rhea grew up Baptist but she wanted to be baptised and confirmed as Catholic before we got married, which took some time. Also, we wanted to get married here in California but we wanted Fr Flavin from Boston to do it, so we had to work out that timing. Then there were my movie commitments. Then Rhea got pregnant and she didn’t want to do it when she was bigger so we had to wait till the dress fitted again… it was a number of factors really.”
Who can point out what is wrong with this statement ?
A Catholic engaging in premarital sex? Stop the presses.
I just learned that really low interest threads will keep resurfacing if they have the name if a prominent celebrity in the title.
If he was black he’d still be rotting in prison. Y’know, if he survived being arrested and all. Seriously? He served six weeks?
For an unprovoked, racially motivated attack, that cost someone an eye? (Let’s not forget two black men lie dead, one for stealing a cigar and one for selling a loose cigarette! )
And now he wants his record cleared so he can expand a restaurant business?
I’m glad he turned his life around, but those actions should stick to him like glue. It should never be erased, in my opinion.
Music career, movie star status, wealth, celebrity, Playboy bunny wife, I don’t really see how it’s holding him back in anyway whatsoever.
He’s kind of becoming a poster boy for white privilege in my opinion.
It didn’t help The Crow, but it certainly harmed the sequels.
Too soon?
Yeah, the timing couldn’t be any worse. Thuggish white guy gets to have the perfect life by capitalizing on his thuggish persona. Thuggish black guy–keep those hands up!
If he had apologized to the victims, compensated them, and asked for their forgiveness, then I might be convinced of his contrition. But he can’t be arsed. So no pardon for him, I say.
And never let them hover by the waistband for one millisecond.
A lot of black guys get rich off of marketing a thuggish persona.
Massachusetts has issued all of zero pardons between Deval Patrick and Mitt Romney (the last two governors.) Marky Mark ain’t gettin one.
Wahlberg is clearly an idiot (I like some of his dumb action movies in the same way and for the same reason I like movies like Commando) but he also grew up basically in a Boston gang and the crime against the Vietnamese people and the black children were when he was 16 or younger. People in gangs tend to be extremely racist, so I feel I’m more inclined to judge him off of his behavior as an adult.
His behavior as an adult indicates while he may not be as bad as he was when he was a kid, he’s still a violent unbalanaced guy. Other than earning high income I don’t see any significant turn arounds, just a guy who was way out of control at age 16 who is still a bad guy as an adult, but has gotten things under control a bit better.
What about the victim he blinded? Nothing in this list addresses what actions he has taken to make this person whole again. There’s not even an apology mentioned. Did he ever do that?
The second argument is also ill-thought, especially given current events. Why should we want someone with a history of violence (racially-motivated, at that) immersing himself in LE? Maybe he’s overcome his aggressive ways, but there’s no guarantee of that. Plenty of convicts are able to mentor youth without the privilege of being pardoned, so he should be able to do that too.
And lastly, if becoming a big-name actor, model, and musical artist in spite of his criminal past isn’t enough of a “symbol” to troubled youth, then a pardon will be completely lost on them. In my view, the fact that he was able to become those things only symbolizes how ridiculously lucky and privileged he is; the vast majority of others like him would be dead, rotting in jail, or barely able to find work due to their records. To reward him further with a pardon will only symbolize how biased the judicial system is towards a certain demographic.
I would think the lesson troubled youth would need to learn is that if you beat up people for jollies, don’t expect that shit not to haunt you for the rest of your life. Even if deep down inside you are a good person.
What sort of involvement is he imagining? What are his qualifications?
On one hand, I don’t think he’s a particularly good person.
On the other hand, he’s not that same person either and all of us deserve some level of forgiveness.
He played a cop in The Departed.
If Wahlberg really wants to do good in this world, he could publicly beseech lawmakers to repel laws and policies that make convicted felons second-class citizens, as detailed here. We’re supposed to feel sorry that a wealthy guy like Wahlberg can’t get a liquor license because of his violent criminal history, while hundreds of thousands of guys can’t get jobs or student loans because of non-violent crimes committed in their youth. Wanting to mentor troubled kids is great. But he doesn’t need a pardon to use his star power to highlight a situation that is quite serious, given how many people have been incarcerated over the past couple of decades for minor drug offenses.
Seeking a pardon only for himself is a self-serving move.
No, we don’t. Not unless we acknowledge our sincere regrets to the people we wrong and make some attempt to make amends.
Perhaps Wahlberg has and he’s chosen not to publicize this. But if he hasn’t, then no, he doesn’t deserve forgiveness.
Hey, at least he concedes that he might have injured one of his victims. The petition he filed says, “From later accounts of the incident, it is my understanding that I may have caused serious injuries to [redacted] and/or [redacted].”
In effect he’s saying, “So maybe someone might have gotten a little hurt. The important thing is that I want to get a firearms license in California.”