This is a disgusting comment that says a lot about the poster.
I’m pretty feminist and think the outrage over Martin’s comment is ridiculous.
I’m an ugly fat chick and I think what he said was touching and sweet and sincere.
I am disgusted by people who look for ways to be offended. I guess I’m offended by them so maybe I’m no better. I’m equally offended by people who deliberately shitpost or troll to get a rise out of others though, so it all balances out.
Martin was talking about an actress. Is the first thing you notice about an actress her physical beauty? Probably. That’s why they’re chosen. Nice if they have talent as well, but that’s never been as important. Even Carrie Fisher went from leads to character parts quickly as she grew older. Her talent didn’t go away. Her youthful beauty did. That’s a commentary on Hollywood, not Martin, as true today as it was in 1976 and for that matter in 1916.
I’ve mentioned before that I met mark Hamill in 1976 when he was doing promotion for Star Wars. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know he was in the movie. He was just a young guy at the back of the room. But when I saw him my brain went ping - that’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen in my life. And I thought the word “beautiful” not “handsome.” He was beautiful unlike any other man I’ve met personally, although he’s the only Hollywood actor I’ve met. It was purely an aesthetic reaction, not at all sexual. There have only been a handful of women that pinged my brain the same way and all of them were purely aesthetic for the same reason. They were almost in the uncanny valley of being not human.
Maybe if I got to know Hamill he would turn out to be witty and bright. I’ll never know. It’s just ridiculous to discount my first impression of him because that’s all I had to go by.
I am absolutely sick and tired of everybody screaming that they are offended by everey fucking thing.
Personally,there have been lots of women in my life whom I thought were sexy or attractive at first sight, and then, afterwards, when I knew more about them than what they looked like, was in a position to judge their personal qualities. What the fuck is wrong with that? I even married some of them.
I would agree that what he said isn’t offensive to most reasonable-minded people, but I really don’t get this attitude. Apologizing when you’ve offended other people, even if the other people are, objectively speaking, unreasonable in taking offense, isn’t being a “pathetic pussy,” it’s being a polite, gracious person. (Or, for people who prefer to see life as a competition, it’s also a way of making it dead clear to the onlookers that YOU are the reasonable, generous one in this situation.)
Me, too! (though I hope I’m not going to get pummelled for saying I never once thought Carrie Fisher was beautiful. That has puzzled me for years. She could be good looking in her youth, but to me, not beautiful. I admired her greatly, she had so much more talent than should be allowed by law.)
I never found her all that attractive either, but I’ve learned that still pictures don’t really do her justice. Take a Youtube look at some of her youthful appearances on some old TV talk shows and she she could be really quite pretty and vivacious.
She was a good actor too. She had a role as a dowdy old grump in one of A&E’s excellent Nero Wolfe episodes from fifteen or so years ago and she was really convincing, to the point where you forget you’re watching an actor and feel you’re watching a person as they really are.
Some of the complaints about Martin’s compliment of her are based on the fact that she apparently made scornful remarks at some point about women being admired for their looks and disdaining both her Star Wars bikini and cosmetic surgery, but it’s obvious from her weight loss and facial appearance that she had work done and indeed cared about her looks herself. I don’t however think her surgeon did her any favors when it came to her mouth though, as toward the end of her life she always looked like she was sucking on a lemon.
I don’t agree, not categorically anyway. There might be cases when one apologizes insincerely, which is really what it is if the other person is being unreasonable, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’. That’s not a real apology which to me implies ‘I was wrong’ which we’re agreeing the aplogizer is not if the complainer is being unreasonable.
But yes it’s sometimes best to do that to grease the wheels and move things along. However in others cases it’s just encouraging more unreasonable behavior of some systematic kind, which IMO has definitely been happening in US society, as exemplified by incidents like this.
And it’s why I voted ‘reason for Trump’, only semi-kidding. Part of his appeal is people sick of this crap, which they should be IMO, though they are expressing it in a non-productive way IMO.
The only offensive thing to me is that he deleted it. Does the guy have no balls at all? He posted a totally innocent statement, a nice complement to Fisher. She was beautiful, then I found she had brains too. You have to look at that completely asquint to find offense in it.
But enter the outraged twits and Martin timorously runs for cover. It reminds me of China when the Red Guard were in the ascendant and everybody had to watch their words with care. I really hope this poisonous atmosphere dissipates in the next four years and that people will no longer fear to say things that others may twist to suit their agenda.
Exactly!
Carrie was no blushing wall flower. She lead quite a interesting and enthusiastic life.
Penn Jillette wrote a wonderful and slightly raunchy account of meeting Carrie at the Porn awards. It conveys Carrie’s wonderful and quirky personality. She was a real person that I would have really enjoyed meeting and hanging out with for a little while. Not some exalted star.
I think Steve’s comment is something he would have said to Carrie and she would have been flattered. There was no sexist intent in that comment.
It’s not sexist if you find it equally surprising when you meet a man who is at high percentiles in both looks and intelligence, or any other rare traits.
This is a rarer event than meeting a man (or a woman) who is high in one of the traits and average in the other.
Based on what I’ve observed about Martin over the years, I have no doubt he would agree with this. Hell, he’s a walking example of it: how many all-time great comedians are also as accomplished musicians as he is?
Hedy Lamarr was an immortal screen siren. She also co-invented an early spread spectrum technology (frequency hopping). I sometimes talk about this when I teach engineering classes. And before I express fascination at the confluence of these two facts, I always stipulate that I would find it just as fascinating if it had been Cary Grant who invented frequency hopping.
Maybe what he has is the maturity to realize that his and others’ mourning the loss of his friend is not and should not be about him and his tweet or about making a stand regarding the size of his testicles? For those who actually knew her, like he did, it is a time for real grief and thinking about her, not for pissing matches with those who have recreational outrage, or for satisfying the standards of those who think that being sensitive to how others feel is weak.
Mr. Martin is a class act.
What is “RO”?
Recreational Outrage.
He’d be the exact same person had he not deleted it, and it appears deleting it has extended whatever distraction it caused it the first place.
It’s the cry baby butt hurt complainers who should be ashamed of themselves for turning her death into one of their me me me rants.
If anything, it’s a self-deprecating remark in that he’s commenting on the fact that he was shallow enough to be drawn to her physical appearance before her wit and intelligence. Anyone offended by it is a douche.
I’m not offended or outraged. I get that Steve Martin and Carrie Fisher were friends and I imagine it’s the sort of thing where a friend would know exactly what a friend meant. It seemed well-intentioned.
BUT as a person in the world reading a tweet that Steven Martin intended for the world to read, it struck me as a little clumsy in that it emphasized her physical appearance and cast her intelligence as an add-on. I don’t think that’s what he meant exactly, but I understand why people read it that way, and were less than thrilled with it. I don’t think these people are big whiny babies; they are probably just people who are tired of physical appearance being the primary focus of views about women. It’s not so much this one statement, it’s the sea of similar statements in life that gets wearying, so it feels even more disappointing when it comes from someone we think is usually thoughtful and kind.
I can see how someone could be misconstrued, but I doubt very much Steve Martin me at any offense. I did not see it that way.
Right, it’s not this one time, it’s all the times men compliment women on their looks so we’ll childishly take it out on the nice guy.