People – or, rather, internet trolls with nothing better to do with their time – have moved on from racist yearbook photos of sitting governors to being upset over decades-old comments made by deceased actor John Wayne and published in a 1971 edition of Playboy.
You read that right. It’s no longer enough to hold the living accountable for insensitive things they said on Twitter back in high school – now, we have to go after the dead.
Wayne’s comments about gay people and black Americans published in Playboy back in 1971 are now catching flak for being racist, homophobic and all-around offensive, with little grace given for the fact that the western movie star was born in 1907 and was spouting off comments representative of many people's views in the 1970s.
The whole thing started when a random Twitter user dug up the interview and posted excerpts of it on Twitter, which immediately launched a firestorm from those without hobbies.
Jesus fuck, John Wayne was a straight up piece of shit
— Matt Williams (@pixelpreaching) February 18, 2019
(Playboy interview, May 1971) pic.twitter.com/okfG1iZb0U
In the interview, Wayne, who’s been dead since '79, used a gay slur to reference love scenes between two men, before moving on to call many black Americans under-educated and ignorant.
Again, in 1971.
But the fact that the interview is nearly 50 years old and Wayne's been dead for 40 hasn’t stopped social justice warriors from using the decades-old comments to paint a picture of a racist America today. Vibe published a response to the Playboy interview by saying Wayne’s statements nearly half a century ago “shows that not much has changed in America.” Over on Twitter, SJWs lost their minds over the whole thing like racist and anti-gay comments made in the 70s are some brand new revelation we’re only hearing about now.
Funnily enough, that 1971 Playboy interview isn’t new at all; in fact, it's been well known for a long time. Back in 2016, California even rejected a proposal for a “John Wayne Day” over the interview, while Snopes has had an entire piece up for nearly two years addressing the allegations that Wayne defended white supremacy.
But hey, anything to paint America as the racist cesspool of white dominance the left wants it to be, even if it means reaching back into the 70s archives and dragging a dead man, right?
Then again, perhaps the Jussie Smollett Deflection Committee could try a little harder.