It really doesn’t take much to get rigt-wing culture warriors hepped up about some new supposed outrage. It doesn’t even have to be real — in a lot of ways it’s preferable if not.
Consider the case of the non-binary James Bond.
A few days ago, you see, the woman in charge of the 007 franchise, producer Barbara Broccoli, appeared on the Girls on Film podcast. Naturally, given the interest a lot of people have in the prospect of a female Bond, Broccoli was asked if se thought 007 would always be a man.
Broccoli responded with an unequivocal “I do.”
She was then asked if Bond could be “non-binary, perhaps, maybe one day?”
This time Broccoli was quite a bit less definitive in her answer.
“Who knows?” she replied. “I mean, I think it’s open. We just have to find the right actor.”
The tabloids jumped at the chance to blow this bit of the interview completely out of proportion. Setting aside the part of the interview in which Broccoli said that Bond would pretty much always be a man, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Mirror all came out with clickbaity stories suggesting that Bond could someday be non-binary.
And where the tabloids go, the right wing press is sure to follow. Stories about the (hypothetical) non-binary Bond appeared on Fox News, The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, PJ Media, RedState, Lifezette, Revolver, The Post Millennial, Conservative Review, and The American Thinker. (But who’s counting?)
On PJ Media, Kevin Downey Jr. pulled out all the stops in an article titled “‘Bond, Zhim Bond’: The Non-Binary Spy Who Loved Me.” (Clearly conservatives are not getting any better at comedy,)
The woke monster is hungry and he/she/it is going after James Bond now, leaving spy fans…wait for it…shaken, not stirred.
Apparently, the brains behind the James Bond franchise have decided to ignore Trump’s warning about “woke.”
So of course the world may soon have a non-binary James Bond. Call it a case of toxic miniscuility.
The word “may” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, as it also did in other articles and headlines about non-binary Bond.
In the Daily Caller, meanwile, editor David Hookstead erupted in what seemed like real outrage:
Has Broccoli lost her damn mind? Is the world going insane? There’s no reason for us to be even having this conversation, but here we are.
Fans don’t want to see a non-binary James Bond. Literally nobody is asking for that nonsense.
The only right-wing media outlet I saw that recognized that a non-binary Bond is pretty much out of the question? Louder With Crowder, an outlet that rarely seems to have that much sense.
Meanwhile, on Reddit’s Conservative and SocialJusticeInAction subreddits, the regulars traded vaguely indignant quips in several threads devoted to the topic.
“The names Bxnd, Jxmxs Bxnd,” wrote one aspiring comedian.
“Imagine Pat from SNL with a cool gadget watch,” wrote another.
“They are doing this to further push the emasculation of Men,” wrote still another, more serious-minded commenter. “They want weak fragile pussies. Not men. That’s too much competition for them.”
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@Gerry Sherry, Full Metal Ox,
Don’t know about de Beaumont, but there’s more than a bit of evidence that American Revolutionary hero Casimir Pulaski was likely intersex.
https://qz.com/1589007/casimir-pulaski-may-have-been-female-or-intersex/amp/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/07/science/casimir-pulaski-intersex.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Pulaski
And his life sounds like it’d make a good adventure movie, at least.
This illustration could be your best yet! I want to see you hired to do the opening credits.
Seriously though they would be better off just making new characters/movies than rewriting old ones just to pander to the woke minority.
There is no reason why they can’t make a movie featuring 008.