John Wayne Under Fire From Liberals Over Comments He Made 40 Years Ago

Though Hollywood star John Wayne has been dead for nearly forty years, he has become the latest “politically incorrect” actor to be targeted by liberals this week after a 1971 interview surfaced in which he expressed some dated views on race and homosexuality.

The Daily Caller reported that in the 1971 interview with Playboy Magazine, Wayne made comments about blacks being uneducated, Native Americans being “selfish,” and homosexuality being “perverted.” Excerpts from the interview were posted to Twitter, and it didn’t take long for the liberal outrage machine to get fired up. In no time, it was going with such full force that “John Wayne” was trending on Twitter as the liberal lynch mob we’ve grown accustomed to started going after someone who has been dead for decades.

OK but to be fair, this was a very different time!

…now that I’ve gotten the attention of anyone who might agree with the above statement, let’s be clear that this is exactly who America’s “hero” was & let’s look at the direct lines between this language and the country today https://t.co/Uucec8NrA0

— @PiaGlenn (@PiaGlenn) February 19, 2019

I love the tweets explaining how John Wayne was born in the early 1900’s so we shouldn’t be horrified.

Ya gotta pick one. Are we trying to go back to those times or were those times terrible? Ya can’t make America great again while making excuses about how shitty it was.

— Elon James White (@elonjames) February 19, 2019

Others were quick to point out how truly ridiculous it is to go after a dead man for comments made so many years ago.

I am shocked that John Wayne, who was born in 1907 (!) made some un-progressive remarks in 1971. Just shocked. This is me being shocked. pic.twitter.com/MswXTGXRZA

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) February 19, 2019

John Wayne was only emboldened to say these terrible things because Donald Trump is president.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 19, 2019

Some even said that this is a convenient distraction for the racial incidents of the Covington High School kids and Jussie Smollett, both of which have left the media humiliated and looking incompetent.

After two major racial incidents blew up in the media’s faces so far this year, the media is going after a dead guy who can’t defend himself.

John Wayne is an America icon, so naturally the Left hates him. pic.twitter.com/wp6ZQW9hjn

— The Original Myiq2xu™ (@realmyiq2xu2) February 20, 2019

The bottom line is that we cannot start taking comments made decades ago and start looking at them through a modern lens. If Wayne were alive today, there’s no telling how his opinions would have evolved over the course of forty years. If we start combing through comments made by historical figures looking for something “offensive” by modern standards, we’ll have nobody left to look up to from a historical perspective. It’s unfair to hold people who have been dead for so long to our modern standards of acceptable language, especially when we currently live in an outrage culture where liberals are ready to pounce at the slightest infraction.

The liberal outrage machine can keep spinning their wheels by going after Wayne as much as they want to, but it won’t change the fact that he is still an icon in many of our eyes.