Was Gina Carano Fired for being a Conservative or a Bad Employee?

Gina Carano in The Mandalorian by Disney Plus

There’s been a lot of buzz since Gina Carano was fired from Lucasfilm. Her fierce defenders are blaming cancel culture and bias against conservatives. Her critics argue Carano was fired for a much simpler explanation: she’s a bad employee. But is that true?

It’s not uncommon for employees with some sort of public standing to be censored by their employers. I have personal experience with that myself. Disney clearly did not like Carano’s tweets—not just for making waves, but they walk on the woker side of life. Carano’s official firing by Lucasfilm didn’t become apparent until after a social media post urging Americans to consider the slippery slope of turning against your neighbors solely based on their political views. She made her point, though clumsily, with a reference to Nazi Germany. Her critics proved her point by demanding she be fired.

If you listen to Carano’s haters, they say she engaged in anti-Semitism for making a Holocaust reference. Considering Trump has been called “Orange Hitler” and his supporters were called Nazis, repeatedly, over the past four years, that’s a boldly hypocritical leap. But those are internet critics. Disney/Lucasfilm did something much worse.

“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano did not “denigrate” anyone based on their religious identities by making a reference. If Disney has such a righteous stance on this matter, then why lie about the nature of her tweets?

The truth is, Lucasfilm had an issue with Carano after she listed her gender pronouns as “beep/bop/boop,” after facing pressure from lefists to include pronouns in her Twitter bio. Carano explained to Lucasfilm that she had no intention to hurt the trans community but was poking fun at the demand of conformity.

“Earlier on last year before The Mandalorian came out, they wanted me to use their exact wording for an apology over pronoun usage. I declined and offered a statement in my own words. I made clear I wanted nothing to do with mocking the transgender community and was just drawing attention to the abuse of the mob in forcing people to put pronouns in their bio.”

According to Carano, Lucasfilm opted to no longer include her in any promotion of the show. Lucasfilm had no contact with her since then. As a matter of fact, she told Bari Weiss she learned of her firing through social media, the same way everyone else did.

Mason Downey wrote a piece posted by Gamespot, chastising conservatives for making this a story about the suppression of speech rather than disciplining a bad employee. “Pearl-clutching fans and commentators will cry out about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘conservative politics’ being the root of Carano's excommunication when the reality is that Carano is experiencing the consequence of flagrantly inappropriate public behavior.”

But what was Carano’s “inappropriate public behavior” that Disney deemed so unacceptable? Warning the dangers of allowing political differences to tear our communities apart? Enraging the outrage mob by poking fun at the outrage mob? Perhaps it was her tweet supporting voter ID?

Disney doesn’t believe making a Holocaust comparison warrants firing. Pedro Pascal made one that was far worse. Is it the sheer fact Carano poked fun at potential fans who were perhaps overaggressive in their demands of her conformity? That also wouldn’t be terribly consistent. Writers for television, film, and comics have engaged, debated, and even insulted fans under Disney’s company umbrella. So have their talent. Popular geek Youtube channels like Nerdrotic and websites like Bounding into Comics have been chronicling it for some time now.

Is it because Carano wouldn’t bend the knee and issue the apology they wanted? Of course, that plays a huge role. That was the beginning of the end of their relationship. But why was it necessary for her to apologize?

Carano was an employee, and she didn’t represent the company. And how did she not properly represent the company? Because she openly displayed an unwillingness to adhere to gender identity politics. Carano’s recent post referencing history was Lucasfilm’s excuse to let the public know about their distaste of her.

Disney shouldn’t lie about the nature of Carano’s tweets, and neither should anyone else. If she had a contract that allowed for a firing of this nature, or if her contract was up, own up and say you don’t want her. Slandering Carano is unacceptable.