Liberals Call for 'Racist' and 'Homophobic' John Wayne Airport to be Renamed
Southern California airport which bears the name of iconic screen legend under fire
© press
Southern California airport which bears the name of iconic screen legend John Wayne has come under fire following a social media uproar amid the resurfacing of a 1971 Playboy interview which has been described as 'racist' and 'homophobic.'
Liberals are now calling for the John Wayne Airport in Orange country to be renamed after claims he believed in “white supremacy,” at least "irresponsible" black people became more educated.
When asked which films he thought where 'perverted,' he referenced 1969’s “Easy Rider” and “Midnight Cowboy,” before using homophobic slurs when discussing movies.
© press
[RELATED] Liberals Complain Charcoal Face Masks are 'Blackface' & 'Racist' - Call for Ban
Other debates surrounding the Airport was its failure to convey the airstrip's location in Santa Ana.
But columnist Michael Hiltzik suggested Wayne represents a bygone era that is far removed from progressive politics.
“Orange County today is such an economically and ethnically diverse community that it’s hard to justify asking any member of that community to board planes at an airport named after an outspoken racist and homophobe, with his strutting statue occupying a central niche in front of the concourse,” Hiltzik wrote in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.
Also, Orange County's strong conservative leanings influenced their decision to name the airport for Wayne in 1979, Hiltzik wrote.
But modern progressive politics how people see Wayne's name at the Airport.
“That should be evident from the results of November’s election, in which voters turfed out the county’s last remaining GOP members of Congress — some of whom had embraced Donald Trump in a fruitless effort to save their careers--and elected an all-Democratic congressional delegation,” Hiltzik wrote.
© press
But according to those for Wayne's name remaining in place, they argued that comments made nearly 50 years when he is no longer alive to respond to critics is unfair.
“Removing his name from Orange County’s airport now only validates what many Americans are coming to believe: You can’t say anything anymore, darn it, without being discovered and punished by the mob,” Madeline Fry wrote in the Washington Examiner.
“Removing his name from Orange County’s airport now only validates what many Americans are coming to believe: You can’t say anything anymore, darn it, without being discovered and punished by the mob.”
According to Fox News: Others suggested removing the name of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt from a New York City roadway, as well as from other monuments and buildings, over FDR's comments about Jews.
Other say that Wayne expressed
Still, others have said that Wayne was displaying common views of the era, which came across in the interview in Playboy.
“Wayne was a few weeks shy of his 64th birthday when the interview appeared in print,” Hiltzik wrote.
“It was 1971, so the civil rights revolution had been going on for years; Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated three years before. Wayne wasn’t expressing the tenor of the times — he was reacting to the advances being won by African Americans through demonstrations and legislation."
Fry suggested finding where to get the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars it would take to rebrand the facility “Orange County Airport."
"But for goodness sake," she adds, "not yet."
