[Note: This is an interesting story that Instapundit linked to and must have put the site over its bandwidth limit. It’s mostly reprinted here because we caught a cached version of the original.]
Jimmie Bise at The Sundries Shack points out a celebrity who isn’t just down on Chick-fil-A, but on the millions of people who attended Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.
…[T]here is one shining exemplar of tolerance and love, one man whose devotion to Ghandi-esque peaceful engagement deserves a special mention. His name is Wheaton and this is what he wrote today on Twitter.
For the record, I like what Wil Wheaton has done with his career over the past few years. It’s not his fault he spent years portraying Ensign Wesley Crusher, a character so whiny and arrogant he made Bill Paxton’s Private Hicks appear stoic by comparison. Young actors don’t necessarily get to change the characters they play and plenty of young actors got locked into bad careers because they played bad roles. Wheaton could have fallen into the same typecasting trap that befell many of his Star Trek: The Next Generation cast-mates, but he didn’t. He spent many years learning how to laugh at himself, how to embrace his geek audience, and how to use his own interests to rebuild a career that moved away from Star Trek and into other new areas. He is the creator and host of a very good webcast called Tabletop, part of an excellent creative team at Geek and Sundry, and has an acting career of which he can be proud. Wheaton has become an Alpha Geek, someone whose work ethic, adaptability, and lack of ego a kid could emulate.
That is why I’m puzzled that he would risk all he’s built with such a repugnant and extremist Tweet. His bizarre opinion, given proud voice, puts him at odds not only with most of his audience and most of the nation but also runs afoul of his own advice for the rest of us. I had thought him smarter and a tad more humble than that but obviously he’s not.
Wheaton has taken to his blog to explain, and apologize to a subset of those attending. At least he realizes that he’s broken his own “don’t be a dick” rule.
