Celebrities suffer backlash after invoking Hitler
If famous people have learned one thing in the whatever-I-say-gets-tweeted era, one would think its this: Dont mention Adolf Hitler. Yet individuals ranging from Megan Fox to, most recently, Hank Williams Jr. have continued to court controversy by bringing up the Nazi leader. In the hope that celebrities will finally grasp the no-Hitler rule, heres a rundown of a few who have gotten themselves into trouble:
Hitler move: In a 2009 Wonderland magazine interview, the Transformers star violated the most basic rule of employment: Dont imply your boss has anything in common with Hitler. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is, she said of Transformers director Michael Bay.
Result: Fox stopped being a Transformers star. Bay recently told GQ that Transformers executive producer Steven Spielberg told Bay to fire the actress after the Hitler comment. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replaced Fox as Shia LaBeoufs love interest in the third battling-bots movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Hitler move: While speaking to the Sunday Times of London in a July 2010 interview, the Wall Street filmmaker said, Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German Industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support ... Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.
Result: The American Jewish Committee issued a condemnatory statement, and Stone issued an apology. In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret.
John Galliano
Hitler move: A video surfaced online in February in which the fashion designer used anti-Semiti! c langua ge and declared I love Hitler. During a subsequent criminal trial in France, Galliano said he was under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs at the time and did not recall making the statements.
Result: Galliano lost his job at Christian Dior and was found guilty of anti-Semitic behavior in that trial. He was fined $8,400.
Hitler move: During a Cannes Film Festival press conference to promote his movie, Melancholia, von Trier said, I understand Hitler, but I think he did some wrong things, yes, absolutely. ... But I sympathize with him a bit. He then rambled further and concluded with, Okay, Im a Nazi.
Result: This ones especially messy. He immediately apologized and said he meant them as a joke, but Cannes organizers banned von Trier. He later retracted the apology in an interview with GQ and, earlier this month, took a vow of public silence after announcing that he faces charges of violating a French law that forbids justification of war crimes.
Hank Williams Jr.
Hitler move: In an Oct. 2 interview on Fox and Friends, Williams Jr. referred to a golf game between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.
Result: Williams was fired from his steady gig as the Are you ready for some football? guy on Monday Night Football. Williams apologized and has since rebounded; his musical retort to the controversy, a slightly recast version of Keep the Change, had been downloaded online by 100,000 people as of earlier this week. Neither the existing nor newly written lyrics contain a reference to Hitler.
Result: Those already disgusted by James for cheating on Americas ! Sweethea rt found another reason to be disgusted.
Kanye West
Hitler move: During the Big Chill music festival in August, the hip-hop star said, I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street, and people look at me like Im [expletive] insane, like Im Hitler.
Result: Some audience members reportedly booed. But then everyone pretty much forgot about it because comparing himself to Hitler just makes West sound narcissistic, not anti-Semitic.