Australian actor George Lazenby starred in one James Bond movie fifty years ago. Today, he was fired from a Music of James Bond tour after regaling his audience with remarks media describe as "offensive to the LGBTQ+ community"—and a story about that time he dragged a girl into a car.
It was absolutely unbelievable … at one point he named an Australian cricketer whose daughter he was chasing and he said he dragged the daughter out of the pub and put her in the car in London, which again is of course horrific.
One of the odd things about this story is that the outlets reporting it, including the BBC and The Guardian, only hint at what he actually said. He was "creepy" and "homophobic". He made "references to sexual conquests". They lead not with what he did but his forlorn statements of apology. The resulting journalism blurs whatever he did into the everyday culture war over offensiveness and free speech.
On one hand, then, we may have the British media's "never quote the offensive remark" problem at work—itself an expression of its draconian libel laws, middle-class fainting couches, and culture of insinuation and innuendo—leading to a misinformed readership. On the other hand, it's not even clear if any of them know what was said.
This is all they have:
They said: "He spent all of the interview just talking basically about his sexual conquests, he was homophobic, he swore, he certainly wasn't talking about his Bond movies, he downplayed the Queen, a day after she died.
"At one point he named an Australian cricketer whose daughter he was chasing and he said he dragged the daughter out of the pub and put her in the car in London, which is horrific … he named women he had slept with, and there were children in the audience, and a lot families who had brought their kids probably to their first classical music concert."
And, on Twitter:
"His stories" included one where he shrugged off what sounded like kidnap and assault of someone by him which left the victim in tears. And you think the people who were offended were the problem… Care to provide another reading of perusing a woman who asked repeatedly not to, physically grabbing her, putting her in a car, then breaking into her hotel room and saying after doing "it" she was "crying against the window but she deserved it"
