Fox News contributor Katherine Timpf learned the hard way that the only thing that will get "Star Wars" fans more riled up than Jar Jar Binks is being called juvenile. For weeks, the journalist and comedian has been getting death threats over comments she's made about the series. But in an essay published on Tuesday in the National Review, she said she has no intention to apologize.
The whole affair began about a month ago, when Timpf appeared on Fox News' late-night political talk show "Red Eye" to talk about "Star Wars." She had some harsh words for the series and its fans.
"I have never had any interest in watching space nerds poke each other with their little space nerd sticks, and I’m not going to start now," Timpf said. "You people are crazy. You Star Wars people are crazy."
She explained that she had gotten death threats after tweeting that she never became interested in "Star Wars" in high school because she was because she'd "been too busy liking cool things and being attractive.”
As Timpf explained in the essay, she got a few more death threats after appearing on "Red Eye," which surprised her, given that the show airs at 3 a.m. Then things quieted down -- until Saturday, when YouTuber AlphaOmegaSin posted a video slamming her comments.
"You just made yourself into a f**king target by trying to attack people for no reason other than liking something that you disliked," AlphaOmegaSin said.
If Timpf was a target before, she became a much bigger one after this video went live. Commenters on the YouTube video excoriated Timpf and wished all manner of horrible violence upon her -- including rape and murder. And many Twitter users were at least as aggressive.
Timpf, though, refuses to back down. In her National Review piece, she defended herself by saying that her comments "were clearly jokes."
"A lot of people are clearly a lot of upset. But guess what? I’m not apologizing," Timpf wrote. "Why? Because the all-too-common knee-jerk reaction of apologizing for harmless jokes after overblown hysteria is ruining our culture."
But it looks like the ordeal hasn't made Timpf lose her sense of humor. She's posted a bunch of related photos to Instagram over the past couple days, including this hilarious photo of herself as Darth Vader.
Timpf's comments may have been insensitive. But the reaction from the fanbase was obviously over the top. Way over the top. While it wouldn't be hard to compare Fox News to an evil empire, they're the ones on the dark side this time.
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