Anti-trans bigot Graham Linehan has decided the best thing for his “career” right now is to slander David Tennant. Wait, David Tennant, the beloved star of Doctor Who and Good Omens and Broadchurch? Yep, THAT David Tennant. Linehan is a mean and petty man, and he comes off as even more mean and petty when you learn what this is about.
This is all over a t-shirt. Tennant wore a fantastic t-shirt reading “Leave trans kids alone you absolute freaks” while on the Good Omens press tour a few days ago and it seems to have really triggered Linehan to become even more of a human tire fire than he already is. Tennant’s reasons for wearing the shirt, not that he needed any, are twofold: he’s a transgender ally and he reportedly has a child who’s nonbinary. He also has an international platform far beyond Linehan’s reach, which may be another reason the latter is so angry.
(By the way, the shirt is from Crooked Media, and a portion of the proceeds go to charities that protect trans kids.)
Graham Linehan made a serious accusation against David Tennant
First off, Linehan retweeted a pic of Tennant in the shirt from an account called “@authenticTERF” (accounts of that nature being about the only ones that interact with Graham these days) and wrote, “Disgusting, ignorant, reckless @David_Tennant” One small problem there: David Tennant does not have social media and the account of that name is a fan account.
The Bad Writing Takes account shared a screenshot of that tweet, writing, “Disgraced former comedy writer Graham ‘Glinner’ Linehan calls much-loved icon David Tennant ‘Disgusting’ after Tennant is photographed wearing a t-shirt opposing child abusers.”
This seems to have hit a nerve with Linehan. He responded to the Bad Writing Takes tweet with, “Only disgraced among the ranks of abusive groomers like yourself and Tennant,” casually defaming a Twitter account and a world-famous actor in one go.
The tweet is still there, and “abusive groomer” is still an extremely serious accusation, no matter how many bigots without children’s best interests at heart like to pretend it isn’t.
Could David Tennant sue Graham Linehan?
Linehan has been sued before for his remarks online, more than once, and even by another Scottish actor called David. (This would be David Paisley, and Linehan has been crowdfunding to counter-sue.) He is not a popular man.
I think we can safely say the internet is dying to see what would happen if Tennant did actually decide to sue. Well-known bigots have been sued in the U.K. over tweets before and to their surprise lost large sums of money—consider the case of Jack Monroe vs Katie Hopkins for example. So over the past few days, Fandom Twitter has been considering the idea with an equal amount of schadenfreude and glee.
Tennant actually suing would certainly add to Linehan’s woes, which are plentiful. In an extremely self-pitying interview from this year he lamented, “I have met people, people I’ve worked with—big names—and begged them to become involved [in anti-trans activism]. Begged them. Please just say, ‘Graham Linehan is right,’ or ‘Graham Linehan has some important contributions to make on this,’ anything that makes it sound as though I’m doing this for anything other than recreational cruelty. That’s how I’m portrayed. Like a recreational sadist. And none of them will stand up for me.”
What a surprise! Tennant on the other hand has the money to successfully sue and buy a tiny violin afterwards.
(featured image: Prime Video)
