In defense of Shia LaBeouf...for some reason.

It's like Netflix, except you
have to put pants on.

Oh no! Shia LaBeouf is retiring from public life! It's the latest crazy fallout from that whole plagiarism thing a while back. That wah? Oh yeah, I forgot, you don't like to click on the links...well, I'll explain that in a minute, but first what does he mean retire from public life? Who does that? So like is he just quitting acting or is he not going to come out of his house anymore? Ever? Not even to go to a Redbox? And how come Shia LaBeouf is retiring from public life, but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is not? Seriously.

Pictured: LaBeouf, (left)
ruining Indiana Jones forever. 

To catch you up, LaBeouf lifted the plot, characters and dialogue for his artsy short film called HowardCantour.com from a comic book by a guy named Dan Clowes. It was straight up plagiarism and he's spent the last month and a half apologizing in increasingly bizarre ways. First came his tweeta culpa:

"In my excitement and naiveté as an amateur filmmaker, I got lost in the creative process and neglected to follow proper accreditation"

-Shia LaBeouf, apologizing for getting lost in the
uh-wait, what creative process? He stole it...

Screw this, I want Michael Bay
to sky-pologize for Transformers.

More tweets followed, and then there was skywriting. Skywriting! Rich people, right? He hired a skywriter to write: 'I am sorry Daniel Clowes' over Los Angeles for all to see. Well, all except for author Daniel Clowes, who lives in San Francisco, but still, it's the thought that counts. If all this sounds a little crazy, it's because it is. It kind of sounds like the dude is loosing his mind. Maybe it's guilt over what he's done, maybe it's because he got caught, but whatever the case he screwed up and he's sorry and now he's promising to go away forever. A bit much, right?

You know, most people would have said 'whoops, my bad,' settled out of court and then gone on with their lives. 

What made him think he'd get away with it?
I mean, who does he think he is, Disney?

Above: Governor Christy at the grand
opening of New Jersey's newest
uncontrolled industrial fire. 

So what does this have to do with New Jersey Chris Christie? Well, since you asked (didn't you?), back in September, a mysterious shutdown of two lanes of the George Washington Bridge caused massive gridlock in New York City. Commuters were late, kids missed school and at least one elderly woman died waiting for an ambulance. Now it turns out the shutdown was orchestrated by Governor Christie's office as political retribution for something, no one knows what for sure. Christie says he don't know anything about the closures until last week but promises to get to the bottom of this and fire whomever is responsible.

No really, that was a season 1 plot.
People did a lot of coke back then.

Ok, that's great and all but isn't he kind of responsible? Like even if he didn't personally order the bridge closed, his staff did. Shouldn't he, you know, do the right thing here? This whole thing kind of reminds me of Star Trek (yeah, a lot of things do). On Star Trek, the Captain is responsible for the actions of his or her crew. Like there's this shitty season 1 episode of TNG where Wesley tramples some flowers on a primitive planet and the half-naked fascists with 80's hair who run the place want to execute him.

Does Captain Picard promise a full investigation and start firing his aides? Of course he doesn't. He tells those pre-warp douchebags that his crew is his responsibility. He tries to take the fall for Shut Up Wesley because he's classy.

Think of it, one needle prick could have saved us from like
two dozen more episodes of Wesley Crusher: Boy Genius.

Don't get me wrong, Plagiarism is bad, not
screwing on Bumblebee's hood bad, but bad.

I know ripping off a comic book and causing a traffic jam are two completely different things, and that the parallel I'm drawing is, at best, shaky, but come on. Shia LaBeouf is retreating from acting and hole-ing himself up in his house forever with no Redbox because he made a mistake. An incredibly stupid mistake, but we'd all get over it given time (Indy 4 on the other hand...). But Governor Christy? Holy shit, a woman died because someone in his office wanted to play a funny funny joke on some political rival. At least pretend to be sorry.