Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Not Too 'Hip' and 'Edgy' for Censorship (or, "Please. Behead me last.")
National Review ^ | 04-24-10 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 04/24/2010 8:12:03 AM PDT by thouworm

....in terms of the electoral map this November, you’ve only got to scare a relatively small percentage of squishy, suburban moderate centrists back into the Democratic fold, and how difficult can that be?

Hence, Bill Clinton energetically on the stump, summoning all his elder statesman’s dignity (please, no giggling) in the cause of comparing tea partiers to Timothy McVeigh. Oh, c’mon, they’ve got everything in common. They both want to reduce the size of government, the late Mr. McVeigh through the use of fertilizer bombs, the tea partiers through control of federal spending, but these are mere nuanced differences of means, not ends.

(snip)

For a long time, tea partiers were racists. Everybody knows that when you say “I’m becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending,” that’s old Jim Crow code for “Let’s get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson.”

(snip)

Meanwhile, Comedy Central — you know, the “hip,” “edgy” network with Jon Stewart, from whom “young” Americans under 53 supposedly get most of their news — just caved in to death threats. From a hateful 83-year-old widow who doesn’t like Obamacare? Why, no! It was a chap called Abu Talhah al Amrikee, who put up a video on the Internet explaining why a South Park episode with a rather tame Mohammed joke was likely to lead to the deaths of the show’s creators.

(snip)

Yet in the end, in a craven culture, even big Hollywood A-listers can’t get their message over. So the brave, transgressive comedy network was intimidated into caving in and censoring a speech about not being intimidated into caving in. That’s what I call “hip,” “edgy,” “cutting-edge” comedy: They’re so edgy they’re curled up in the fetal position, whimpering at the guy with the cutting edge, “Please. Behead me last. And don’t use the rusty scimitar where you have to saw away for 20 minutes to find the spinal column . . . ”

Terrific. You can see why young, urban, postmodern Americans under 57 get most of their news from Comedy Central. What a shame 1930s Fascist Europe was so lacking in cable.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Government; News/Current Events; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: marksteyn; teaparty
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-65 next last
To: worst-case scenario
What a Straw Man argument. Comedy Central never said it was “hip,” or “edgy.”

Nonsense.

21 posted on 04/24/2010 8:46:18 AM PDT by Albion Wilde (I can see November from my house!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: bcsco; thouworm
Who's Mark Setyn?

One of Satin's minions...

22 posted on 04/24/2010 9:06:22 AM PDT by null and void (We are now in day 457 of our national holiday from reality. - 0bama really isn't one of US.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: worst-case scenario

You are missing Steyn’s point. His point is that the polls show that Stewart / Comedy Central have captured the hip and edgy market for “those who list TV as their news source”. VH1 and MTV do not have news programs so they are irrelevant in this discussion. Date My Mom and Parental Control may be “hip”, but they aren’t a source for news.

The same executives who pay Stewart (and others) a lot o money to be hip and edgy with current events, could have been real hip with this current event. But they got scared.


23 posted on 04/24/2010 9:17:52 AM PDT by cpanter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Grunthor
Through Terry Nichols’ associations with Ramsi Yousef in The Philippines. Bombmaking manuals in Yousef’s possession during his arrest in Pakistan detailed a nearly exact replica of that used in the OKC attack.

There's enough evidence to my satisfaction that ties all of these suspects together. One just has to dig a little, which the US government has ignored. Just follow Bill Clinton's nose.

24 posted on 04/24/2010 9:27:41 AM PDT by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: thouworm

“Everybody knows that when you say “I’m becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending,” that’s old Jim Crow code for “Let’s get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson.” “

LOLOLOLOL!!!

I do adore Mark Steyn.


25 posted on 04/24/2010 9:53:25 AM PDT by autumnraine (America how long will you be so deaf and dumb to the chariot wheels carrying you to the guillotine?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: autumnraine

LOL-— that’s the line that shouted out to me: Post this column as a thread.

His wit can wither any libtard argument and annihilate any marxist screed.


26 posted on 04/24/2010 10:19:33 AM PDT by thouworm
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: thouworm; All
On the Tax Day Tea Party Rally in Grand Prairie Texas, I took video camera in hand and interviewed attendees. I did this knowing it would counter the media misrepresentaion of the Tea Partiers.

PLEASE FORWARD these links to anyone who has been lied to by the media and politicians about the Tea Party Movement, which of course is everybody.

“The True Face of the Tea Partiers”

Click Here for Part One

 Click Here for Part Two

27 posted on 04/24/2010 10:29:57 AM PDT by Do Not Make Fun Of His Ears (Pray for our leaders: Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Albion Wilde

Oh? Show me where.


28 posted on 04/24/2010 11:03:31 AM PDT by worst-case scenario (Striving to reach the light)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: thouworm; abb; Anima Mundi; ebiskit; TenthAmendmentChampion; Obadiah; Mind-numbed Robot; A.Hun; ...
Nevertheless, we should be grateful to [Comedy Central's] jelly-spined executives for reminding us that the cardboard heroes of the American media are your go-to guys for standing up to entirely fictitious threats. But for real ones? Not so much.
As a youth I had a black cocker spaniel who would make a fuss if the mailman came, but if a stranger showed up he would just wag his tail. I have often thought that when "the cardboard heroes of the American media" look in the mirror they should see, not a "watchdog," but the visiage of my dog.
The reason American journalists set themselves up as "cardboard heroes" is painfully obvious - because they can. What could be more obvious than that it is profitable to do so? And what could be more obvious than that they can get away with it because they are in cahoots with each other - and that the mechanism which enabled and promoted their cooperation is the news service in general and the Associated Press in particular.

For protection from real threats, you want the kind of person who goes to church to be reminded of the transcendent - and who takes a camera to a Tea Party rally in Washington wondering if anyone else will be there but Obama goons.


29 posted on 04/25/2010 2:10:56 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ( DRAFT PALIN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Since I began reporting for my own newsblog last summer, it has been fascinating to watch the actions and reporting of the “real” media with regard to local government - city hall, county commission, school board.

It is obvious the other media have been properly “domesticated” by the politicians and seldom report anything controversial or upsetting to the local Power Structure.

It’s a hoot to witness it all close up.


30 posted on 04/25/2010 2:20:43 PM PDT by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: conservatism_IS_compassion

BTTT


31 posted on 04/26/2010 2:59:57 AM PDT by E.G.C.
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: abb; Anima Mundi; ebiskit; TenthAmendmentChampion; Obadiah; Mind-numbed Robot; A.Hun; johnny7; ...
Nevertheless, we should be grateful to [Comedy Central's] jelly-spined executives for reminding us that the cardboard heroes of the American media are your go-to guys for standing up to entirely fictitious threats. But for real ones? Not so much.
How long have we known that "the American media" and "liberals" were joined at the hip? But we have struggled to articulate exactly why and how that is so. Here, Mark Steyn crystalizes the reason.

The thing that unifies American "liberals" and American journalism and is that each, in his own way, systematically makes fictitious "threats" out of entirely unthreatening fellow citizens and then "rescues" us from them. All "liberals," whether journalists (who assign the laurel "objective" exclusively to themselves) or politicians or intellectuals (whom journalists assign the laurels ("liberal," "progressive," or "moderate" according to what will the public will receive best) are natural allies in the endeavor to bring entirely safe phantom "threats" to light, and to book.

Cardboard heroes, every man Jack of them.

The Right to Know

32 posted on 04/26/2010 8:59:05 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ( DRAFT PALIN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: conservatism_IS_compassion

BTTT


33 posted on 04/26/2010 9:11:12 AM PDT by E.G.C.
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: conservatism_IS_compassion; LS

Until I can establish otherwise, I date the break point at 1964, when Henry Luce gave up his position as Editor-in-Chief of Time, Inc. He had sufficient conservative influence within the media industry to leaven the tendency of journalists to lurch leftward.

http://www.timemediakit.com/us/timemagazine/press/bios/luce.html

So far my research shows no other event or series of events that would explain it. IIRC, LS was working on a book that would establish about that time frame as when the media shed all pretense of being “objective,” if ever they were.


34 posted on 04/26/2010 9:37:53 AM PDT by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: abb

Update: our research did NOT show what I thought-—a sudden lurch during or after JFK. Rather, it showed a very steady but consistent move further left by ALL major papers every year. The implications are that you cannot tie this leftward lurch to a specific event, but rather to larger forces that are more difficult to quantify. It is across the board-—At. Constitution, Cleveland Plain Dealer, NYTimes, WaPo, and LA Times moved at about the same rate.


35 posted on 04/26/2010 9:56:18 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually." (Hendrix))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: abb; LS
LS was working on a book that would establish about that time frame as when the media shed all pretense of being “objective,” if ever they were.
A historian's study of that issue is much to be desired. Larry's A Patriot's History of the United States, good as it is, omits any mention of the telegraph that I was able to find. He said that the book had to be ruthlessly cut down to fit within the covers of what his publisher was willing to print . . .

IMHO that is like omitting any mention of radio and TV in a discussion of politics in the 20th Century.


36 posted on 04/26/2010 10:03:47 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ( DRAFT PALIN)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]

To: LS

Very interesting.

Perhaps the shift leftward is a result of the collectivists purposely going into journalism to co-opt the trade.

That Luce was not well thought of amongst the “elite” media is quite evident in some of the biographies that I’ve read. The pejorative term they used (and still do) is LucePress.


37 posted on 04/26/2010 10:10:49 AM PDT by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: LS; conservatism_IS_compassion

This is the one I’m working on now.

http://books.google.com/books?id=rl_-_sdlxNsC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The press gang: newspapers and politics, 1865-1878
By Mark Wahlgren Summers

Relations between the press and politicians in modern America have always been contentious. In The Press Gang, Mark Summers tells the story of the first skirmishes in this ongoing battle. Following the Civil War, independent newspapers began to separate themselves from partisan control and assert direct political influence. The first investigative journalists uncovered genuine scandals such as those involving the Tweed Ring, but their standard practices were often sensational, as editors and reporters made their reputations by destroying political figures, not by carefully uncovering the facts. Objectivity as a professional standard scarcely existed.Considering more than ninety different papers, Summers analyzes not only what the press wrote but also what they chose not to write, and he details both how they got the stories and what mistakes they made in reporting them. He exposes the peculiarly ambivalent relationship of dependence and distaste among reporters and politicians. In exploring the shifting ground between writing the stories and making the news, Summers offers an important contribution to the history of journalism and mid-nineteenth-century politics and uncovers a story that has come to dominate our understanding of government and the media.


38 posted on 04/26/2010 10:15:31 AM PDT by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: abb

Summers has been a good historian in the past. I haven’t read this book.


39 posted on 04/26/2010 10:20:20 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually." (Hendrix))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: abb
"Perhaps the shift leftward is a result of the collectivists purposely going into journalism to co-opt the trade."

First part true. Last part, no, I think it is the natural self-selection process.

40 posted on 04/26/2010 10:21:12 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually." (Hendrix))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-65 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson