Imagine the whining from the conservatard claque if anyone -- anyone -- proposed shooting them during an interview. Well, no one listens to me, but uh, yeah, at what point do decent people hold worthless shitbags like Ted Nugent and Alex Jones accountable for this sort of thing?
Here's how it'll shake out: there might be some sort of squawk of outrage, and Fuckface Nugent might mumble some sort of mealy-mouthed "I was only joking" sort of averral. Somebody else will do or say something stupid, and people will forget about it in a couple of weeks.
But here's the thing -- I don't know about you, but I've had my fill of these fucking people. All of them. The cliché they tell victims of domestic violence -- that people will treat you how you let them treat you -- is a hard truth. That other old wives' chestnut -- when someone tells you who they are, believe them -- is just as true.
Ted Nugent turns seventy in December, and it would be a fine thing if he keeled over into a wood chipper before then. Failing that, he has some concerts coming up, including one at the end of June less than a mile from where I was born. I will be contacting the club to ask them what they think about having someone who literally says "half of the government should be shot" performing at their establishment.
I would very much prefer to have Ted Nugent alive but with nowhere to play, nowhere to spew the vile nonsense he routinely does at his shows. It's probably too much to hope that he goes broke from lack of touring opportunities, but I sincerely hope that happens as well. He's a vile piece of shit, and the world will be a better place when he's dead and gone. In the meantime, our options in dealing with such people are ballots and wallets.
People -- including Bill Maher, who really oughta know better -- are complaining about the supposed "chilling effect" that David Hogg's boycott on Laura Ingraham's show has on free speech. In that particular example, they're not entirely wrong; Ingraham is at most a third-tier light on a network full of deserving douchebags. Frankly, the entire network should be boycotted, not just a particular performer (which is really all any of them are, trained monkeys).
But free speech does have a responsibility baked into it. The First Amendment merely says that the gubmint can't imprison you for speaking your mind, no matter how demented you are. But it certainly does not guarantee you or me or Rush Limbaugh or Ted Nugent a comfortable living doing so, especially when the person in question is saying things that are provably untrue, and/or incitements to violence. Arguing with such people is an exercise in futility. They are not there to debate the merits of this or that position. This is so obvious, it needn't be said. [And yet you did. -- Ed.]
I don't want Nugent or Jones arrested for the things they say; I want the people who sponsor and support them to pay a price for doing so. It should be unacceptable to decent people for someone to say that Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) should be shot. It should be unacceptable to claim repeatedly that a classroom massacre of first-graders was a hoax, as Jones has infamously done.
Kevin Williamson's another one. You cannot expect immunity from doubling down on the unspeakably stupid notion that women who have abortions should be hanged. (Extra points for Williamson's particularly stupid mode of doubling down -- by insisting he meant future women who have abortions, not the ones who have already had them. Oh, well, of course. Carry on then. Sheesh.)
This sort of rhetorical bomb-throwing keeps these losers employed, and that's the part that has to be shut down. They can spout their vile fictions all they want, but they should not have the expectation of securing a grand paycheck for their nonsense. (Incidentally, this also applies to more polite idiots such as Bobo and MoDo. Seriously, I can't believe there is anyone out there that still reads either of those two dipshits.) Williamson's defenders act like Williamson is someone trying to start some sort of good-faith dialogue, as if he's an honest broker in all this. All you have to do is read Williamson's responses to the abortion question [Q.: Are you serious? A:. Hell yes, I'm serious.] to know that.
This is not to say that Williamson should have been fired from The Atlantic before he even had a chance to start. In fact, it would have been better for the abortion debate at large for Williamson to elaborate on his (let's say) peculiar sensibilities on the issue. But that is a different matter than noting that neither Williamson nor his new employers should have been in the least surprised when a number of people (including, you may be surprised to find, quite a few vagina-owning humans) were instantly revolted at the thought of reading a publication that employed such a person.
That is the accountability of the free marketplace, unless of course you're the one being held financially accountable for writing stupid things, in which case it's just a witch hunt.
Usually when free speech is squelched, it's from the top down. None of us will ever know how many momentous stories have been buried over the years by news editors, who are usually company creatures above all else. When it starts coming up from the bottom, from the powerless, people who don't have money or assets or media companies to push everyone around with, you can tell it's effective when the pigs start squealing.
So let's make Nugent squeal. The guy's already a fucking turd of a human being -- got a blowjob from Courtney Love when she was twelve and he was nearly thirty, right about the time he "adopted" a seventeen-year-old girl in order to beat the Mann Act. Plus, he literally shit his pants to get out of Vietnam, which is not a crime in and of itself (on the off chance he had a moral objection to the war), but tends to undercut his usual phony-tough guy stance.
Fuck him. He doesn't have to be shot, or even go broke, but if we're truly tired of hearing from people like that motherless fuck, the least we can do is make sure he can't show his face among decent people anymore. Let him have the Traitor-Slaver-Loser flag bozos, collectively drunkening to the thousandth iteration of Wang Dang Sweet Poontang. Fools and their money are lucky enough to get together in the first place. But it's time to start pressuring the companies that sponsor this shit.
Here's how it'll shake out: there might be some sort of squawk of outrage, and Fuckface Nugent might mumble some sort of mealy-mouthed "I was only joking" sort of averral. Somebody else will do or say something stupid, and people will forget about it in a couple of weeks.
But here's the thing -- I don't know about you, but I've had my fill of these fucking people. All of them. The cliché they tell victims of domestic violence -- that people will treat you how you let them treat you -- is a hard truth. That other old wives' chestnut -- when someone tells you who they are, believe them -- is just as true.
Ted Nugent turns seventy in December, and it would be a fine thing if he keeled over into a wood chipper before then. Failing that, he has some concerts coming up, including one at the end of June less than a mile from where I was born. I will be contacting the club to ask them what they think about having someone who literally says "half of the government should be shot" performing at their establishment.
I would very much prefer to have Ted Nugent alive but with nowhere to play, nowhere to spew the vile nonsense he routinely does at his shows. It's probably too much to hope that he goes broke from lack of touring opportunities, but I sincerely hope that happens as well. He's a vile piece of shit, and the world will be a better place when he's dead and gone. In the meantime, our options in dealing with such people are ballots and wallets.
People -- including Bill Maher, who really oughta know better -- are complaining about the supposed "chilling effect" that David Hogg's boycott on Laura Ingraham's show has on free speech. In that particular example, they're not entirely wrong; Ingraham is at most a third-tier light on a network full of deserving douchebags. Frankly, the entire network should be boycotted, not just a particular performer (which is really all any of them are, trained monkeys).
But free speech does have a responsibility baked into it. The First Amendment merely says that the gubmint can't imprison you for speaking your mind, no matter how demented you are. But it certainly does not guarantee you or me or Rush Limbaugh or Ted Nugent a comfortable living doing so, especially when the person in question is saying things that are provably untrue, and/or incitements to violence. Arguing with such people is an exercise in futility. They are not there to debate the merits of this or that position. This is so obvious, it needn't be said. [And yet you did. -- Ed.]
I don't want Nugent or Jones arrested for the things they say; I want the people who sponsor and support them to pay a price for doing so. It should be unacceptable to decent people for someone to say that Democrats (or Republicans, for that matter) should be shot. It should be unacceptable to claim repeatedly that a classroom massacre of first-graders was a hoax, as Jones has infamously done.
Kevin Williamson's another one. You cannot expect immunity from doubling down on the unspeakably stupid notion that women who have abortions should be hanged. (Extra points for Williamson's particularly stupid mode of doubling down -- by insisting he meant future women who have abortions, not the ones who have already had them. Oh, well, of course. Carry on then. Sheesh.)
This sort of rhetorical bomb-throwing keeps these losers employed, and that's the part that has to be shut down. They can spout their vile fictions all they want, but they should not have the expectation of securing a grand paycheck for their nonsense. (Incidentally, this also applies to more polite idiots such as Bobo and MoDo. Seriously, I can't believe there is anyone out there that still reads either of those two dipshits.) Williamson's defenders act like Williamson is someone trying to start some sort of good-faith dialogue, as if he's an honest broker in all this. All you have to do is read Williamson's responses to the abortion question [Q.: Are you serious? A:. Hell yes, I'm serious.] to know that.
This is not to say that Williamson should have been fired from The Atlantic before he even had a chance to start. In fact, it would have been better for the abortion debate at large for Williamson to elaborate on his (let's say) peculiar sensibilities on the issue. But that is a different matter than noting that neither Williamson nor his new employers should have been in the least surprised when a number of people (including, you may be surprised to find, quite a few vagina-owning humans) were instantly revolted at the thought of reading a publication that employed such a person.
That is the accountability of the free marketplace, unless of course you're the one being held financially accountable for writing stupid things, in which case it's just a witch hunt.
Usually when free speech is squelched, it's from the top down. None of us will ever know how many momentous stories have been buried over the years by news editors, who are usually company creatures above all else. When it starts coming up from the bottom, from the powerless, people who don't have money or assets or media companies to push everyone around with, you can tell it's effective when the pigs start squealing.
So let's make Nugent squeal. The guy's already a fucking turd of a human being -- got a blowjob from Courtney Love when she was twelve and he was nearly thirty, right about the time he "adopted" a seventeen-year-old girl in order to beat the Mann Act. Plus, he literally shit his pants to get out of Vietnam, which is not a crime in and of itself (on the off chance he had a moral objection to the war), but tends to undercut his usual phony-tough guy stance.
Fuck him. He doesn't have to be shot, or even go broke, but if we're truly tired of hearing from people like that motherless fuck, the least we can do is make sure he can't show his face among decent people anymore. Let him have the Traitor-Slaver-Loser flag bozos, collectively drunkening to the thousandth iteration of Wang Dang Sweet Poontang. Fools and their money are lucky enough to get together in the first place. But it's time to start pressuring the companies that sponsor this shit.
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