You may have heard that last week was the seventy-fifth anniversary of D-Day. It is no small irony that this occasion of epic sacrifice committed by brave men in the pursuit of defeating fascism should be commemorated by a phony-tough coward who has never sacrificed anything besides other people's money. True to (lack of) character, Trump spent most of his time shit-posting and yammering about domestic politics in a foreign country, which used to be a thing you shouldn't do.
To add insult to injury, because that is her only marketable skill, Laura Ingraham made her own heroic effort to convince, in true Orwellian fashion, that what they saw with their eyes and heard with their ears, from their golden idol no less, was in fact not true. Sound confusing? It really isn't.
You see, Ingraham was in Paris for D-Day, as she had an "interview" with the failure-in-thief, who then held up the start of the commemoration for fifteen minutes or so while Ingraham fellated him to completion (which, as we have stated many times before, is simply an audible puff of cheeto dust). Trump even acknowledged in the interview that he was happy to delay the ceremony because he likes Ingraham (because, again, no man turns down a good blowjob -- or even a bad one, really).
So on that night's broadcast, by which time it had gotten out that the ceremony had been delayed for this bullshit, Ingraham made a point of insisting -- right after the interview had aired, with Trump declaring otherwise -- that the interview had not delayed the ceremony, that that was just another perfidious lie thrown mercilessly against this good christian man.
To which the entire nation shrugged at both sides of the argument and collectively muttered whatever. Because that's all we do anymore.
I have been suggesting quite a lot these past months that the best thing we can all do, besides venting impotently on the internets and vowing to trudge to the polls next year and hope the machines have power cords, is boycott these fuckers. So I decided to take note of all the commercials that aired during that evening's episode of Ingraham's show (which, trust me, is an entirely different thing than watching the show), and make a list (grouped chronologically by intermission break):
Fisher Investments
Spin the Wheel (upcoming Fox game show, produced by Justin Timberlake and hosted by Dax Shepard)
Joint Flex (arthritis pain relief crème/gel)
Queen Sugar (new show on Oprah Winfrey Network)
South Beach Diet
Fox and Friends Concert Series (sponsored by Sandals)
Talcum Cancer Legal Helpline (same ambulance chasers that run those ads about class-action suits for mesothelioma and hernia mesh problems and such)
USAA Insurance
Ripley's Believe It Or Not (new show on Travel Channel, hosted by Bruce Campbell)
Zantac (antacid)
My Pillow
Stairlift
Fox MLB All-Star Game
LifeLock/Norton
Dupixent (injectable dermatitis/eczema medication)
Salonpas (pain relief patch)
*Ripley's
*South Beach Diet
Fox News Channel/Bret Baier
Saatva (another one of those mattress companies, like you can't just go to a fucking mattress store in any town)
Monsanto Roundup Legal Hotline
AT&T
Fox Sports 1/US Open Golf
*Joint Flex
My Pillow Mattress Topper
Liberator Catheter
Fox Nation
(* denotes repeat ad)
I mean, go ahead and sharpen your wallets, folks, but what really jumps out of that list is how few name companies there are in that list, and how much of it is in-house cross-promotion, which means the network is helping shoulder the burden of subsidizing this fucking dingbat. It's a collection of the usual late-night infomercial crap one would expect. Might as well have had a Chia Pet or Nugenix ad.
The only real surprise was the South Beach Diet ad running twice. I don't think Laura's audience of angry, arthritic codgers have any intention of liquid-dieting themselves to fitness. They are already leaning into their eventual fates, wondering only which Lucky Strike or western bacon cheeseburger will be the one that finally keels them over, to the joy of their exhausted, demoralized children and grandchildren.
Still, it would be great if what few legit advertisers there are could be collectively discouraged from sponsoring what can only be objectively said to be the ongoing gaslighting of this nation of gullible dupes. Again, Ingraham ran the clip of Trump bragging that he held up the ceremony for her -- even though the ceremony was actually delayed because Emmanuel Macron was running late -- before Ingraham herself came on to insist that Trump had not held up the ceremony. Okay, then why did he volunteer that he did, and did so deliberately?
There has been in recent months a surge in "free speech" opinion-mongering, the idea that if, say, some YouTube dipshit gets "demonetized" -- not deplatformed or suspended but simply loses his ad income for "his" page on the YouTube platform owned by Google -- that there's some sort of "chilling effect" to be concerned with.
I believe I covered this topic pretty thoroughly several months ago, and I wouldn't change a word. On the one hand, I don't know if it was necessary to suspend Steven Crowder's ad income, apparently for using the phrase "lispy queer" to taunt a gay journalist. But for one, Crowder has also apparently encouraged his audience to harass the journalist, and for another, Google has no obligation to continue paying Crowder to be an obnoxious asshole.
I really don't get what's so hard to understand about this. This blog you're reading, right here, right now, is owned and operated by Google. If they decide that some of my content is objectionable -- and let's face it, over the course of fifteen years, I've certainly posted plenty of material that a wide variety of people would find objectionable -- they have the right to suspend or kill the blog. I wouldn't be happy about it, and I'd at least appreciate a week's heads-up so I could set up a private site and migrate the content over, but the bottom line is that they own it.
Now, if I sold ad space on here (which I did briefly several years ago), it would be even more problematic. When you get into ad agreements with a platform, you're essentially endorsing a blanket agreement that the platform has with the companies that advertise on the platform. In other words, YouTube and Google have a responsibility to any advertisers that might get steered to Steven Crowder's YouTube page, that their products aren't going to be used to promote someone who might indulge in speech that would alienate large swaths of customers.
This has never been about free speech. It has always been about money.
From what little I have encountered of Crowder's material, it seems not so much like the ravings of a hate-addled madman, more like the usual bumptious nonsense of a garden-variety internet provocateur. He sets up card tables with a "contentious" phrase, challenging passersby to change his mind, as it were.
Here's his latest "challenge":
Jesus. Has he never watched a clip of one of Hitler's speeches, or Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation, David Duke, George Wallace? Of course, that's not the point of Crowder's gaslighting; the point is to muddy the waters by insisting that no one ever got hurt by someone shouting faggot or wetback or whatever. Which is an easy thing to say when you're an ofay white asshole who's too young to remember when those words where the last thing some people hurt before an attacker's fist or foot met their face.
So Crowder's really just an idiot, and perhaps Google is getting a bit gun-shy around this issue -- but again, it's their platform and they can do as they see fit, and they have an additional, probably legal, obligation to the companies who advertise to protect those companies' investments, and not stick them on a channel that might get boycotted because the proprietor is nitwit.
What's stopping Steven Crowder from starting his own website, taking his million viewers or whatever over there, posting his vlog and selling ad space to whoever he wants, saying whatever he wants? What's to stop Milo Yiannopoulos or Alex Jones or any of these other weepy snowflakes from going forth and doing likewise? Hell, what's to stop them from banding together, pitching to Robert Mercer or Steve Bannon or one the Koch Brothers' useless failsons, and starting a "conservative" YouTube or Twitter?
It's interesting how these idiots -- who to a person will be only too happy to lecture you about makers and takers, and how those people think they can sneak in here and get a free ride on someone else's dime -- seem to actively avoid the thing they so vociferously insist on for everyone else -- getting a real fucking job.
To add insult to injury, because that is her only marketable skill, Laura Ingraham made her own heroic effort to convince, in true Orwellian fashion, that what they saw with their eyes and heard with their ears, from their golden idol no less, was in fact not true. Sound confusing? It really isn't.
You see, Ingraham was in Paris for D-Day, as she had an "interview" with the failure-in-thief, who then held up the start of the commemoration for fifteen minutes or so while Ingraham fellated him to completion (which, as we have stated many times before, is simply an audible puff of cheeto dust). Trump even acknowledged in the interview that he was happy to delay the ceremony because he likes Ingraham (because, again, no man turns down a good blowjob -- or even a bad one, really).
So on that night's broadcast, by which time it had gotten out that the ceremony had been delayed for this bullshit, Ingraham made a point of insisting -- right after the interview had aired, with Trump declaring otherwise -- that the interview had not delayed the ceremony, that that was just another perfidious lie thrown mercilessly against this good christian man.
To which the entire nation shrugged at both sides of the argument and collectively muttered whatever. Because that's all we do anymore.
I have been suggesting quite a lot these past months that the best thing we can all do, besides venting impotently on the internets and vowing to trudge to the polls next year and hope the machines have power cords, is boycott these fuckers. So I decided to take note of all the commercials that aired during that evening's episode of Ingraham's show (which, trust me, is an entirely different thing than watching the show), and make a list (grouped chronologically by intermission break):
Fisher Investments
Spin the Wheel (upcoming Fox game show, produced by Justin Timberlake and hosted by Dax Shepard)
Joint Flex (arthritis pain relief crème/gel)
Queen Sugar (new show on Oprah Winfrey Network)
South Beach Diet
Fox and Friends Concert Series (sponsored by Sandals)
Talcum Cancer Legal Helpline (same ambulance chasers that run those ads about class-action suits for mesothelioma and hernia mesh problems and such)
USAA Insurance
Ripley's Believe It Or Not (new show on Travel Channel, hosted by Bruce Campbell)
Zantac (antacid)
My Pillow
Stairlift
Fox MLB All-Star Game
LifeLock/Norton
Dupixent (injectable dermatitis/eczema medication)
Salonpas (pain relief patch)
*Ripley's
*South Beach Diet
Fox News Channel/Bret Baier
Saatva (another one of those mattress companies, like you can't just go to a fucking mattress store in any town)
Monsanto Roundup Legal Hotline
AT&T
Fox Sports 1/US Open Golf
*Joint Flex
My Pillow Mattress Topper
Liberator Catheter
Fox Nation
(* denotes repeat ad)
I mean, go ahead and sharpen your wallets, folks, but what really jumps out of that list is how few name companies there are in that list, and how much of it is in-house cross-promotion, which means the network is helping shoulder the burden of subsidizing this fucking dingbat. It's a collection of the usual late-night infomercial crap one would expect. Might as well have had a Chia Pet or Nugenix ad.
The only real surprise was the South Beach Diet ad running twice. I don't think Laura's audience of angry, arthritic codgers have any intention of liquid-dieting themselves to fitness. They are already leaning into their eventual fates, wondering only which Lucky Strike or western bacon cheeseburger will be the one that finally keels them over, to the joy of their exhausted, demoralized children and grandchildren.
Still, it would be great if what few legit advertisers there are could be collectively discouraged from sponsoring what can only be objectively said to be the ongoing gaslighting of this nation of gullible dupes. Again, Ingraham ran the clip of Trump bragging that he held up the ceremony for her -- even though the ceremony was actually delayed because Emmanuel Macron was running late -- before Ingraham herself came on to insist that Trump had not held up the ceremony. Okay, then why did he volunteer that he did, and did so deliberately?
There has been in recent months a surge in "free speech" opinion-mongering, the idea that if, say, some YouTube dipshit gets "demonetized" -- not deplatformed or suspended but simply loses his ad income for "his" page on the YouTube platform owned by Google -- that there's some sort of "chilling effect" to be concerned with.
I believe I covered this topic pretty thoroughly several months ago, and I wouldn't change a word. On the one hand, I don't know if it was necessary to suspend Steven Crowder's ad income, apparently for using the phrase "lispy queer" to taunt a gay journalist. But for one, Crowder has also apparently encouraged his audience to harass the journalist, and for another, Google has no obligation to continue paying Crowder to be an obnoxious asshole.
I really don't get what's so hard to understand about this. This blog you're reading, right here, right now, is owned and operated by Google. If they decide that some of my content is objectionable -- and let's face it, over the course of fifteen years, I've certainly posted plenty of material that a wide variety of people would find objectionable -- they have the right to suspend or kill the blog. I wouldn't be happy about it, and I'd at least appreciate a week's heads-up so I could set up a private site and migrate the content over, but the bottom line is that they own it.
Now, if I sold ad space on here (which I did briefly several years ago), it would be even more problematic. When you get into ad agreements with a platform, you're essentially endorsing a blanket agreement that the platform has with the companies that advertise on the platform. In other words, YouTube and Google have a responsibility to any advertisers that might get steered to Steven Crowder's YouTube page, that their products aren't going to be used to promote someone who might indulge in speech that would alienate large swaths of customers.
This has never been about free speech. It has always been about money.
From what little I have encountered of Crowder's material, it seems not so much like the ravings of a hate-addled madman, more like the usual bumptious nonsense of a garden-variety internet provocateur. He sets up card tables with a "contentious" phrase, challenging passersby to change his mind, as it were.
Here's his latest "challenge":
Jesus. Has he never watched a clip of one of Hitler's speeches, or Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation, David Duke, George Wallace? Of course, that's not the point of Crowder's gaslighting; the point is to muddy the waters by insisting that no one ever got hurt by someone shouting faggot or wetback or whatever. Which is an easy thing to say when you're an ofay white asshole who's too young to remember when those words where the last thing some people hurt before an attacker's fist or foot met their face.
So Crowder's really just an idiot, and perhaps Google is getting a bit gun-shy around this issue -- but again, it's their platform and they can do as they see fit, and they have an additional, probably legal, obligation to the companies who advertise to protect those companies' investments, and not stick them on a channel that might get boycotted because the proprietor is nitwit.
What's stopping Steven Crowder from starting his own website, taking his million viewers or whatever over there, posting his vlog and selling ad space to whoever he wants, saying whatever he wants? What's to stop Milo Yiannopoulos or Alex Jones or any of these other weepy snowflakes from going forth and doing likewise? Hell, what's to stop them from banding together, pitching to Robert Mercer or Steve Bannon or one the Koch Brothers' useless failsons, and starting a "conservative" YouTube or Twitter?
It's interesting how these idiots -- who to a person will be only too happy to lecture you about makers and takers, and how those people think they can sneak in here and get a free ride on someone else's dime -- seem to actively avoid the thing they so vociferously insist on for everyone else -- getting a real fucking job.
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