Tuesday, May 22, 2007

...

The whole Obie & Anthony "rape Condoleeza Rice to death" knee-slapper, as covered by (among others) Shakesville (in three parts), the Rotund, Shapely Prose...

yeah.

I was going to say something more general about "shock jocks," maybe connect it to some other recent incidents of "hateful bigoted media asshole says something even more fucked-up than usual, eventually gets shitcanned."

but I'm reading some of the more uh -colorful- comments to these postings and...yeah.

and, I -was- going to say something terribly amusing and oh-so-clever about the various and bloody ways I imagine the tapeworms' in question deaths.

which, would totally be fine and protected FREE SPEECH0RZOMGBBQ, particularly on account of it's JUST A JOKE, LIGHTEN UP, YOU MISERABLE SHITBAGS, SHEEESH.

but suddenly I just feel really, really tired.

on edit: double so, oh lookie, on another front, why, it's not racism, it's -youthful stunts.-
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10 comments:

Alon Levy said...

Not all media formats have those kinds of comment. Formats where I know of such comments include talk radio, blogs, forums, and shock jocking (is that a verb?). Formats where to my knowledge they don't appear include public debates, speeches by politicians, and anything by mainstream media commentators.

In other words, places where people are expected to be authentic and show their real selves are full of assholish crap.

In contrast, spaces that are expected to be professional and sanitized, and that require people to censor themselves based on a very conservative notion of appropriateness, don't. Instead, those spaces have hateful comments disguised as legitimate punditry: Bill Bennett's "abort all black babies" quip, anything by Josh Treviño, CNN segments about how working mothers destroy society, coded racism in political speeches.

May 22, 2007 8:59 PM
belledame222 said...

well--in a way I kind of see them all of a piece, you know, although I take your point that Bennett and various CNN anchors are considered more "genteel" than...some other people.

I'm sick of the people currently dominating the media, let's put it that way.

But I am especially sick of "oooo, so and so is just being POLITICALLY INCORRECT, FREEDOM OF SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH"

because of course that's what we all -really believe- deep down inside, see. world without end.

May 22, 2007 9:11 PM
Alon Levy said...

Well, yeah, they're two sides of the same coin. In the South in the 1950s, white racists came in two flavors: the uneducated ones, who supported the KKK, and the educated ones, who supported the White Citizens' Council. Likewise, today, hateful people come in two flavors: those who like commentators who call black women hos, and those who like commentators who talk about the negative consequences of civil rights.

May 22, 2007 9:23 PM
J. Goff said...

Apparently, in that Jena, LA case, they've arrested some black students and charged them with attempted murder, ffs. This world, I tell ya.

May 22, 2007 10:49 PM
Amber Rhea said...

Alon you better be careful talking about "in the South this" and "the Southern racists that." There are a few actual Southerners around here who don't take kindly to other people telling us "how it is." Or are you secretly Southern?

May 22, 2007 11:08 PM
Alon Levy said...

Well, I grew up in a city that's at about the same latitude as Atlanta. But it's about 120 degrees to its east, so I don't think it counts (yes, you're free to make digs about that city's country's record on not occupying other countries or turning military brutality into a point of pride).

I know the South isn't all like that, especially not now, 40 years after the civil rights movement. But in the 1950s, black people got lynched there. I don't think noting that the Old South had significant KKK and WCC presence is unfair.

May 23, 2007 12:07 AM
UneFemmePlusCourageuse said...

I feel slightly deceptive for saying this, but, another blog that I read, Deus Ex Malcontent, also posted something about Opie and Anthony, essentially in their favour-- and when I responded by saying that while I supported free speech, I couldn't support anyone who glorified rape-- he basically said that they "never said the word rape, therefore it's not rape, and people are just throwing that word around to make what was said seem more 'wrong.'"
"Fuck them to death" was what was said, and presumeably this 'fucking' was to be done without consent. If that's not rape, then what is?

May 24, 2007 4:21 PM
Alon Levy said...

It may not be rape, but it's still eliminationism.

May 24, 2007 4:50 PM
Anonymous said...

I think the argument that they "never said rape so it isn't rape" is disingenuously facile. It turns the whole thing into a semantics debate instead of focusing on the idea that these guys think it is FUNNY to talk about punching a woman in the face and fucking her to death.

Argh.

May 24, 2007 10:09 PM
UneFemmePlusCourageuse said...

Here's his exact quote on it: "Femme --

They said nothing about rape. What happened is what always happens: news is viral -- once a buzzword shows up in a story, that word will turns up, unchecked, in almost every story on every network and in every newspaper subsequently. It'll be parroted until someone thinks to go back and listen for themselves, and even then, if a seed has already been planted in his or her head about what's being heard -- that's tough to shake. You get into that mindset and it's tough to snap out of it -- particularly when there's a manager standing over your shoulder pushing you to "punch it up." "

And here's what his wife said, which ALMOST angers me more...
"I would certainly be angry about it if they HAD been joking around about rape, but it's still their right to do so.
But they weren't. Listen to it- they never said the word. They basically said that the only way Condi would have sex with him is if he had to hold her down. (Technically, that's a compliment to her.)"

...Because it's such a compliment to be forced into intercourse by some shock jock idiot, of course.

May 25, 2007 9:37 AM

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