If you thought that, having gorged themselves on the rights and freedoms of We the People and wiped their asses with the Bill of Rights, the Thought Police of the Supreme Court would return to Valhalla to slumber now that Bush and Co. are out of the White House, think again. In the past week, they’ve hit We the People with a double whammy of First Amendment bashing.
First, there was the decision to uphold the FCC’s right to fine people for swearing and other verbal slips:
The Supreme Court said yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission may penalize even the occasional use of certain expletives on the airwaves but left for another day the question of whether such a policy is constitutional.
The court’s narrow ruling said the FCC — prompted by Cher’s use of the F-word during a 2002 live broadcast and similar remarks by what Justice Antonin Scalia called “foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood” — was justified in changing its policy in 2004 to fine broadcasters up to $325,000 every time certain words are allowed on the air.
This from a man who laughed as Stephen Colbert flipped him off (Italian-style) at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few years ago. Then again, the WHCD is just one massive circle jerk when the media and the politicians in bed with said media get together for an orgy of mutual masturbation.
Fox Television Stations and other networks had challenged FCC’s actions under the Administrative Procedure Act. They said the agency did not adequately explain why it changed its policy, which previously held that one-time utterances of expletives did not constitute a violation of FCC rules.
…Fox said it was disappointed but “optimistic that we will ultimately prevail when the First Amendment issues are fully aired before the courts.”
For Christ’s sake, Supreme Court, you’re making me side with FOX on this one? Something is seriously wrong here.
My favorite quote, however, once again comes from the Justice I love to hate the most. Mr. Scalia, take it away:
“Whether [the policy] is unconstitutional will be determined soon enough, perhaps in this very case,” Scalia wrote in sending the case back to the appeals court. In the meantime, any suppressed “references to excretory and sexual material surely lie at the periphery of First Amendment concern.”
Essentially, if it refers to sex or feces, it’s automatically naughty! Because we’re not going to go by the intention of our Founding Fathers — especially not the so-called Constitutionalist Scalia. Oh no. We’re going back further, to the true founders of this country, the Puritans! They knew the score, and that is to say that scoring is bad, mmm kay. Sex is bad, it’s something we do, but we should still be kind of ashamed of, because we enjoy it! And we shouldn’t! It’s dirty! It’s wrong! It is animalistic and uncivilized! It’s horrid! WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE STOP THINKING ABOUT SEX! DIRTY!
Then, to drive the point home, the Supreme Court decided to send the FCC fine of CBS over Nipple Gate back to the lower courts for reconsideration.
The high court on Monday directed the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to consider reinstating the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on CBS over Jackson’s breast-baring performance at the 2004 Super Bowl.
…
Last year, the appeals court threw out the fine against CBS, saying the FCC strayed from its long-held approach of applying identical standards to words and images when reviewing complaints of indecency.
The appellate court said the incident lasted nine-sixteenths of one second and should have been regarded as ”fleeting.” The FCC previously deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so ”pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience,” the court said.
But, ah, see the Supreme Court just decided two things in Tuesday’s ruling: sex is always naughty and not protected by the First Amendment on it’s face (THANKS SCALIA!) and that “fleeting” does not equal “excusable”. So, if you’ve been dying to see Janet Jackson’s nipple again, you’re in luck, because this case just won’t go away! The nip slip seen and heard round the world returns, and this time, it’s personal.
Someone interested in pharmacology could go into research and work for Big Pharma instead of being a dispenser at the local Walgreens and refusing the morning after pill to a rape victim. But that would require more education, which is expensive.
Someone who enjoyed bringing babies into the world by attending births could be a midwife, a birthing coach, or a maternity nurse to avoid dealing with the termination of pregnancy. But that would greatly decrease his or her ability to bring in revenue for annual PAP smears, treating women with HRC, etc.
So, when those who’d opt out via the “conscience” clause say it’s about religion, what they’re really saying is that it’s about the money, honey.
Just as the papers I read in England are divided between the comically conservative (The Daily Mail) and the absurdly liberal (The Guardian), so too are divided the papers in the United States. Reader reactions in The New York Times to President Jesus’ speech span the gauntlet from hand job to out-right worship of a demi-god, divine made flesh on earth. Meanwhile, the readers at The Wall Street Journal heard a message of a different kind — fire and brimstone, the Whore of Babylon riding through the streets, and saw the spector of four horsemen on the horizon as they headed to Lowes, Home Depot, and the nearest supermarket to stock up on hand-crank radios and canned goods.
I heard neither the end of the world nor the second coming in President Jesus’ speech today. I did, however, hear an eerie message that gives credence to the insane ramblings of a lunatic and the chipping away of what made our country great in the name of “progress” and “freedom” but what should be given the name of that which it is: socialism.
A recap of President Obama’s speech:
“My fellow Americans…blah blah blah [socialism] blah blah blah [redistribution of wealth] blah blah blah [take care of the lazy, the weak, those that cannot and will not contribute to our nation's glory] blah blah blah [new world order].
What?
“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders;”
Thus spoke Zarathustra.
With those words, President Jesus implied something more powerful than most — other than conspiracy theorists like David Icke — can comprehend. We have to take care of other nations, says President Jesus. We have to not just redistribute the wealth [AKA Socialism] within our borders, but outside as well. And when we start treating all nations as one, we have one world power — the power of he or she who’s charge is the redistribution of that wealth. And he who holds that power holds the world and all of its nations under his control.
That, my friends, is the concept of The New World Order; that, my friends, is what Barack Obama has promised to bring about.
Are you as sick as I am? Did any lingering glimmers of hope die for you with that? Or did your hope vanish with President Jesus’ other promises, as did mine?
“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”
There, my friends, is where my heart turned cold and the skys drew dark on my horizon, where the specter of all that I loathe about the liberal guilt-trip and socialism in shepard’s clothing is given a name and face. No liberal wants to ask if our government is too big because the answer is a resounding yes. Yet for socialism to work — and that is President Jesus’ goal — then we must have big government. So he couched his vision of American government in terms of “does it work?” But for whom does it work is the better question. For people who cannot save for their own retirement, he wants government to work. For those who cannot pick up the pieces of a job terminated, dream deferred, marriage dissolved and move forward under their own power, Mr. Obama wants the government to work. For those who are intellectuals and artists of varying work, our socialist president will provide health care and wages to create ideas and art that may well be worth less than the paper they are not printed upon.
For those who work and are industrious, you are fools under the regime of President Jesus.
“Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control”
President Jesus ignores the SEC and FTC regulators who watched and fiddled while Rome burned and Madoff made off with so many fortunes and continues to roam free to redistribute that wealth in the way he sees fit. He ignores that government is, by and large, corrupt and that corrupt government cannot regulate even itself, let alone private industry.
“The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart – not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.”
And here he is again, adorning his socialist policies in fine words while never giving their true name. Today, his speech revealed that the Emperor wears no clothes, that he is a socialist despite his best efforts to dress it to the contrary. President Jesus will raise your taxes to pay for the food, shelter, education, retirement, and health care of those who choose not to work, of children you did not give birth to and parents who did not bear you.
“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”
And yet, I believe that we will see new waives of censorship in the name of playing nice, of not offending anyone, of bringing back the Clinton-era Thought Police who searched for thoughts against the government, as Bush did, and for thoughts that weren’t nice or politically correct or in line with what others believe.
“The false choice between our safety and our ideals.” He danced around the word freedom, because we will not be free under a man, a president, who believes freedom is something that can be granted by government. Freedom, my President Jesus, is intrinsically free. You are not giving freedom when you dole out benefits to the undeserving or the unfortunate. You are not spreading freedom in your social programs any more than Bush spread freedom in Iraq and the middle east. Freedom comes from being able to think or say or do whatever one wishes. Freedom is my ability to take my wages earned with my blood, my sweat, my tears, and give it to those whom I think deserving, not you, Mr. President, not you. Freedom is not compromising, not backing down, the ability to say that 2+2=5, as George Orwell put it; the freedom to know that if I buy a TV and the man next door to me cannot feed his family, he does not have the right to take my TV to sell to buy a proverbial loaf of bread because it is mine, free and clear. Yet all that freedom is would be sacrificed by President Jesus, to make sure we all have the security of retirement, food on every plate, and a roof over every head — the later promise being the promise of several presidents that caused the housing market bubble (that could only burst) in the first place.
I think Benjamin Franklin answered President Jesus best when he said “those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.” Your social programs do exactly that, President Jesus–sacrifice freedom in the form of private property rights for personal security that can be attained, a point which you yourself are proof of–and per Mr. Franklin, I believe that you and your supporters deserve neither.
So, if you’re a fan of Teh Intertubes, you know all about the non-smackdown that happened between Violet Blue and BoingBoing and just how boring and frustrating it’s been the past few days. When will someone at BoingBoing say something that doesn’t sound like Scott McClellan wrote it? When will the BB fan boys stop acting like Violet Blue is the devil? When will readers notice that BoingBoing and Big Brother share initials and memory hole policies?
For those of you who aren’t Intertubes fans or have been in a cave recently, the non-story of the year goes like this:
Violet Blue is a sex blogger and sometimes writer/radio show host who probably has more money than God that comes from simply talking about sex. Boing Boing is an anti-censorship, liberal vehicle for Cory Doctorow’s latest work copyleft/copyfight blog that pretty much makes money from talking about how much copyright, big government, and invasion of privacy suck. Sometimes, the libertarians on this blog are all over BoingBoing; sometimes, we’re just over it.
The connection between the two comes from the fact that Blue once wrote a few posts for BoingBoing, and used to be a favorite on BoingBoing insomuch as she was linked to with frequency. Over the course of a few years, Blue wrote for or was mentioned in BoingBoing somewhere on the order of 70 times, give or take a few, according to an LA Times blogger who bothered to go to the WayBack Machine and count.
Why the Wayback Machine? Well, that’s the rub. You see, according to BoingBoing, they “unpublished”, which is a NewSpeak way of saying “deleted”, not just articles by Ms. Blue, but every mention of her in existence on their site, effectively scrubbing her from their archives and sending her down the memory hole.
Trust us, Winston Smith was doubleplusbusy that day.
Naturally, for such an anti-censorship site as BoingBoing, this seems rather odd, especially since there was no transparency in the action to unpublish Ms. Blue: one day she existed in the BB universe, the next she did not. Even Ms. Blue was unaware of her deletion until this past week, when the news slowly began to trickle out that she was gone from BB. People began to ask questions, and alternatively flame the hell out of BoingBoing, and BB began a hard and fast policy of denial: any comment that mentioned Violet Blue was systematically deleted from their site. The InterTubes grew restless. Metafilter got involved, then ValleyWag picked up the story, which then hit its sibling site Gawker, and all hell broke loose.
Sometime yesterday, BoingBoing responded to the controversy with a non-post about the issue by Moderator-cum-Douchebag Teresa Nielson-Hayden, who did her best White House Press Secretary working interview and forced out the editors’ response to the controversy, which was pretty much “This is a personal blog, we’ll damn well do what we feel like and have no responsibility to tell the readers what happened or why. More over, this is personal, so leave us alone.”
Also, she cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.
Now, that by itself wouldn’t be so bad, if the comments that followed weren’t routinely attacked for asking questions that seemed pretty self-evident after reading the post, such as how can a blog about transparency and accountability be neither transparent nor account for its actions? How can they continue to post about Mr. Doctorow’s novel fighting Big Brother (entitled “Little Brother”) when they had gone totally BB themselves and unpublished a writer? Between Nielson-Hayden and the readers, things in the comments quickly spiraled out of hand and two camps formed: fan boys who believe BB can do nothing wrong, reading for two minutes of hate with Violet Blue as a symbol of all that’s wrong with the InterTubes, and conspiracy theorists and general uber-left communists who now want BB staff to post home addresses, SSNs, and all other personal data to be the most transparent InterTubes blog of all times or else fail miserably under the weight of evil corporate oppression.
After that there were only three or four new posts to BoingBoing’s site, ending around 3PM. Then, for six hours, BoingBoing was dark, save for the glowing light of the comments thread growing exponentially. Meanwhile, ever the willing victim in all of this, Ms. Blue was giving interviews to any blogger who would listen. She even created a spreadsheet detailing every post involving her that was deleted from BB. When it comes to being sympathetic, Ms. Blue seemed to be aiming for a new residency over at Fail Blog.
Lost somewhere in the maelstrom was the question that the first few hundred posts reasonably asked: what transgression did Violet Blue commit that was so horrible and unspeakable, she had to be erased from the annals of BoingBoing, at the expense of BoingBoing’s own integrity?
For anything even close to an answer, only the LA Times and SF Gate came close to getting answers, and theirs had the ring of X-Files paranoia to them.
1: Cory Doctorow is a big copyleft protector, fighter of the “evil” of copyright. Violet Blue legally changed her name two years ago to Violet Blue and soon after sued a porn star for using Violet Blue as a name. Said porn star is a single mom (Oh noes! Leftists always bleed extra hard for the single mommies!) quit the business to sell her own work herself (Leftists also get massive hard-ons for independent production and small business) and (here’s the actually important part) had been using the name since 1999, long before Ms. Blue was a sex blogger. Moreover, it is believed that Violet Blue knew of the porn star’s existence before legally changing her name, and allegedly, before even using the moniker at all. Blue (the sex blogger) even had Blue (the porn star mommy) on her radio show once. The fact that Blue (PSM) couldn’t afford a decent attorney and was trounced in court by Blue (SB) would have really pressed Doctorow’s buttons wrong and ended with Blue being throughly denounced on BoingBoing. However, Blue being a former contributor, it might have looked bad to other editors or the almighty sponsors if Blue was still on the site as a contributor and yet trashed later on, so it was best to delete her and go on their separate ways.
2. Federated Media supports BoingBoing through ad revenue almost exclusively. Like many other publications, BoingBoing could, theoretically, be held hostage to the demands of Federated Media, and if they decided association with Ms. Blue was becoming a liability, they could demand she be wiped from the site.
3. Blue was “riding the coattails” of her BoingBoing posts, according to some readers and bloggers familiar with the two. She allegedly referred to herself as the fifth BoingBoing editor, which may have bruised an ego or two, and eventually might have had a falling out over taking more credit than her due and trying to raise her importance level to back her new projects.
4. Editor Xeni Jardin and Ms. Blue were allegedly involved at some point, and the affair turned sour. A hurt Jardin may have then convinced the other three editors that deletion of Ms. Blue was the best way to go. This rumor is fueled by a LA Times blog post which suggests that after a conversation with both Jardin and Blue, the blogger was satisfied that it truly was a personal matter handled poorly and not worth the bru-ha-ha it generated. Of course, that blogger’s lips are sealed.
For Blue, we’ve come to believe, the friendship always had a mercenary angle — Jardin could get her linked as well as laid. The association with Boing Boing boosted Blue’s career. How painful it must have been for Jardin to realize she was being used by a groupie who wanted to join her band. And people in pain exercise supremely bad judgment, which is what Jardin did when she “unpublished” posts about Blue from Boing Boing.
None of the rumors implicate either Mark or David as the root of the problem, which makes sense, as Mark just seems like such a nice guy, you can’t imagine him getting into a fight with anyone (did you see him on the Colbert Report?) and David isn’t nearly as active as the other three. Mark and David are like the Ringo and George to Doctorow and Jardin’s Lennon and McCartney, respectively. While you can see the latter getting into public feuds with people, the former just are so freakin’ nice and quiet, you’d have to murder their ickle robot puppies for them to get upset with you, and even then you could probably settle the matter over a cup of tea or something.
So, no matter what theory you subscribe to, the one thing all the theories have in common is that BoingBoing has compromised their principles for some unnameable reason, which makes the compromising of said principles all the more suspect. For a group of editors who decry the Bush Administration (and who doesn’t anymore, really?) they sure have learned a few lessons from the last 8 years under Bush Jr’s reign, such as how to talk without actually saying anything.
War is Peace.
Secrecy is Transparency.
Long live BoingBoing.
As many of you know, we here at BoMb have been supporting Mike Gravel’s candidacy since he was a Democrat. Ideologically, he lines up with everything we stand for:
Apparently, a creative-minded car salesman in Missouri had an idea on how to stop flagging car sales due to increased gas prices: buy a car, get a gun for free!
I just watched Grover Norquist embarrass himself, conservatives, and Americans in general on (last night’s) Colbert Report. Thank GOD he associated himself with McCain and the Republicans. If he’d called himself a Libertarian, and maligned my people the way Dennis Miller constantly does, I’d have cried.
Come on, small government people. Our cause is good! It’s worthy! It’s a message that should be spoken! We need someone better than that to stand up for small government!
Today, John McCain announced that he believes we could see troops withdraw from Iraq as early as 2013 which isn’t very early at all, and by which point he would have single-handedly destroyed the world by going to war with every country that looked at him funny. And there are a lot of those.
Apparently, steadfastly holding onto an opinion that less than 30% of the country believes in is not good for politics! Who knew?
There are, of course, reasons why Mr. McCain would set a potential withdraw date in his candidacy, other than trying to draw in independent and moderate voters who may be swayed by a message of change or by Mike Gravel’s awesome libertarian policies!1 And, it may not be that he too has been obsessively listening to Handlebars by Flobots and now wants to end the world in a holocaust. Remember, kids:
2013 would be after he was out of office, should he only serve one term.
You shouldn’t invade other countries, like Iran, when your troops are fighting on two different fronts with little international support.
By 2013, we may have no troops to send or withdraw.
He’s an old man who had skin cancer and is from Arizona–he could die soon.
1: I once took an online test about whose policies I most align with, and surprisingly it was Mike Gravel. True story.
In a speech to the Israeli parliament today, the nation’s current commander and chief decided to take a swipe at diplomacy loving Barack Obama, who has previously stated he would like to foster dialoge between the US and countries like Iran, with this winning statement:
“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Mr. Bush, if you invoke Hitler or Nazi Germany for the sake of an argument, you lose. It’s cheap, it’s petty, it’s a straw man argument, and without Godwin, straw man arguments are automatic failure in debate. Any high school debate team member knows that. But, more over, we now have Godwin’s law, and you keep breaking it. Are you trying to tell me that you can’t think of anything else about Barack Obama (the fact that he wants to practically turn the country into a democratic socialist state leaps to mind) that you have to bring up Hitler when you are addressing Jewish people? Are you retarded?
Oh yes, I forgot. It’s the same person who wants to know “Is our children learning”. I’m sorry. I forgot.
Even though he’s not even secured the nomination (but who are we kidding at this point?), Obama’s already been threatened by…wait for it…the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
We will attack Obama viciously on all fair issues, whether they are national security, whether they are taxes or the economy,” promised Chris LaCivita, one of the Republican strategists behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry in 2004.
Now, I don’t think Barack Obama fought in Vietnam. In fact, I don’t think he was old enough to fight in Vietnam, honestly. He definitely didn’t testify to the senate in the 1960s about the activities of Vietnam vets, so why are the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth planning a “vicious” attack? Because, apparently, they’re actually not a group of concerned veterans but a Republican lobbying group.
Isn’t that special?
And to think that for four years, I really thought they weren’t attacking John Kerry for his party or his politics, that they were still just really bitter about Vietnam! Who knew?
Oh, that’s right. I did. But apparently, not very many people did, as The Shrub got four more years.
We are a country full of geniuses. Apparently, most of them live in West Virginia.
Apparently, a creative-minded car salesman in Missouri had an idea on how to stop flagging car sales due to increased gas prices: buy a car, get a gun for free!
