Chunky David Brooks gets his panties in a twist over the whole South Park Mohammed thing. I can tell you that I agree with him, I would rather live in a world where religious extremists didn’t threaten to kill cartoonists.
But to pretend that this doesn’t happen, in some form, every day on every show on television is absurdly naive, even for an adult Tolkien reader. You’ve heard it before but here’s a partial list of people who lost their jobs for not being sufficiently psyched about Operation Iraqi Freedom: Bill Maher, Ashleigh Banfield, Phil Donahue. NBC wouldn’t rebroadcast the clip of Sinead O’Connor tearing up a picture of the pope. (And her reasons for doing so were so crazy, in retrospect, weren’t they?) I’ll stop now, but I could go on.
When it happens because of right-wing American complaints, it’s called family values or patriotism. When it happens because of Muslim complaints, it’s called censorship.
Mike Kay
Don’t forget how the wingers staged a jihad over the CBS miniseries of Reagan, starring Barbara Streisand’s husband.
CBS decided not to show the series. It was later shown on cable tv.
EDIT: how could I forget: The Smothers Brothers
And Another Thing...
Dixie Chicks
C Nelson Reilly
The History Channel show that’s on right now will fire up a bunch of wingnuts with cable
Malron
Damn, Doug. I can’t believe how on point you are.
Jim Bales
I second Malron (@4). Also, let’s not forget the response to Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondants Dinner.
Wikipedia
Warren Terra
@Mike Kay:
And – not a censorship issue, but definitely an issue of partisan pressure shaping the entertainment we receive – who can forget the infamous Showtime 9/11 movie featuring a resolute George W Bush, Man Of Action? There was some hilariously over-the-top invented “quote” the Bush character got to say on Air Force One in the flick about how we Americans are gonna show them Terrorists, sort of like his braggadocio with the bullhorn a few days later but much, much closer to the events.
And, of course, in the hard news side of the game it took about five years for anyone other than a few voices on NPR (on On The Media, not on the main news shows) to point out the cynical and political manipulations of the “Terror Alert Level” by the Bush Administration (I’m not counting Pacifica or Air America, who were much faster to point this out, because their audience is too small).
rob!
And yet, somehow, The Simpsons got away with repeated, direct shots at Christianity–and on FOX, too boot!
But that’s about the only example I can think of.
BR
@Warren Terra:
Don’t forget Keith Olbermann. It’s his segments on “The Nexus of Politics and Terror” that got me watching his show in the first place.
That was when his show was great. His show now is merely okay. He used to deliver the news with the attitude and perspective of a straight news reporter, but without the B.S. beltway memes and fair and balanced reporting. It was understated and nuanced, and because it was less opinion-heavy, it was both more informative and more believable.
Now his show is like a left-wing Fox, but with real facts rather than fake ones. While that’s great for base rallying, it saddens me that he’s left his news show history behind in favor of being a cable opinion show.
LanceThruster
Remember that Jesse Ventura’s MSNBC’s show was pulled a week before it was set to start because they discovered he was not pro-Iraq war.
He also could not present his views of 9/11 in the Huffington Post (even after Arianna begged him to write for them); they pulled his article within a day.
And Bill Maher urged his security to rough up the 9/11 hecklers in his studio audience, and said truthers were “crazy people”.
For some reason, he declined to say that to Gov. Ventura’s face. It was apparent that his “Real Time” chat with Ventura was going to steer entirely clear of it, though it was alluded to by his comment in regards to Ventura’s book that “he didn’t agree with everything in it.”
Jesse responded that everything in there is fact not speculation and he provides the footnotes.
I call it “gatekeeping”, with or without the death threats, the intimidation and control of the narrative ultimately has the same effect…to silence contrary views.
handy
Where the money leads, that’s where they follow.
gbear
Naivety is the new caucasian.
Warren Terra
@LanceThruster:
Um, Lance, I’m pretty sure that the Truthers are “crazy people”. Aren’t you?
@BR:
Fair point, but I’m not really sure when Keith got political. Looking at his Wikipedia entry, it looks like it might be as early as mid-2005, when he started his “Worst Person In The World” feature. His first “Special Comment” wasn’t until August 2006. Even so, that’s almost four, maybe five, years after the Bushies started milking 9/11 for everything from tax-cuts-for-rich-folks to an illegal, stupid war.
ellaesther
Dude. I agree, to a large extent, with what you’ve said here. And you know that I am frequently swanning about the place calling for greater understanding of Islam and Muslim faith and practice and less discrimination, and, and, and.
But there is a difference between making it known that journalists will no longer be welcome to interview powerful persons A, B, and C if they do X, Y, or Z — and threatening to kill someone. For any reason.
Hell, I know the difference myself! I once had a story spiked at the Chicago Tribune because the editor of the op/ed page was out of town and his assistant was too scared to run what I had written — a piece on which I had spent an enormous amount of time and in which broke down some important statistics regarding an aspect of decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence that I still have yet to see discussed anywhere else. It was killed, and the work went down the drain, not to mention the public knowledge of it.
On the other hand, I also once received a phone call in which my life was threatened for writing my opinion of the conflict.
Guess which one of these two got the notice of my local police?
There is a difference.
ellaesther
@ellaesther: PS FYWP for not letting me edit to add:
The call threatening my life came from a Jew. A lady Jew, at that. So, yeah. Crazy can be found anywhere.
Anya
How about 60 Minutes show about the case against Don Siegelman that did not air in all of Alabama by a miracle.
gbear
@LanceThruster:
Jesse tended to believe that a fact was anything that came out of his mouth. He could be a bit boneheaded now and then when he was Gov. (although he wasn’t a cruel bastard like the guy we have now).
burnspbesq
Exactly what is it that we accomplish by continuing to beat this dead horse?
handy
@burnspbesq:
More references to Burkean Bells and Applebee’s salad bars?
Anya
@ellaesther: crazy Muslim death threats always get the headlines. Just ask journalists like Robert Fisk, he always gets death threats and is called all kinds of abusive things. Since the threats does not come from Muslim fanatics they are not taken seriously.
geg6
@LanceThruster:
I’m gonna call bullshit on the complaint about Maher having the Truthers tossed from his show. They were not invited guests; they disrupted the show with completely off-topic and irrelevant garbage screamed over the discussion with the guests And disrespected the other audience members. It was rude and stupid and completely deserved, not to mention the appropriate response when your show is being hijacked by assholes. If he had invited them on for a discussion and then tossed them, you might have a point. As for not discussing Ventura’s nutty conspiracy theories, he was being polite to his guest and discussing matters that Ventura was able to discuss without sounding like a nutcase in a tinfoil hat. He chose not to have tell his guest that he’s certifiably insane or, at least, completely deluded. Not engaging with Truthers is not a form of censorship; it’s what sane people do. They deserve nothing better than being ignored.
John Cole
Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
Walker
Since it was mentioned, I just finished watching the History channel special with my Polish wife (who has never had US history). We both agreed that the show is crap. The history in that show was shallower than a 7th grade US history course. If you jump from Jamestown to the Revolution with no mention of the French-Indian war, you know this is not a serious history show. Certainly not one as super hyped as this one was.
We certainly won’t watch the rest.
John Cole
Truthers are crazy people.
Zach
“But to pretend that this doesn’t happen, in some form, every day on every show on television is absurdly naive.”
I think there’s a fundamental difference between criticizing the war or the Pope and trolling a large fraction of the world in order to provoke death threats from a tiny subset of them. The point’s already been beaten to death; what was the value in piling on now, anyway?
Say some small radical Christian group threatened Matt and Trey with death over some wacky portrayal of Jesus; would the same folks be this outraged over roadblocks they ran into trying to do the same thing again?
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
I am sorry to have to bring in Douthat but this was the most coherent version of this I could find.
handy
@handy:
Woops! I thought DougJ was riffing on a real David Brooks column, not his chunky acolyte. Gotta be more careful reading those links.
JH
I’ve become really weary of South Park. The formula is basically:
1) Identify something that’s important to a group of people they dislike.
2) Defile it.
3) Funny!
It turns out ok sometimes, but mostly it’s just tiresome and adolescent.
Warren Terra
@John Cole:
Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
(Or, in this case, now we tear our hair out about the mostly meaningless threats of violence inherent in parts of the system, while actual existing economic violence and some threats of physical violence in other parts of the system somehow get much less attention).
Little Dreamer
Michael Moore (is fat)!
ellaesther
@Anya: The question of what kind of death threats are taken seriously wasn’t addressed by DougJ or by me. DougJ compared “people who lost their jobs for not being sufficiently psyched about Operation Iraqi Freedom,” etc, to people whose lives were threatened for their work. My point was that these things are not fairly comparable.
Little Dreamer
Sibel Edmonds?
eco2geek
Douthat:
We self-censor ourselves all the time. It’d have been nice to tell that a-hole of a boss to go eff themselves, but I needed the job. Does that make me a coward?
I think choosing to not intentionally raise the ire of people who might actually hunt you down and hurt you for insulting them on a cartoon show might be called common sense, rather than cowardice. (And I might be a bit more outraged if South Park tickled my funny bone – but it doesn’t, not in the least.)
Now what ABC did after Bill Mahar stated the obvious on Politically Incorrect, that was cowardly.
Little Dreamer
Dan Rather?
apocalipstick
@rob!:
The Simpsons took shots at everything. It’s also worth noting that while Ned Flanders was portrayed as a doofus, the show never presents him as a hypocrite.
Dave Ruddell
Bill Maher’s show (Politically Incorrect) was cancelled many months before OIF. It was axed in June 2002, about 9 months after he made his controversial 9/11 related remarks. Whether or not the cancellation was a direct result of what he said is a matter of who you talk to.
DougJ
@ellaesther:
My comparison was between how the networks treated external pressure, not on what happened to the the various people. I apologize if that wasn’t clear.
I will add though that Ashleigh Banfield et al. actually lost their jobs whereas nothing has happened to the guys who write South Park.
Germane Jackson
How exactly do you say Douthat’s name? I can’t think of a way that doesn’t sound stupid. It’s either “Doubt Hat” or “Do That.”
LanceThruster
@geg6: He had every right to toss them out. That he exhorted his security to kick some asses because they were being politically incorrect is more a reflection on him.
I mentioned his hypocrisy. If truthers are ‘crazy people’, then Maher did a glowing interview with a crazy person without mentioning the elephant in the room, except in a manner that left no room for further discussions.
BTW, South Park did a 9/11 episode that linked http://www.911truth.org. It reiterated the meme that anti-Semitism is largely behind the 9/11 truth movement, even to the point of comparison to Holocaust denial.
Disagree if you want, but this is a far cry from being a flat earther. 9/11 Commission members rejected their own report and the NIST keeps shifting its own explanations.
More crazy people here:
It is disturbing to know that in clear cases of criminality (the handling of the crime scene for one), to claim incompetence is enough to cover a multitude of sins.
The next false-flag is going to make this one look like chump change. Maybe that Minot AFB nuke might play a role. Look out Iran.
Mnemosyne
@ellaesther:
Kind of off topic, but have you seen the reporting that the Muslim guy behind the “South Park” death threats was raised Jewish in New York and was involved with Lubavitchers in New York and settlements in Israel? It’s a pretty fascinating story.
(Somebody posted it in another thread — hopefully it wasn’t you!)
Mark S.
@Germane Jackson:
I don’t know. I kind of assumed “Do That,” but that does sound stupid.
DFS
It’s pronounced “useless neckbearded fat fuck.”
Egypt Steve
Never watch South Park; mostly a matter of a regular commitment to David Olberman and John Stewart, and desire to get a couple of hours work done in between most nights.
So, a couple of questions:
Can/do they say “nigger” on South Park?
Do they do Holocaust schtick?
DBake
I agree that there is a difference between pressuring networks and threatening violence. That said, it’s less than 6 weeks ago that people were threatening congressmen with violence, and actually attacking their houses and offices. It would be nice if that could have been denounced as forcefully. But I guess right-wing anti-government types are inherently less dangerous than Muslims.
YellowJournalism
I quit watching the show for these very reasons. I think it started right about the time Isaac Hayes’ Chef character got royally ripped apart in the episode after the Scientology one. I just didn’t feel that what Isaac Hayes did in the name of his “religion” deserved what the SP creators did: turn the character into a brainwashed pedophile Darth Vadar. It seemed like an utterly malicious way to attack someone you’ve worked with for years and quite hypocritical on their part, especially when they started crying about how he hurt their feelings by badtalking the show and walking away from it.
After that, I just noticed the episodes relying too much on recent events and cheapshot celebrity shakedowns rather than the smart social satire with a central sweetness to it that the show once was.
That said, I would stand by their right to portray Muhammad, whether it’s a cheap shot or a sincere attempt at addressing the issue and what happened in Europe. And I appreciate those that are supporting that right, such as Jon Stewart and the creators of The Simpsons with their chalkboard shout-out on tonight’s episode. (Yes, I occasionally still watch The Simpsons. I just can’t quit that show.)
Yutsano
@YellowJournalism: I stopped watching South Park around the Cartman’s dad episode. After that the contrivances just got too annoying. I will confess I did watch the Facebook episode, and it is exaggerated, but just slightly. It’s another of the many reasons why I won’t join up.
Mnemosyne
“South Park” is great at deconstructing celebrity culture and, well, that’s about it. The Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck episode (“Fat Butt and Pancake Head”) is hysterically funny even though it’s so very wrong in so many ways, and the Britney Spears episode (“Britney’s New Look”) was pretty scathing both about the tabloid culture and the audience for those tabloids and surprisingly sympathetic to Spears.
But actual politics? Not so much.
YellowJournalism
@Yutsano: I remember watching the Cartman’s dad episode (part II) in my dorm at WSU. There was a huge crowd of people in the common area, and I think half of them were about to start a riot when the fake Terrance and Phillip episode came on. Good times. (An episode I appreciate more after living in Canada, go figure.) The actual second part had a significantly smaller crowd, and we all agreed it was a crappy way to resolve that storyline, considering the part I was actually pretty damn funny.
I continued watching the show after that, but you’re right, it wasn’t the same. But I still liked it enough to watch until around the fifth season, then I started watching episodes if the subject seemed interesting enough.
I actually say, “Don’t kick the baby” in an Ike voice when my oldest isn’t careful around his baby brother. Someday they’ll understand.
YellowJournalism
@Mnemosyne: While I was replying to Yutsano, I was thinking about that exact same episode (Lopez/Affleck). That has to be one of my favorites outside of the first season ones. I get the taco song stuck in my head, though. I have not seen the Spears one, but I heard it was okay or good. Will have to check it out.
Yutsano
@YellowJournalism: You’re only going to be in trouble if the oldest figures out the other half of that game. Hopefully the youngest one isn’t football-shaped like Ike is, which I’m certain is part of the joke. My Canadian friends thought the whole Terrence and Phillip storyline was hilarious, but if you watch the Closing Ceremonies in Vancouver, the self-deprecation has deep roots in Canadian humor.
BTW GO COUGS!!
YellowJournalism
@Yutsano: Sometimes there are things I wouldn’t put past my oldest. He’s my cheeky one.
No football-shaped heads here, but I just always loved the fact that Ike actually sounded like a little kid compared to the others, too.
And, GO COUGS!, indeed.
Yutsano
@YellowJournalism: I visited a friend who’s also an alum in the Vancouver area (she’s a teacher, her partner is a social worker) and we got into a discussion about how you could tell who went to WSU in Pullman versus one of the branch campuses. If you went anywhere else it was Washington State or WSU, but if you went to Pullman it’s always Wazzu. I just thought that was funny. That and the truism that Cougs go everywhere, and it’s true even for just my friends. One now lives north of Atlanta, another is in Arizona, another went back home to the Bahamas where her father is a higher up in their judicial system. Could be why we have an alumni association going strong in Nairobi and Karachi.
bago
@Egypt Steve: Yes.
Anne Laurie
@Germane Jackson: I always read it as “Doubt That”. No matter what young Ross asserts, I end up thinking, ‘Well, I doubt that’.
Yutsano
@Anne Laurie: Someone posted a pronunciation guide for his name awhile back, but I confess I didn’t bother to pay attention to the subtleties. That would require me caring about Chunky Bobo beyond the mere comedic value he brings to my life.
CJ
@Anne Laurie:
I’ve been going with that, but someone here once mentioned pronouncing it as “Douche Hat,” so I switch back and forth.
asiangrrlMN
@Anne Laurie: I actually see it as “Do that”, but I like yours better so I’m updating my mental files. Thanks!
Randy P
Not sure anyone is still reading this, but I always say “Doot Hat”. I guess I’m the only one.
I haven’t watched that many South Parks. It was always just a little too rude for my tastes, but whenever I watched over my kids shoulders I would always hear “Ha, ha, Dad, you’re laughing”. It’s very funny, and a couple of episodes are outrageously funny (my favorite: the battle against the Old People over the drivers licenses) but the over-the-top rudeness prevents me from seeking it out to watch on purpose.
John Cole
Think harder, DaTechGuy.
There are multiple different front page posters here. This should be easy to tell, considering we all have different names.
But you’ll probably get your Instapundit link soon!
Little Dreamer
@John Cole:
Well, it’s your blog John, so of course, you’re responsible for every word that your other front pages post.
::rolls eyes::
John Withheldjo
@ Germane Jackson
I pronounce it Douche-hat
Potfry
You called him chunky! So funny.
b-psycho
@YellowJournalism: You must’ve missed what Kyle said at the end of that episode.
Pete
I would say looked at objectively on a global basis fundamentalist Muslim violence and bullying is worse, although the Christian variety is worse in the US and Christian fundamentalists are Republican. So it’s no surprise DougJ and Greenwald spin the issue a certain way, especially in reaction to Douchehat and Brooks.
Just another case of epistemic closure by the left.
Origuy
@Walker: I’m sorry to hear your comment about the History Channel show. I had hoped for better. I think they would do better with a narrower focus. I watched The Revolution on iTunes a while back and thought it was well done.
Cpl. Cam
@ellaesther:
Meh. Call me a marxist but once again it comes down to the division of haves vs. have-nots. If the Haves want to censor you they can just fire your ass and refuse to publish your shit. If the Have-Nots want to censor you they have to threaten you and hope you believe them and self-censor out of fear of reprisal. And, once again, the Haves’ way seems much more practically effective.
Potfry
Chunky! Razor-sharp wit!
LanceThruster
@LanceThruster:
In summary, a ‘truther’ is someone skeptical of the official 9/11 narrative and therefore ‘crazy’, but an anti-truther is someone who accepts the official narrative and is therefore rational.
The official narrative, as per the 9/11 Commission, is based on being told lies by the principles involved. That means the ones actually generating the official narrative are crazy people because they reject the lies they were told to craft the official narrative.
I call BULLSHIT indeed.