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When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Come on, man.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

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Let there be snark.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Republicans in disarray!

You are here: Home / Policing Our Discourse

Policing Our Discourse

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DougJ, Atrios, and Glenzilla have already said a lot about the sad spectacle of our establishment media rushing for the fainting couches when someone says fuck or is rude to someone in a position of power, but not batting an eye when someone like Tom Friedman says one of the reasons we went to Iraq was to basically kill brown people so the rest of the region would know who is the fucking boss. I could go on and on and on with examples about how this always seems to conveniently happen to only left-wing voices, as could you, but here’s a crystal clear one- Marcy Wheeler has been basically banned from cable tv because she dared to say the words “blow job” when talking about the Clinton/Lewinsky never-ending saga. On the other hand, Ann Coulter, with a history of saying vulgar and offensive things, was on MSNBC yesterday morning as a guest where she called people douche bags and spit on the corpse of Ted Kennedy. Rather than being shunned by the media, here was CNN’s response to Coulter’s behavior on MSNBC (via an email sent by one of their marketing flacks:

Ann Coulter tells HLN’s Joy Behar what she said about John McCain that caused censors at MSNBC’s Morning Joe to censor her.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/11/29/exp-behar-ann-coulter.hln

Please source: “HLN The Joy Behar Show”

The Joy Behar Show airs on HLN at 10 p.m. (ET) weeknights.

For press inquiries please contact Alison Rudnick 212/275-7987 or Karen Reynolds 212/275-8253

Follow Joy on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/JoyBeharHLN?ref=ts

Follow Joy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JoyVBehar

Video of these interviews will be posted on http://joybehar.blogs.cnn.com/ after the show.

Karen Reynolds
HLN Public Relations
One Time Warner Center, 4th fl.
NYC 10019
212-275-8253-O
347-327-2473-BB

Rather than shunning Coulter like Wheeler was treated by all the networks, CNN’s response was “LET ME IN ON THAT ACTION, BITCHES” and then blasted out a spam email to make sure everyone knew Coulter would be on headline news talking about douchebags. Rock on, media.

On top of this bias, our media elites have decided that anything to the left of Susan Collins is just too controversial to even have the opinion aired. How many serious discussions of nationalizing the banks during the crisis do you remember? How many serious discussions about single-payer did we have during the health care debate? How many serious discussions have there been about just ending the drug war? When was the last time you remember someone on tv arguing “To hell with it, let’s just GTFO of Afghanistan?” And on and on. And on top of it all, you have stuff like this:

I’m not a regular reader of Andrew Sullivan, so I’m not familiar with all of his traditions, but it seems that Moore Award voting happens at the end of December. For those who are regular readers of Sullivan, please help me keep an eye out for when the Moore Award voting begins. You may recall that I was nominated in May, and I am in it to win it. Any idiot can shoot his mouth off on the internet, but it takes a special kind of idiot to win an award for it, and mama always said I’m special.

The offending statement that generated the nomination was made on the date of bin Laden’s death, and was the following:

So many awful things have happened in the battles to find this man, so many awful things have been “justified” in the name of responding to his attacks, that killing him won’t fix a damn thing. There is no justice here. He started it, but our leaders have continued it, and it will not stop.

Anything less than a victory dance on bin Laden’s corpse is just too vulgar to even enter into the public discourse. While Sullivan is babbling about political correctness and getting the vapors because a bunch of racist assholes are being called out for being racist assholes doing shitty research, he’s shunning people for having the audacity to reflect on all that has transpired since 9/11 rather than breaking out the foam fingers because we killed a terrorist.

I’d say this second aspect of the policing our discourse is even worse than the “OH MY GOD A BLOGGER SAID FUCK PUSSY SHIT COCK.”

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  7. 7.

    Wiesman

    Hmmm, I wonder if I can register the domain name, OHMYGODABLOGGERSAIDFUCKPUSSYSHITCOCK.COM for my blog?

  8. 8.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Fuckin-A right guy! You’re one righteous fucking asshole Cole. Shit man, keep on keepin’ on and pissin’ those M$M bitches off!

    Fuck yeah!

  9. 9.

    Jennifer

    I’d say this second aspect of the policeing our discourse is even worse than the “OH MY GOD A BLOGGER SAID FUCK PUSSY SHIT COCK.”

    Absolutely. And I’ll give you another really great example: since the meltdown in 2008, no one on any network has dared point out the obvious: the whole thing happened because too much wealth had become too concentrated into too few hands, and the economy can’t really “recover” until we get some more income equality/wealth equality up in here. Just like it never recovered from what was supposedly a mild recession at the beginning of Bush’s presidency. You look at the charts, and it shows that it took 5 full years to even get back to even; that’s what you’d expect in an economy where wealth concentration is reaching a critical limit. This is all obvious nose-on-your-face stuff, and until OWS came along, even the bare fact that disparity and inequality were accelerating was never whispered by any talking head. And for a good long while after OWS got rolling, they continued to try to pretend that no one had the slightest idea what the protesters were upset about.

  10. 10.

    Steeplejack

    @Cole:

    What is up with that Coultergeist.jpg?! It’s hard to read, it doesn’t say much of anything, and you can’t click on the hyperlinks in it. Are we supposed to embiggen it and then laboriously retype the link addresses into our browsers?

    Justin Bieber in a search field, just give us a short, inaccurate recap to give us the flavor.

    ETA: Fucking fuckety-fuck-fuck. There.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    The media is pretty sad, and I’m not going to defend them. However…if the price of admission is to look and sound “respectable,” and not use certain 4-letter words, isn’t it an acceptable tradeoff for the increase in exposure that media access would provide? I’m really curious about what people think.

  14. 14.

    Ocotillo

    How come so much of this stuff happens on Morning Joe?

    Halperin called Obama a dick, Scar himself dropped an uncensored F-bomb and now Coutergeist?

    Must be some shit going down during the commercial breaks.

  20. 20.

    John Cole

    @seabe: I couldn’t remember if I was or not. I remember taunting him about the idiotic Moore awards, but I had forgotten I was nominated. Do you remember what we said?

  24. 24.

    Calouste

    @Jennifer:

    no one on any network has dared point out the obvious: the whole thing happened because too much wealth had become too concentrated into too few hands

    Most people on the networks are one of those few hands, and they definitely all work for someone who is one of those few hands. But mostly the first bit.

  31. 31.

    David Koch

    I don’t think marcy wheeler is a good example. It’s not as if she was a frequent guest, all over the tubes. I don’t think she was ever on tee vee more than a handful of times.

    but a good example is Kos. Kos tweeted about the dead intern with whom Scarborough was having an extramarital affair and how it was no different than Garry Conditt, and a simple personal tweet got him banned from msnbc. It would have been one thing if he said it on air, but he didn’t even do that.

  32. 32.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I was shocked that even Barnicle sat there and said nothing while Colter was trashing Kennedy (I believe she called him a human pestilence) Mika is a bit like a battered wife at this point and just sits back and watches. She occasionally shows a spark of independence but then gets her pretty blonde head right under Joe’s thumb.

    I have to admit though I do LOVE the new promo they have, and everyone who is saying it is sexist needs to get a fucking hobby or something.

  33. 33.

    newhavenguy

    The Post was just recently publishing cute opinion pieces about how the Palestinians are savages who should be fed to sharks. That is a valid Conservative viewpoint, one which should be honored by The Washington Post Kaplan Daily and given a megaphone.

    The ironic thing is that it’s almost impossible to accurately describe the state of this once-great paper without using the harshest profanity, and a fucking boatload of it. To further assault civility, I am reminded of this old Wonkette piece, with which I still agree.

    Why is the Post still an influential publication anyway? Half the editorial content and reporting stenography could be outsourced to the Washington Times without anyone noticing.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @Jennifer: Sure, you (and I) agree with Lewis Black. I’m just saying there are a lot of people who don’t, and I’m asking if that’s the hill to die on.

  35. 35.

    Benjamin Franklin

    “I was shocked that even Barnicle sat there and said nothing while Colter was trashing Kennedy ”

    Simpatico. He’s just careful about the subject because his former mentor, Tweety, has written a book. He wants back on the show “Tardball”.

  36. 36.

    The Moar You Know

    Yeah. So, short of whole mass executions of the media, the 1%, the FIRE parasites and all the other horrible assholes who are bleeding our society to death, how do we FIX this fucked up situation?

    We need answers and I’m not hearing them from anyone save DFHs, who can’t buy even a second of the national discourse no matter how much money is offered.

  37. 37.

    RalfW

    The networks are really only watched by people with either above average income/wealth, or above average discretionary time*.

    In other words rich people and old people. Neither demographic wants to know be confronted with uncomfortable truths.

    *Discretionary time not spent doing bong hits or gaming, that is.

  38. 38.

    CT Voter

    Sullivan is the “serious edgy blogger” everyone (and by everyone I mean people like Howard Kurtz and kindred sorts) goes to to burnish their intellectual bona fides.

    If any BJer is nominated for any award on Sully’s blog, I’ll vote early and often!

  42. 42.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Until Brooks Bobo, Douthat Chunky Bobo, Dowd MoDo, and Friedman MOU hold awards contests, I’m not wasting my time voting on no Sully blog.

  44. 44.

    r€nato

    Anything less than a victory dance on bin Laden’s corpse is just too vulgar to even enter into the public discourse.

    really? I was under the impression it was perfectly acceptable for sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrome – who, prior to 1/20/09, were notorious for using 9/11 to excuse everything their idiot, illegitimate president did, from starting unnecessary wars to shitting on the Constitution to tax cuts for the wealthy – to find all kinds of creative, patriotic-sounding rationalizations to criticize how Bin Laden got taken out, to cover up the fact that they were fucking pissed that Obama got OBL rather than President Dimestore Cowboy who promised to get him ‘dead or alive’ after 9/11 and then six months later said he ‘wasn’t all that concerned about him.’

    Of all the wingnut, Fox News koolaid-guzzling right wingers I have the displeasure of being acquainted with, not a single one of them was willing to say anything positive about the execution of the man who not that long ago was considered by them to be a threat to our nation worse than Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Castro all put together.

    So, I guess what I am saying is, once again, IOKIYAR.

  45. 45.

    Chris T.

    You can say pussy. For instance, I have a very nice pussy… cat.

    As George Carlin noted, you can prick your finger, you just can’t finger your prick.

    [Edit: ironically, this comment is in moderation]

  46. 46.

    Hart Williams

    If you get a really good censor, you can say “pussy,” which derives from pusillanimous (cowardly), AND “pussy,” meaning cat, but not the anatomical euphemism, which, interestingly enough is common in many European languages and means “cat,” but doesn’t sound a thing like “pussy.” French, for instance.

    [Edit: ironically, this comment is in moderation as well.]

  49. 49.

    piratedan

    as always, it’s good to know that this site will continue to skullfuck kittens in the name of Freedom!

    as for our political opponents and their lack of compassion, empathy, sympathy and care for their fellow man; may reincarnation be a reality and they can all come back as children of Darfur.

  51. 51.

    eemom

    @The Moar You Know:

    short of whole mass executions of the media, the 1%, the FIRE parasites and all the other horrible assholes who are bleeding our society to death

    You say that like it’s something negative.

  54. 54.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Back when I was working in the S3 shop (that’s the operations division, for you non-Army types) of the 9th Division Artillery, the S3 officer (a LTC) decided one holiday season that the entire S3 shop was going to make a New Year’s resolution to not use the F word in the office.

    So, third day back after the holiday break, and so far, everyone has been doing great at checking their impulse to use the F word in the office. Then the S3 gets some directive down from Division HQ, and all the sudden we hear this string of profanity (which naturally include the first breach of the New Year’s resolution) issuing forth and the assistant S3 very politely comments on who broke the colonel’s resolution first…the colonel. The S3 then shows the directive to the assistant, and the assistant gravely nods his head and mutters “understandable”.

  55. 55.

    Roy G.

    So, just the other day I went home with this girl, and she had the best pussy I have ever seen… AW CMON!! I was talking about her cat! You people make me sick!

    That cat was the best fuck I ever had…

    -Steve Martin

  57. 57.

    TenguPhule

    So, short of whole mass executions of the media, the 1%, the FIRE parasites and all the other horrible assholes who are bleeding our society to death, how do we FIX this fucked up situation?

    I’m sorry, what was wrong with this solution again?

  59. 59.

    Pat In Massachusetts

    I cannot stand these British transplants always shooting their mouths off on how Americans should behave. If Sullivan is not doing that, then he is picking away at the American psyche. I wish he would move back to England and suck up to the Crown. He looks like he would be good at it.

    And by the way, the only thing I ever liked about his blog was his “View From My Window” series which of course just involved pictures, not words.

  60. 60.

    sherparick

    Because it is sometimes forgotten:

    1. Rupert Murdoch owns Fox Noise and all other sorts of media manifestations. One thing to notice on Fox is that although from time to time a guest will say something negative about China, and frequently Obama will be criticized for for being vaguely weak on China and military spending relative to China, the big guys, O’Reilly, Hannity, etc. never criticize China’s government, including its atrocious human rights record. Rupert has big interests in China.

    2. NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC were owned by GE and are now owned by COMCAST. One should read Bob Somerby’s book and his archives at the Daily Howler about how Chris Matthews and assorted others at MSNBC went on a jihad, first against Clinton over the Lewinsky affair, and then against Al Gore in the 199-2000 period where the truth did not matter much, but Jack Welch’s agenda of tax cuts and job shifting to China did.

    3. ABC is owned by Disney and CBS is part huge comglomerate, orginally known as Viacom, and includes Westinghouse Electric.

    4. PBS is extremely dependent on corporate sponsors, Exxon-Mobil being the prime example.

    5. The rag known as WaPo is now chiefly the publicity arm of the Kaplan Inc, the chief testing and educational comglomerate of our time.

    6. Bloomberg, the name speaks for itself.

    This is one of real jokes that mainstream media is “liberal,” when it reflects conservative elite economic values, and which non-conventional economics. It also means that so called liberals like Ruth Marcus are their chiefly to tell others to keep to their place and understand why they need to make the sacrifices so their betters can pay less taxes. Hence she goes on on the flippant remark an 18 year old makes to friends rather than see something odd about a Governor’s office using the full panoply of its office to seek punishiment for the girl. The proles need to know their place and respect authority. Also, Dana Milbank venting his own personal spleen at Barney Frank for giving his friend, Savannah Guthrie, a tough interview.

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