Monday, March 19, 2012

Free Speech in a Time of Choler


For those who doubt that the modern left is turning into what Orwell warned us against...
Angelo Carusone, who started both the Stop Beck and Stop Limbaugh campaigns and who now works at Media Matters, prefers to call his efforts “education.” (Politico – Left’s War on Rush)
Meanwhile, people who are supposed to be taken seriously because they are senators shovel BS like this...
"Rush Limbaugh's comments were just nasty and directed at a particular young woman who had a particular point of view and was expressing herself. Bill Maher's a comedian. It's much different," said Schumer. "Rush Limbaugh has tremendous weight in the Republican Party and no one will rebut him. Bill Maher's a comedian who's on at eleven o'clock at night, but has very little influence on what's happening here." (NY Mag)
Breitbarting the Left

Oh, OK. If you label your misogyny as comedy, and you’re on late at night and you don’t have what someone subjectively considers “much influence,” it’s OK.

 Rolling along unquestioned and answerable to no one breeds this brand of arrogance and stupidity on the left, but Breitbart jammed a stick in the spokes, and the liberals with skinned knees are crying to mommy.

The Breitbartian pushback tactics are working...

Obama Henchman Cancels Bill Maher Appearance
David Axelrod will not be appearing as a guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” despite reports last week that he was scheduled to do the show in the next few weeks. (Politico)
Liberal Pigmouth Withdraws from Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association annual dinner
A couple of years ago, “comedian” Louis CK “joked” on the Opie and Anthony radio show about Palin coming to the Republican convention “holding a baby that just came out of her f-ing, disgusting [C-word], her f-ing retard-making [C-word].”
Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren posted a blog using similar language calling for a boycott of the Association’s dinner. Susteren wrote in her blog: “Another pig….and a media association has hired the pig, Louis C.K., to be their headliner for the big media dinner? Really? I am not going. I refuse to go. Everyone in the media should join me in this boycott.”

Following Van Susteren's criticism, Louis C.K. has withdrawn from the Association's dinner. (Newsbusters)
John Nolte over at Breitbart laments the flame wars and wishes it would all end, while reminding us that it was the liberals who started it, and they are now being burned by the flames they fanned.

We don’t want to shut people up, we just want to confront the liberal manufactured outrage BS machine with their own medicine.  Everybody on all sides needs to drop the bs. We all make mistakes, we all say stupid things in our lives, and no one is immune from criticism.

Maher Defends Limbaugh

In a strange twist, while we on the right use Bill Maher's crude misogynist vulgarity as a bludgeon against the left, Maher was defending Rush Limbaugh.
He also defended his earlier Twitter defense of Limbaugh, saying that Limbaugh had apologized and so the left looks bad for not accepting. “I said I don’t like it that people are made to disappear when they say something you – or people try to make them disappear – when they say something you don’t like. That’s America. Sometimes you’re made to feel uncomfortable, okay?” (Politico)
He argued that “the word they are upset about” was not said on HBO, but during his stand-up comedy act, “which I consider the last bastion of free speech.” (Politico)
And that is what this is really all about. Free Speech. Bill Maher is right. You speak freely and take the consequences. Noisy pre-fab offense-taking and the boycotts they spawn pollute the environment even worse.

The left could learn something from Maher. At least he takes a defensible and logically consistent position

Politico – Left’s War on Rush
Politico – “They Thought I was Finished”