I know it’s not Thanksgiving, but this video just made me think that maybe our Puritan forebears could be reshaped into a more modern image.
(Episode CCXC: Might as well give up.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
My kids liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, both book and movie, but I think they liked the book better.
There was another kids movie written by Roald Dahl, though, that freaked them out when they were young: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (the book wasn’t by Dahl, but the movie was, and the specific character that gave them terrors was Dahl’s creation). I couldn’t let them watch it in the evening or they wouldn’t get any sleep.
Can anyone guess who scared them crapless?
I didn’t like either of the Willy Wonka movies either (though it’s years since I’ve seen either, and I don’t think I ever saw the Gene Wilder one all the way through).
I did enjoy the book when I was a child, though. I liked Roald Dahl in general (The Witches, The Twits*, Esio Trot and so forth).
(*Though I credit The Twits with making me unable to eat spaghetti to this day.)
The Child-Catcher!
After reading The Twits, my kids made fun of my beard.
The Child Catcher is the part of the movie that gets worse as you get older
Yeah, I don’t know what it was, but the child-catcher really had the kids covering their eyes and squeaking. Every time. I only saw it as an adult so something about it just sailed right past me.
I remember reading The Twits, I think. Isn’t that a story about an old asshole guy and an old asshole woman being horrible assholes to each other?
Midnight Rambler:
This, holy shit, this. It looked off-putting and I picked up on that as a kid. Poor fucking choices were made.
kristinc:
What the fuck? Seriously?
That’s just fucking disturbing.
I quite liked Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but it wasn’t my favourite in that genre.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks, on the other hand, is probably my favourite children’s film of all time.
Y’know, I really should watch the Johnny Depp version. I have the DVD but haven’t watched it yet.
And the only part of the Gene Wilder version I really can’t stand is the ‘tunnel of horrors’ segment. When I was a toddler, I apparently recorded over that part of the VHS tape. Seriously.
####
Sailor:
Throwing candy works pretty well in the classroom but is difficult in the lab, as it’s larger. I’d need a slingshot to reach the back row.
Happy Martin Luther King Day from the mormons:
LDS “Apostle” Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, pp. 108-109, 1966
I saw that, Weed Monkey. It left me at a loss for words.
Also, Liam is an empathy-deficient shitbag. Ever notice that when a woman reveals to one of these types that she had been raped, there’s never even a hint of acknowledgment and sympathy? It’s all about winning the argument for them. Of course, I can’t imagine that think of women as deserving of their empathy anyway.
Benjamin: Yeah well, they decapitate a chicken in the background in that scene.
Obviously, I have no problem with killing animals for food… but to make a scene in a movie? Unacceptable.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, but he would be treating her differently if he were to acknowledge that there is anything about her life and experiences that is different from his, and that would be sexist and wrong. Therefore the only way to treat women equally is to ignore anything they say or anything that has happened to them that does not directly correlate with whatever experiences he has had in his own life. QED.
I enjoyed the Depp movie because I really enjoy quirky and oddball characters, so that’s the main thing I like about the book and Depp brings it really well. (The scene with the singing animatronics is my favorite.)
Oh Audley, the history of genuinely traumatizing actors is long, rich and fucking fucked up as shit. It’s a strange coincidence how it mostly only ever happens to female and child actors! I don’t watch Hitchcock films anymore since I learned how prone he was to abusing his female leads. I don’t like the thought that I’m watching not acting but literal film of women being terrified.
Shirley Temple was pretty much kicked around like a tin can, emotionally, to make her do all those adorable crying scenes. There’s a memoir of a former child actor titled Please Don’t Shoot My Dog; one guess where that title came from. The TVTropes entry on “Method Acting” has enough examples to make you sleepless for days. And it’s not all from ye olden days of Shirley temple and Hitchcock: there is a horrifying story about Wes Craven and Drew Barrymore in the making of Scream.
I remember two movie scenes that I saw as a kid that made me recoil in my chair in disgust and horror: Wrath of Khan when they implanted the eel in Chekov’s ear (when my mother saw how afraid I was she ordered me to bed immediately), and realizing Landon was lobotomised in Planet of the Apes (and this one I watched to the end behind the sofa).
Richard Carrier also did a post on Crommunist’s post. It’s good to see this getting around – but Carrier also had a fail moment at the beginning.
*back to the kittehs*
Coat colour is only partially genetic. The overall colour is, but much of the detail is to do with development in the uterus – cloned cats usually have different body markings. Temperature is one factor, which is how you get the various “points” – feet, ears, tail, muzzle coloured differently.
I didn’t really like the Depp version.
I like Tim Burton, I really do, but Tim Burton only ever makes Tim Burton movies. So you can bet I’ll be excited when Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian or The Nightmare AFTER Christmas comes out, but when Tim Burton touches someone else’s work, it just seems to turn into another Tim Burton movie. And usually seems to star Johnny Depp, and maybe some Helena Bonham Carter.
Carlie: Pretty much. “Equality” = everybody is treated as though they are and have always been straight white cis men, because that’s the default experience.
The Sailor:
Ah. I understand. Sort of. When my mind goes off on its own and free-associates the fuck out of things, I get bewildered, sit back, and enjoy the ride. When someone else’s goes off and starts free-associating I just get confused.
Chitty, Chitty, Bang Bang never scared me. Willy Wonka didn’t either. The fucking flying furry monkeys in The Wizard of Oz would give me four months of nightmares every time the movie was on TV.
Looking back, the flying monkeymares were much easier to deal with than the ones I still have from you-know-what.
G’night, all. To bed, perchance to not dream.
My mind boggled when I saw this: I Usually Hate Wes Anderson Movies…
How could anyone hate Wes Anderson movies?!eleventeen!!
To each their own, I guess.
*mumble grumble*
The flying monkeys on the Wizard of Oz scared the crap out of me as a child.
This is true. I think Charlie And The Chocolate Factory would be brilliant in the hands of, say, those Beeb folks who do Doctor Who. Willy Wonka reminds me a bit of the Doctor.
I am Augustus Gloop.
I’m still kinda irritated Burton cast Depp and Carter for Sweeney Todd. Neither has the pipes to carry Sondheim.
Yes, but it’s a Burton film, not a Sondheim performance. He casts for look first and everything else second.
… which is why I much prefer the Hearn/Lansbury televised version from 1982.
I don’t get what Burton’s whole fixation with Depp and Carter is. Did he sign some exclusive contract? Or is he really convinced that Depp and Carter have some kind of ‘chemistry’ onscreen? Because I’m pretty sure they don’t. I can’t think of a single memorable scene in any movie I’ve watched where Depp and Carter share the screen.
I don’t wanna sound like a hipster, but Burton seemed so much better in the 90s. Back when he still made fun, quirky little movies, blending the macabre and heartwarming in a genuinely likable way. (Would anyone think I’m weird if I said I find Sally from NBC kinda attractive? Oops, too late!)
It’s almost like he’s degenerated into a sort of self parody. He puts gothy stuff in his movies because he’s Tim Burton, and that’s what Tim Burton does, not necessarily because it makes artistic sense. And so whenever I hear Tim Burton is making a new movie, I already know it’s going to be mostly in shades of black and white, with maybe a bit of red or other colors thrown in. I know that everyone will likely have pale skin and heavy bags around their eyes, because Burton just can’t get enough of that “I haven’t slept for two weeks!” look. The better to connect with the mall-goth Hot Topic crowd he tries to cater to, I suppose.
There might also be a zombie/ghost/somehow undead dog thrown in there somewhere too, though this isn’t as constant a Tim Burton trope as the others.
Musicals
♬
Let’s cut their throats
trala ♪
Chop them up
trala ♬
And make them into pies!
♫
Oh, dear. An actor yelled at a child.
Fetch me my smelling salts. /fans self, collapses on chaise longue
Benjamin “Butterball” Geiger wrote:
Indeed, though the fact they cut out some of the good songs also diminished it. I saw the film and thought it okay but not great; several years later I saw a stage production and was blown away – to the point where I now consider it one of my favourite shows.
Today, I suppose the kid who played Charlie would be treated for PTSD. I mean, goodness, an adult yelling at a poor ickle child, so atrocious, surely Gene Wilder should have done prison time for such a horrible act.
/eyeroll
The only song I skip consistently in the Hearn/Lansbury version is “Green Finch and Linnet Bird”. It’s genuinely painful to listen to. Of course, three of my four favorite songs all come in a row: Pretty Women, Epiphany, and A Little Priest. (The other is Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir.)
It was the tornado that got to me. That shit was real. As a toddler, I had seen the funnel in the sky in North Dakota. I still had dreams years after moving to Oregon, where twisters mostly don’t happen.
In one dream, there was a tornado coming, and we went to hide in the basement. Basement was not actually underground. Big help, right? My dad had a leather strap; he was going to hold on to one end, and I was going to hold on to the other. Somehow, that didn’t comfort me.
I seem to recall Tippi Hedren had some problems resulting from her appearance in The Birds.
It’s probably because the one time Burton tried to do something somewhat different, Ed Wood, it flopped.
Bleagh… surfing language pages on Wikipedia, I learned about Toki Pona, a made-up language of extremely restricted sounds and meanings whose creator gushes about how it can help you live “the simple life.”
To quote Happiestsadist, “Tooth-rottingly twee. It sounds like how some magical species talks in a particularly condescending YA fantasy novel.” It’s also a great illustration of how some of the world’s worst pretension is not ornate but rather unadorned. I’m not one for florid Victorian literature, but give me that any day over Toki-Pona.
Rey Fox: Ed Wood may not have done well at the box office, but it was a terrific movie. Martin Landau earned his Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi.
Daisy Cutter, to hire a child to do an acting job and then to deliberately surprise him by having an adult scream angrily at him so that he cries is a fucking jerk move. I honestly can’t believe there’s a reasonable person in the world who wouldn’t think so.
And fuck you very much from the bottom of my heart, also, for the obnoxious swipe at PTSD. Love, someone whose life has been fucked the fuck up by PTSD for years.
Kristin, I’ve got PTSD myself, but thanks for presuming you’re the only one who can speak authoritatively on it. Kisses!!!
In conclusion, I wish every sorrow and hardship on you and your passive-aggressive ableist ass.
BTW, I come from a family of yellers. The Wilder incident aside, let’s just say I bristle pretty hard at the implication that yelling is per se abusive. I find it to be classist as fuck… not to mention the mindset of an awful lot of feckless yuppie parents who’d rather stand around and drone, “Hunter-Green, Sierra-Nevada, please stop that or I will say ‘Stop that’ a hundredth time” as their brats tear up the coffee shop.
I’m having trouble with this Toki Pona website. There don’t appear to be any insults or curse words.
What the fuck good is a language if I can’t tell someone to go eat some shit with it? Useless. Absolutely useless.
BTW, in re “ableism”: You know jack and shit about my medical history, not that I’m eager to tell you about it. Let’s just say that I cast a really bleak eye on people who throw that word around, given that some folks apply it to terms like “stupid” and “weak” and, in the labor sense, “scab.”
TLC
Years (years!) ago National Lampoon had an article about swearing in Esperanto and they had the same problem.
They had to make do with stuff like “You are 10 pounds of dung in a 5-pound bag.”
kristinc didn’t say that yelling was per se abusive. She said:
Yelling at a child to stop hir hurting hirself or others is one thing. Yelling at a child in order to make that child cry for the benefit of a movie camera is quite another. The latter is quite clearly exploitative and emotionally abusive.
Walton: Yeah, you’re right.
Kristin, I apologize. I have a sore spot about this. Let’s just say the issue of what does and does not constitute child abuse pushes some buttons for me, probably in the opposite direction that it pushes your buttons. And I’ll leave it at that, because it’s getting late and I’m not going to explain myself terribly well.
Chigau: Yeah, I’m imagining Toki Pona insults sound like something Koko would come up with… “Stink bad toilet” type stuff.
I’m looking up their words and phrases and trying to imagine someone speaking this stuff out loud. I dunno about the rest of you, but it sounds absolutely ridiculous when I try it… like something you’d see on Family Guy.
I read the other day that what really scared convicted murderers in England 2-300 years ago was the fact that their bodies were given to universities for dissection by anatomists and students after their death.
Daisy Cutter, I apologize too for probably being overly hostile right out the door, especially since you’re a regular and I know you’re usually a good sort. (My excuse: dental surgery. One would think Vicodin would make me nice and mellow but apparently not?)
I’m a yeller too, btw. I’m always yelling at my kids. (My kids yell back a lot of the time). But it breaks my heart to think of them being screamed at out of the blue by someone with whom they don’t have the context and history that they do with me. And when someone yells at a child actor to make them cry, they’re explicitly recognizing that that makes it cruel, and on some level, traumatizing, and that the child could not genuinely act upset enough to satisfy them. That shit is just fucked up, end of.
If I’m watching a fictional movie instead of a documentary, it’s because I want to watch actors acting, not film of people being genuinely upset or terrified.
RE: Helena Bonham Carter:
You all do realize that she and Tim Burton are a couple, right? (Or were at the time of Sweeney Todd.)
Ms Daisy Cutter,
You think yelling at a child to get an emotional reaction is something to mock? Jesus Christ, grow a fucking compassion gland. We’re not talking for parenting for shit’s sake, we’re talking about the emotional manipulation of a kid to make money.
But you just go ahead being the edgy badass that you are, it’s totes endearing.
And because I’m slow, I missed the apology. My bad.
I still think that the entire fucking thing is horrifying and not to be mocked or condoned.
I’m not defending the practice, but I can see why directors might do it. Without insulting the intelligence of children, I’ll just say it’s probably REALLY hard to get kids to show any emotion that isn’t ‘genuine’.
And when a little kid in a movie is meant to be cute but comes off as annoying, it’s REALLY annoying. I hate it when you can just tell there’s someone off camera giving the kid various cues and the kid is obviously ‘reacting’.
I think this might be where CGI ends up shining. Usually I come down hard on CGI, but I applaud it’s use in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It’s a movie that goes into how we exploit great apes for research and entertainment, so I’m glad no (nonhuman) great apes were exploited in it.
Incidentally, this got me thinking of one of my favorite Child performances: Newt from Aliens. I found her endearing and likeable years before I was old enough to have the ‘aw, cute kid’ reaction. I like the scene where she’s sitting at the table with all the space marines wearing one of their helmets. Whatever they did to get her to act, it worked.
Yes! I saw the promo clip on The Daily Show or something, and was absolutely gobsmacked to hear it was CGI. Of course it was Andy Sirkis (who is objectively awesome) doing the motion capture, so.
SNOW! It’s snowing! At last!
Supposed to be a wintry mix, including ice, from tonight to tomorrow night. *secretly hopes this means one more day off work*
——————————————
Stupid D Major chord will. not. cooperate. It’s either buzzy, or completely jumbled. Never thought one chord would give me so much trouble.
—————————————–
I didn’t know Gene Wilder screaming at Peter Ostrum was an unexpected act. That’s just warped, and ranks right up there with firing a real gun near an actress just to get the right reaction, or causing back injuries for the sake of the right “in pain” shot. Makes me wonder if Haley Joel Osment ever had to endure lots of abuse on set.
I hated Depp before it was cool.
No, seriously.
What the fuck does that guy have going except for cheekbones?
Also, I especially hate the exploitation and emotional abuse of actors because as I said, it’s usually women and children getting the short end of that stick, and it’s usually men who end up getting lauded as “great directors” or some shit on the other end. (Stanley Kubrick with The Shining, frex.)
Well, fuck that. It’s not directing if you’re not directing actors. It’s just abusing people, filming it and making your career on it.
Carter = token crazy chick. Not too bad a gig though, I’d take it with relish if my life had worked out somewhat better.
PTI: It’s snowing here too! (I can’t remember if you mentioned your location, but I’m guessing you’re somewhere in the Northeast? I’m in Cambridge, MA, of course.)
It’s been intensely cold here the last few days. So cold that it was actually painful to be outdoors yesterday. (And, being from England, one would think I’d be used to cold weather. Even so, it’s damned cold.)
Nah, kristinc, that’s only if you count kids in hot-tubs you gave some pills to.
Or guns if you’re in the music business.
There, I fixed it for you so that it reflects most workplaces.
Children “act” all the time.
They are “performing” constantly while they learn how to fit into society.
—
An actual child actor will probably be required to have exactly the same reaction over and over and over until the director is satisfied. The kid will get bored and cranky. And the director will throw a snake at the kid.
And the stage-
motherparent will tell the meal-ticket to stop crying.Snowing like crazy here. Ex and I took the baby out to play in it. She loved her first sleigh ride, and I was pretty OK with being a malamute.
This is BC though, and I try not to get TOO excited about the snow. 9 times out of 10, it turns to rain by the end of the day. But this shows signs of sticking around for a little while at least- no drippy noises outside.
I love fresh snow, but hate it as soon as it starts getting wet and slushy.
Awww…. that’s not how it works. So I didn’t fix it. Poo crackers.
I guess it’s strike then.
Snow? Wow. It’s… kind of chilly here. Maybe.
Walton: I live in CT, same as Bill Dauphin. I thought we’d never see snow this winter, it’s been so mild up until the past few days.
I need to figure out if shutting down conversations and getting people to leave hastily has some profit in it somewhere, because damn do I have talent!
It doesn’t count as cold until -15°C.
-20°C if you are Brownian.
It’s cold enough that my chickens, who usually disdain the inside of the chicken coop and sleep in front of it, haven’t come out of their coop all day long.
Well, let the record state that I’m not hastily leaving (or at least not hastily leaving because of you, Algernon, or anyone else for that matter). I’m off to pop another powerful narcotic, eat some homemade pudding and watch Doctor Who before I conk out again.
The only thing that scared me more was this.
But thanks, PZ, for this memory.
Hey, howzit goin way downthread? Hard to load the page much?
It is a fairweather commenter, the Great American Satan. Three things, relevant to myself (I know, you weren’t curious):
http://christophocles.com/Personal2D/Personal2D.htm
That’s my old crappy website, including drawings from over ten years ago…
http://www.borfy.com/Kingfisher/Pages/09-30-11.html
That’s an example of my more recent art. I’ve really been into doing cool things with shitty office supplies lately.
http://www.borfy.com/Kingfisher/Pages/BonusLostCharacters.htm
That’s some recent artwork that’s a bit more clean and cartoony.
I give you these links to show my chops, because I want to put up my sandwich board for a minute and solicit some freelance small art jobs. I need to raise a few bucks to connect the dots on the bills after the holidays. Want a quick avatar image for forums or anything else small and cheap? e-mail me, I’ll bust it out quick.
BTW, I don’t know if this kind of prostitution is off limits in the endless thread, but if it is, I promise to never do it again if mods will just delete this comment and not ban me. I’d appreciate the ability to one day again troll in accepted ways.
Have a nice day, people.
-great.american.satan ^at^ gmail }dot{ com
SC: Do you figure that if Pinocchio had been allowed to complete his transformation, he would have turned into a marionette donkey with jointed wooden legs and stuff? Or would he have actually become a flesh and blood donkey?
These are the things that keep me awake at night.
That, and what the hell are those things helping the guy load up donkeys supposed to be? Someone please tell me those aren’t yet another of Disney’s attempts to portray black people?
TLC
A song for you, from the time of my youth
it’s kinda country but listen to the whole thing.
Off-topic: A BBC interview with the Queen of Denmark, in honour of the fortieth anniversary of her accession to the throne.
Chigau: That was a good’un… I might have to try memorizing it.
“Country” gets an unfair rep sometimes. I like good old country farmboy music. I love the fiddles and steel guitars and all that. I just hate what most country music seems to be about these days… most of it seems to have a religious bent, and if not a religious bent, an extremely republican-sounding hook.
I’m tired of condescending stupid people.
@ great1american1satan
I suggest you rather put your link in your nym. (For examples, click on commentors with blue nyms.)
Lost my gorram keys.
Seriously, I have no idea where they are. I know they made it as far as my front door, since I was able to come inside yesterday, but beyond that…
I’ve long loved old cowboy stuff, like Tex Ritter, and other old legends like Hank Williams (SENIOR), Johnny Cash and even Merle Haggard. That stuff has a simple, stark sort of beauty, like a desert at sunset.
At some point, that got lost, and the freaking light shows and smoke bombs and Giant Stupid Hats took over.
There’s something kind of…pigfucky about country nowadays.
Benjamin Geiger
Look under the seat cushions.
That’s where mine were at the end of a two-hour search.
SC, what fringe political party are you a member of?
*raspberry*
Thank you, Walton. I will show it the same respect I have for all of your other posts about royalty.
meh
Yeah, another completely relevant question. Possibly disingenuous, but I’m guessing just another morsel of stupidity.
SC: Thanks for linking that thread. I’ve commented there.
Feralboy12: “Pigfucky.” I like that. I’m gonna steal it.
I really can’t stand the country that has religious themes to it. It’s not just that it’s religious, it’s that it tends to be that particularly stupid and simplistic country type of religion, that’s all about angels and cute innocent children and ‘good old fashioned family values’ and ‘god’s plan’ on the surface, as if absolutely nothing evil has ever come from the gawd they set such store by.
It’s kinda hard to explain exactly what I’m talking about.
I definitely see what you mean about the Giant Stupid Hats too.
The Just Another Morsel Of Stupidity Party.
I like it.
Two of my least favorite country songs, both by the same artist:
Before He Cheats
Jesus, Take The Wheel
I think we all know why the second is loathsome.
The first, though… the ‘protagonist’ of the story describes with glee the acts of vandalism she performed, with only suspicion. Nowhere is it confirmed that the ‘he’ involved is actually doing anything wrong. And this is okay?
Yeah, country music has too much religion and too much “Yay, America!” at this point. At least the stuff I hear; there’s more traditional stuff out there, but it doesn’t get airplay. I miss the days when it was all about real stuff, like drinking too much, cheating on your wife, being cheated on by your wife, and going to prison. And trains, of course.
Oh, and on the subject of stupid jokes… (at least this one isn’t homophobic):
Al and Bubba are out hunting, when Al decides to go take a leak on an old log. Suddenly, a snake jumps out and bites Al in the pecker.
Al collapses and goes into shock.
Eventually Bubba goes to check on Al and finds him lying on the ground. So, he calls 911 (yeah, even rednecks have cell phones these days).
“911, what is your emergency?”
“Yeah, I think my buddy Al is dead.”
“Okay, first we need to make sure he really is dead…”
Silence.
*BANG*
“Okay, what next?”
feralboy12:
I was drunk the day my Ma got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned ol’ train…
I see! I think you’re giving him too much credit. I’ve grown tired of “Or that gay people have the right to claim whatever they want because they are a minority?” I really want someone who’d ask such an idiotic question in that discussion to be zapped off FTB, and to have to prove they’re intelligent enough to return to posting.* In my less patient moments. Like now. I’m sure I’ll recover.
*Last Chance Comment. :)
SC, JAMOS-P
Benjamin,
Did you see my response about the security-monitor article?
I take a few days’ worth of country music now and again (mostly on long drives) and what strikes me isn’t just the yay Jesus, or the yay America… it’s all the same, very narrow worldview. Trucks, beer, outdoors, homey, girls, family. Over and over and over and over again, like nothing else in the world even exists or should exist. Now, once in a while some good narratives come out of there, and it’s not that anything’s *wrong* with appreciating home, family or fishing, but dangit… you’d think in 48 hours of this stuff there’d be an unusual viewpoint or original thought SOMEwhere.
I couldn’t find the really nauseating Jesus one, but two country songs that I actually like the message of, in spite of all the normativeness:
Trace Adkins, “Just Fishin”
Jamey Johnson, “In Color”
@ Benjamin
[Rubik cubes]
They have jumped the shark. Look up neocube on youtube. (Picture of neocube. Sorry no y.t. here.)
Theophontes @ 575-
I totally would put the link in the nym, but my personal site looks like outdated garbage and the second site isn’t mine… Besides, I’m logging in with google. Not sure how that would even work.
Plus if I say something here that has people shitting on me, I don’t want them to take it out on my partner’s site’s comments…
But thanks for the suggestion anyhow!
–
I have nanodots 2×216.
Country music tends to be frustrating. There’s anger, that’s then completely diverted. I want to scream at them, usually.
My usual country link.
My hypothesis on country is that once it was music made by disadvantaged and oppressed people, and deep emotional resonance and beauty is often in the music made by disadvantaged and oppressed people. That’s why old country can be cool as shit and often moving even when it relies on horrifying worldviews, exhibit A “Jolene”.
Country now may still be listened to by (mainly economically) disadvantaged and oppressed people but it’s made by people who have mostly never known oppression or hardship a day in their lives, yet who cling to “simple folk” in-group signifiers. That’s why it’s mostly a pile of insincere, hollow, huge-truck, big-stupid-hat, privileged-ignorance, white-bread, essentially uninteresting crap. Exhibit B, “A Country Boy Will Survive”. Please, Hank Junior, as if you’ve ever had to do any one of those things in your entire cushy entitled life?
Off for more Doctor Who.
@ feralboy
You need old school. You should check out Hank Wangford… from the old country (being England).
What do you get when you play country music backwards?
You get your dog back, you get your horse back, you get your house back, you get your wife back ….
PZ:
Yah, I remember how surprised I was when I first learned that the author of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which I read before I saw the movie) was also the creator of James Bond!
***
PTI:
Yeah, I’m happy to see the snow, finally… but I wish it’d actually been in the frackin’ forecast!
***
Benjamin:
You don’t have to call me “Darling,”
Dar-ling;
You never even call me by my name….
;^)
Smuggling, guns, Hell and the Devil.
This is mother fucking country!
@ great1american1satan
You can also sign out with your nym, using the [a href] html. Discrete, as follows:
…
theophontes
Smoking Daddy-Freakwater
Fuck This Town-Robbie Fulks
She Took A Lot Of Pills And Died-Robbie Fulks
” Exhibit B, “A Country Boy Will Survive”. ”
Speaking of…
In StarCraft 2 when Jim Raynor sung the line ‘A country boy can survive’ did anyone else park him in front of a group of enemies an watch his life bar tick down? Or am I just that petty?
I Told Her Lies-Robbie Fulks
Would you believe, Myspace? (Very local artist)
Eric Taylor – Walking Back Home
Guys:
I watched the GOTP debate this evening. The hubby and I were wondering how long it would take for Perry to step in it.
At 7:15, he called the leaders of Turkey “Islamic terrorists” and said that we should cut off all aid.
I had to check this with my military officer husband, and this is what he told me.
The government of Turkey is secular and they have been our allies for some time.
I’m so surprised that no journalist has questioned Perry’s statement yet.
I think that this is one of his more idiotic statements to date.
Being an idiot is Rick Perry’s greatest strength. It hardly matters that Turkey is not a Islamic Theocracy (That would be Saudi Arabia) that harbors terrorists. The base that he is courting believes that. He he playing to them, not members of the reality based community.
SC:
The Dixie Chicks are all kinds of awesome. I remember seeing them and thinking “oh, great: a country-music version of the Spice Girls”… but you only have to listen for a minute to know that’s not true.
I don’t know if you’d exactly call it country, but this is what I was listening to — in person in Houston — during my college years.
Cowboy Love – Reverend Horton Heat
I’m not much of a country fan myself, but do have a fondness for
Two Nice Girls – I spent my last ten dollars (on birth control and beer)
Not country at all, but this…
…made me think of this:
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Sarah Jarosz – Run Away
Hmmm Feralboy12, I just clicked on your blog and poked around a bit. I must say, I’m kinda feeling compelled to read it until I get to your first post.
That means I like it, I think. Excellent political humor.
Oh fuck, Ariaflame! There are so many acts that I have forgotten. You just reminded me of how much I like Let’s Go Bonding.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cushman/publications/Publications_files/misfortune_web_1.pdf
Still no keys. I has a worried: what if I left them in the door?
I’ve got a backup copy of my car key and my apartment key, but I don’t have a copy of my office key. And I don’t think it’s possible to get my car re-keyed (or even have the key fob recoded), so whoever has my keys has access to my car forever.
Apologies if I’ve missed anything in the interim, but I wanted to respond to this.
I disagree. If a director turns to tactics like that it’s because they’re not imaginative and patient enough. I recently listened to Kirsten Dunst explaining to Terry Gross in an interview how her acting coach directed her when she was an 11-year-old girl playing a vampire who was over a hundred years old:
I acted a bit when I was a teenager, and I recall doing a scene that was meant to convey a threat of rape against my character. I didn’t really understand that at the time, but the blocking of the scene clearly conveyed it, and I remember feeling an electric chill from the audience’s horrified reaction when we finally played it live. Children can act, it is possible to get them to express the emotions in a satisfactory way. Thinking otherwise is laziness, and if a director is of that mind, they should not work with children anyway.
Me too. Especially when they’re defending censorship.
With Mithy gone, I’m the only person around here who defends censorship.
Psssst – hey everyone! Camera Lucida’s noticed us.
(emp. add.)
only regular, that is
The only reason this isn’t me is because I don’t dream.
Re country – I prefer bluegrass, even newer stuff still has much the same sensibility, and (IMO) better playing.
Walk Out In The Rain – Traveling McCourys
The Mountain – Steve Earle & the Del McCoury Band
lm – I wasn’t referring to you.
SallyStrange: Interesting. I can’t even begin to pretend like I actually ‘know’ anything about acting or directing. But as I said, I wasn’t defending the practice, I can just understand why it would be a temptation for a director who’s only interested in making his damn movie.
Speaking of abuse and exploitation for movies, did anyone else ever hear about all those cats getting killed during the filming of Milo and Otis?
Roger Ebert on not being able to eat again — nice appreciation of food and companionship.
You’re talking about Country lyrics and musicians, not the music itself, when you get into this stuff about “worldviews” and whatever the music is supposedly expressing.* The simplicity of the music is generally what reinforces the nationalistic, provincial, lower-class, everyday themes in the lyrics — lyrics which are supposed to express things about the musician’s lives.** However, the music doesn’t rely on anything like horrifying worldviews. People expressing horrifying worldviews may or may not rely on specific kinds of music.
*It’s not just you. People do this routinely, and it bugs me to no end.
**Specifically, they’re almost exclusively about particular cultures in the U.S. — they’re American, but usually not those of Native Americans or urban Latinos, for example.
Benjamin, we were able to get new (electronic) keys to the car. You give the dealer all your remaining keys and they reprogram them or something to match with any new keys you get. If you leave a key at home, it won’t get reprogrammed and it won’t work — so any key you lost won’t work any more. Talk to your dealer. They’ve dealt with this before.
Hmm. The music twit is both stupid and careless. Or stupid, ignorant and careless. Take your pick. I guess every village has its idiot.
I know; that was rather my point. The people you were referring to are not in the habit of advocating censorship.
You know, there are a lot of things you (generic you) can do which is neither.
Surprisingly, adults yelling at kids is not inaudible for the rest of the customers. Neither does it make kids behave any better. It regularly makes kids yell back.
You can, for example, get off your ass and go over to the kid to talk to them. If they don’t react, get over and pick them up. If they throw a tantrum, pay your bill and leave.
But you wanted to have a quiet cup if coffee? Your bad, me too.
But that’s what the kid wanted all along? well, maybe it’s a bit unfair on the kid to take them shopping for three hours, where they’re not allowed to run, touch, pick up things, get out of sight ect and then, because you’re tired, expect them to sit still in a café for another hour.
Whatever you do, you’re not going to teach them that it’s wrong to invade other people’s space and act selfishly without any respect for other people’s needs by doing exactly that.
++++++
Oh, and I declare Mallorie Nasrallah to be an empathy-free asshole. If I wanted to unjustly vilify her I’d need to invent whole new categories.
What do these fucking Air Force pilots think this is, Ramstein?
They just flew their fucking big I have no idea what plane so close past our house that the windows vibrated.
I know they’re usually flying close here but that’s a bit too close.
One day one of them is going to crash with some unexpected house that has been here sind the 1960’s.
The 10-year-old in me can’t help being amused by Nasrallah’s surname. Especially since my inner 10-year-old’s interpretation fits her quite well:
“Nasrala (je)” would be past tense of the verb “nasrati”. It’s not really a proper verb, but one that in slang means, more or less, “to say a lot of (stupid) shit”.
Giliell: yup. As I say, I’m a yeller, and my house is often loud with yelling in multiple directions. My kids *do* yell back.
So what tells them that a) they’re really, noshit, in deep trouble or b) that I’m deathly serious about something? When I talk. very. quietly. That gets their attention but fast.
Mrs. KG and I are currently watching Borgen (“Castle”), which is a kind of Danish West Wing without the sickly sentimentality, and which the BBC is showing to cash in on the success of The Killing. The central character becomes Denmark’s first female Prime Minister – the series was made before last year’s general election, after which Denmark did get its first female Prime Minister, albeit from a different party than in Borgen. After she has visited the Palace during the process of coalition-forming, her 7 or 8 year-old son asks:
“Did you curtsey?”
“You have to.”
“That’s silly.”
What a grown-up attitude to royalty!
kristin
Oh, before I forget, three cheers for removed wisdom teeth.
Well, I got The Look. I don’t yell. If I shout it’s because of danger and it gets me immediate attention.
So, yes, somebody yelling at them would probably bring my kids to tears.
+++++
Witches don’t curtsey, they bow.
Grrrrrr. I hate it when people just consume, and, with regards to blogging, read but don’t comment. We’re having this rather animated, necessary and overdue discussion over here over defamation laws, the occasion being one Melinda Tankard Reist threatening to sue a blogger over the blogger stating that Reist is a Christian, as I already wrote here yesterday. So it’s kinda going on, Russell Blackford has chipped in, I wrote something in response to some silly post on Crikey, and agreed with Blackford in another post. But, no comments ! What is wrong with people ? Do they all just nod and agree with me ? How fucking boring ! Grrrrrrrr
OM NOM NOM. I found some mozzarella that was a few days past its prime in the fridge, so my breakfast is mozzarella with olives, red onions, garlic and a dash of lemon juice and olive oil. This stuff is delicious.
I know, I know, we usually don’t feed into this “math is a mystery” crap over here, but this one made me smile:
“Dear math, I’m not a psychiartrist. Go solve your problems yourself.”
Serotonin Transporter Genotype (5-HTTLPR) Predicts Utilitarian Moral Judgments
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025148
“LL genotype participants rated perpetrating unintentional harm as more acceptable than did SL genotype participants or SS genotype participants. No group differences in moral judgments were observed in response to scenarios featuring intentional harm.”
And to top it all off, now I’ve run out of Nikita episodes to watch, the next one isn’t due for screening until Feb 3 ! Crisis !
(That wasn’t very clear, so, examples.
Unintentional harm: throwing the switch in the trolley problem. Intentional harm: pushing someone in the footbridge variant of the trolley problem.)
Another one!
@ LM ॐ
Well, I am against hate speech and therefore, by implication, I defend censorship.
(verbally) incontinent maybe, irregular never.)
My office is about 3-4 miles in the take of flight pattern from Charleston AFB. We are the home of a large group of the gigantic fucking C-17s and a number of fighters. My office shakes all god damn day. I can’t imaging living nearby. I’d go batshit.
I watched the Repub debate last night.
Uh wow.
What a clown show. It really drives home a few things for me:
I hate to say it, and I don’t agree with him on pretty much anything, but Santorum sounds the most intelligent or at least the most prepared of all of them. Ron Paul and Rick Perry are giant fucking bozos, Gingrich is a bitter angry motherfucker and nailing Romney down on anything is impossible.
But over all what i can away with was what a depressing thing it must be to be a Republican watching this group of clowns and realizing this is all you’ve got.
TLC and Feralboy: I agree with you entirely about country. Hell, I don’t even mind gospel bluegrass or old-time music, to be honest. I don’t buy the message, obviously, but the lyrics seemed mostly to be concerned with the narrator’s struggle to be a good person, or longing for heaven because poverty, the deaths of loved ones, etc. made life extremely hard. Laden with nonsense, but not aggressively pushed onto other people.
I can’t stand Nashville pop, and I really can’t stand the Toby Keith/Hank Jr. school of lyricism. Country, like its cousins the blues and (yep) traditional Celtic music, originally came from people who lived hard lives, as Kristin says. Most of them weren’t able to escape via education. Big difference from suburban assholes in giant hats spouting crap that’s halfway between a Hallmark card and Rush Limbaugh.
I think Dale Watson says it best… that said, if you want “the real thing” these days, the best genres to look for it in are alt.country and bluegrass.
Janine: MUCH love for the Robbie Fulks links. He’s one of those artists whose considerable assholery (e.g., the incredibly skeevy “White Man’s Bourbon”) I’m willing to overlook because of the music. I wouldn’t want to hang out with him, though.
Giliell: Point. If the parent yells at the same volume/tone constantly, it’s eventually going to be tuned out. And, yeah, even my dad, the main yeller in the house, tended to get quieter and colder when we had done something really wrong (e.g., theft).
Rev:
Depends on the Republican. Everybody in the clown car has his fans. (Or her fans, if you want to include the ones who’ve dropped out.))
And I gaurandamntee you that 75% of the likely GOP primary voters nodded so hard they spilled their Coors Light.
What is it with evangelicals and conservatives that they are unable to spell the name of our
Lord and Masterhost correctly? Don’t they know it is spelled MySATANers? Or is it a software problem on fundervative computers?And they debated each other last night.
When I lived in Death Valley in the late 1960s and early 70s, Navy pilots from the gunnery range over in Nevada would routinely come up (or down) the valley at better than Mach 1. Why? It is one of the few places in the US where you can break the sound barrier below sea level. One of my dad’s battles was convincing the Navy that yes, their pilots were doing this (he assigned a seasonal park ranger with a really good camera and telephoto lense to take pictures of them) and that they should stop. At one point, he invited the Army’s Opfor unit to set up a Soviet surface-to-air anti-aircraft artillery radar system.
You are far, far, far braver than I.
For about 3 out of 4 likely GOP primary voters, these guys are the cream of the crop. This is what they actually want and, even worse, they think that these assholes will actually solve the problems created over the last 30 years of supply-side insanity. They are a feature, not a bug!
theophontes, I thought about you after I posted. And then I remembered David Marjanović’s occasional advocacy of Austria’s anti-Nazi laws had been persuasive to me years ago. So yeah. I don’t immediately remember hate speech laws, since we have none here.
Yeah I guess but I’m thinking the more middle of the road republicans which aren’t the rabid assholes who love Perry or Santroum or Bachmann or the out there ones who love Paul (and yes these republicans do exist despite what many think). The ones who realize their party haws been hijacked by the extreme wing and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it right now. It the ones who are going to be forced to stomach Romney because there isn’t anyone worth a shit up there but he appears to be the least “out there” compared to the to the other jokers sharing the stage.
It’s got to be depressing.
I’ll bet it feels like voting for John Kerry.
Can someone explain this Santorum thing to me ? The most eminent evangelical nutcases in the country came together on some ranch, and voted to endorse a Catholic ? How exactly does that work ?
Rev:
I know. I really do feel sorry for the moderate Republicans. And the sad part? They will most likely hold their nose and vote for whoever the GOP tosses up there (even if they nominated Anus the Wonder Dog, most of them would vote GOP).
I really do think that a GOP split is possible this year. There are huge numbers of social conservatives who see Romney as an evil cultist. I would not be averse to putting money on a third party run by Santorum (depending on the odds given, that is).
I’m not necessarily sure that is the truth. From the various people I’ve spoken to and the interviews I’ve seen (plural of anecdotes is not data and all that) it appears to be more of a choose the least bad candidate and maybe choose the one who has the best chance to beat Obmama. Not I’m choosing X because I think he’s great.
Sure each candidate has his core group of supporters (Paul for example) but over all I get the impression that most voters are picking from a cadre of meh.
yep
I think they are willing to overlook the whole “Whore of Babylon” thing in return for homophobia, misogyny, theocracy, and racism.
sigh
Obama not Obmama
rorschach: Perry’s a complete failure, so they have to pick either a Catholic or a Mormon. Catholics are closer cousins.
Rev:
The interviews, I agree. There is a disconnect. The conservatives that I know are rabid about Santorum, Paul, and Perry and are scared shitless about Romney — he’s not fascist enough for them.
ding ding ding
@ LM
No worries. Yes, I am the subversive tardigrade advocating hate speech laws for the ‘Merkins.
I do seriously think it will help you people. I wouldn’t get to hung up on the free-speech fixation. It is massively overrated (and can be very hurtful and counterproductive) and readily abused by the most socially blind, priviledged libertarians.(Is bigotry a real option in public debate… WTFF?)
(General comment on this topic…. I think you get it.)
Wait. Wasn’t the choice at that summit between Santorum and Gingrich ?
theophontes, perhaps you misunderestimate the degree to which “I can say whatever the fuck I want” is a sacred value here.
The USA will not adopt hate speech laws as long as white people constitute a majority of voters, which is to say, at least 2060. Likely not even then, but certainly not before then.
Gingrich is also a Catholic.
He is ? I see…Those evangelicals must have gone to that summit with their anuses tightly squeezed shut already, then…Interesting.
Hm. Still too early. In the realm of possibility, it must be at least [end of white majority] + 18 years. More plausibly, add another 15 years for the youngest voters to become reliable voters.
2080? 2085?
I won’t live to see it.
“The enemy of mine enemy is my friend.” See also: David Duke writing for Arab News; Muslim and Jewish fundies in Jerusalem protesting against pride parades; etc.
Comment #666
Coincidence?
I think not.
@ LM
I try, I try, I try. I do not think I have the mental wherewithal to even understand this. (Obviously I could never become a ‘Merkin. I would die of anger and frustration.)
I don’t think anyone was defending censorship. I certainly wasn’t. Indeed, I said on that thread “Does that mean that liberals and progressives shouldn’t criticize Islamic fundamentalism? Of course it doesn’t. But it’s important to be careful and nuanced, and to avoid stigmatizing and stereotyping Muslims.”
I am in favour of criticizing Islam, when it’s warranted. I am also a free-speech absolutist; I am not in favour of censorship of any kind, in almost any circumstances.
I am, however, in favour of being careful in one’s criticisms – not to avoid offence, but to avoid stigmatizing and stereotyping an already-oppressed group. Sam Harris, for instance, fails to do this, and his blanket attacks on Islam play right into the hands of the xenophobic far right. To take a more egregious example, Pat Condell is a xenophobic asshole who, sadly, was highly-regarded by many atheists until he revealed himself as a supporter of the nationalist party UKIP. Criticizing Islam is fine, but it’s important to recognize the relationship in our society between Islamophobia and racism, and to avoid inadvertently promoting the latter. The far right uses rhetoric against Muslims and Islam as a cover for its racist anti-immigrant agenda, and I am very worried about inadvertently giving them any more ammunition.
I, on the other hand, am opposed to the outlawing of hate speech on both moral and practical grounds. Morally, I am opposed to silencing words with physical force, and I find it chilling to allow the state to police what we may and may not say. I did not agree to surrender my liberty to say what I please and write what I please, and I refuse to accept any state’s right to take that liberty away from me on any ground. And if I demand that liberty for myself, as I do, I must also accept it for others; as much as I’d love to see the Daily Mail stop publishing, I do not want to live in a society where the state gets to decide what is published and what is not. A state that could shut down the Daily Mail could equally-easily silence me.
But let’s leave those moral considerations aside for a minute. In more practical terms, I do not trust any legislature or court to determine what is and is not “hate speech”, given that it’s an extremely vague and contestable term, and no one has ever succeeded in coming up with a satisfactory definition. On the one hand, an over-broad definition would risk silencing legitimate comment on controversial topics; plenty of Catholics would have characterized Crackergate as “hate speech”, for instance, and said as much. Of course, most European countries’ hate speech laws are not so broad as this. But, conversely, I do not believe that the hate speech laws which are in place can be said to be remotely effective in silencing the racist far right. Nick Griffin has been tried twice, convicted once and acquitted once, and it has done nothing to silence him; if anything, it increased his support, drew added media attention to him, and allowed him to portray himself as a martyr. So, too, I don’t think Geert Wilders’ trial and acquittal did him any harm politically. Jean-Marie Le Pen was convicted and fined for Holocaust-denial in 1999; it didn’t stop him finishing second in the 2002 French presidential election. And so forth.
Prosecutions for hate speech, then, do nothing to silence the far right; if anything, they give it more attention and the opportunity to paint itself as persecuted by a “liberal élite”. Of course this could be avoided if much more extreme hate speech laws were put in place – giving the state power to ban far-right political parties and jail their leaders, for instance – but if that happened, we would no longer have any pretence of having any kind of democratic or liberal state; and giving the state this power would, ultimately, allow it to be used to silence political dissent entirely.
Keep in mind that a hate speech law would probably need a constitutional amendment to make it “stick”, and this event would necessitate rewriting the First Amendment, which almost no one is comfortable with the idea of, even if they’re comfortable with hate speech laws.
Rewriting the First Amendment, then, will mean a prolonged period of reinterpreting the First Amendment, which no faction will be comfortable initiating unless they’re confident they can hold a majority on the Supreme Court for the next 30 years.
The only plausible loophole I can see would be a treaty, if the USA entered into some kind of supranation.
So, yeah, it’s just not going to happen during this republic.
And, theophontes, I’m constantly bemused by how much trust you’re willing to place in legislatures, courts and police forces to tell us how to behave – both in the case of hate speech laws and in the case of the burqa ban – and to back up its prescriptions with force. I’m curious as to why you trust the state and its officials so much. (Perhaps I’ve spent too many years studying the legal system to have any faith in the wisdom of people in power.)
@ rorschach
Mmmmh. Is there any way to cause internecine strife amongst the GOP sects? They must be just itching to have at each other…
You asserted this previously and I’m wondering what your evidence is. Having more media attention and being able to call himself a martyr, I will grant, but this does not automatically translate into gaining supporters.
Clarification: no hate speech laws I’m aware of in Europe are actually censorship in the strict sense, because that implies having to submit material to the censor prior to publication. Rather, you can be tried and if convicted, punished, for something you have published.
Well, obviously correlation is not causation, but the BNP gained two seats in the European Parliament for the first time in the 2009 elections; at the very least, Nick Griffin having been tried for (and acquitted of) racial hatred charges in 2006 doesn’t seem to have harmed the party’s popularity all that much. (By contrast, after that date, party infighting seems to have caused them to fall apart somewhat; they performed much less strongly in the 2010 general election.)
Whether or not it led to a measurable increase in support (which is hard to tell), anecdotally, I can certainly attest that the 2006 trial drew a great deal of media attention and provided the BNP with a perfect PR opportunity to paint themselves as persecuted martyrs. I actually think that’s very dangerous, and makes things worse.
Sure, but this is what the US courts refer to as a “chilling effect”. It’s not as extreme as prior-restraint censorship, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a constraint on freedom of speech.
Walton, you call yourself a free-speech absolutist, but I very much doubt you are. I would hope you do not support the right of people to spread falsehoods about others either knowingly or through a reckless disregard for fact-checking. I would also hope you do not support the right to act in a manner which is likely to endanger life, the classic shouting “fire” in a crowded cinema.
If, as I hope, you are not as absolutist as you claim, you need to have a bit of think about what theophontes is saying.
Sheesh. You can’t have any basis for saying that it “doesn’t [or does] seem to have harmed the party’s popularity” before you have even determined what the trend in their popularity was prior to the trial.
Anyway, I would predict that an unsuccessful trial would not affect his popularity. What I’m expecting is that being declared guilty, by the traditional authority, will negatively impact a person’s popularity. When was Griffin actually found guilty? Is it the 1998 thing?
Nick Griffin was convicted of a public order offence in 1998. The details are here.
Drive-by posting: An example of the difference in value systems of the past and today
“In ancient Pompeii, trash and tombs went hand in hand” http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-ancient-pompeii-trash-tombs.html
Libel and slander laws are a very, very difficult area. I am of the opinion that the scope of the tort of libel in England is far too wide (and attracts “libel tourism” – see, for instance, the lawsuit against Rachel Ehrenfeld by a Saudi prince), and that the American approach is preferable. I wouldn’t abolish them entirely, but the bar for a successful libel action, especially one brought by a public figure, should be set very, very high. The test laid down by the US Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan is, I think, about right.
I really, really wish people wouldn’t keep quoting that maxim. It comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes’ judgment in Schenck v United States (1919), a godawful decision in which the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Charles Schenck, a socialist and pacifist, for protesting against the military draft during the First World War. Holmes said:
Not only is it a terrible decision, it no longer represents the law, the “clear and present danger” test having long since been superseded.
The Schenck decision illustrates exactly the reason why an extremely broad conception of free speech is needed. It’s an awful authoritarian decision: the gist of it is that the state has the right to suppress dissent in time of war, because the war effort takes precedence over individual liberty of expression. I reject that proposition utterly, as I would hope most of us do. If we give the state power to censor speech on the ground that it is “dangerous”, to other individuals or to society, we go down a very dangerous road.
Please don’t patronise me. I’ve spent many years thinking about this issue, and I’d venture to suggest that I’m considerably more familiar with these laws and their consequences than most people (my masters’ dissertation last year was on section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003 – the provision under which Paul Chambers was prosecuted – and I’m very familiar with the English and ECHR case-law on the subject of incitement to hatred). It is my considered opinion that such laws do enormously more harm than good.
@ Walton
No. Not at all. I can’t give you an off-the-cuff reply to this, likely this will take a while and I am willing to make the effort.
By using words like “legislatures, courts and police forces” you are suggesting a manner of frivolity (unaccountable/fallible) in this matter that I never would.
I’m very much in favour of two concepts that I have seen developing around me:
1. Constitutional republic (NOT rethuglic!) based on he principal of consensus politics. (Though a country might have to go through a hard time to actually get their shit together and decide on what they really stand for. This might be a problem in the pampered US. A couple of years of GOP could work wonders in this regard.) The country should be ruled by LAW – not lawgivers, not courts, not police … other than enforcing legitimate laws (as defined by the constitution). There is no need to harp on about a theoretical ideal, there is a pragmatic necessity that is clear to everyone on the street.
(Interesting example: Syria, where the son of the foreign minister has taken up arms in defense of the interests of the the people of Syria. Laws, courts, legislatures, police forces are not the ultimate determinants. We need not play coy about where legitimacy lies there right now. It is not with the repressive state apparatus. )
2. The Dutch concept of “Polder Model”, which I have raised a while back, recognises the different parties that must get together (say capital, labour and government) to keep the country productive (and dry). The idea is that each party has something to bring to the table. And (importantly) that the efforts of all parties are required to keep the country in good order. (The analogy is of a polder. Underwater but for the efforts of everyone working together.
(add a comment: 3. Hell, a bit of proportional representation would not go amiss in USA either.)
On a personal level you seem to have a lot of faith in yourself. The “me” meme seems to have survived quite well. I just want to shift you a little further towards the “we” meme.
There is no rush to this discussion, the longer we can bounce the ball back and forth amongst us, the more ideas may surface. I think we may even be underestimating our own power to develop good ideas and ways of thinking.
Oh fuck off you sanctimonious arsehole.
You may be more conversant with the law. However when it comes to being a decent human being you still have a long way to go.
He was convicted in 1998 of an offence under the Public Order Act 1986, for “publishing or distributing racially inflammatory written material”. He was subsequently elected leader of the BNP in 1999, so it really doesn’t look to me like it harmed his personal popularity very much. If anything, it probably drew him to greater public attention.
NEW THREAD!
Oh, and Walton, I am not sure why you gave me all that spiel about UK libel laws, since I did not mention them. I note you also seem unaware of plans to amend those laws, so that they will require demonstrating that either the person make an alleged libellous statement is doing so knowing it to be false, or is doing recklessly by not having undertaken the appropriate steps to determine if the statement is correct.
The latter test is needed since we know newspaper editors have wilfully published stories not having made any attempt to check their veracity, and that they did this because they considered it too good a story to bother checking.