Does this remind anyone else of a certain University of Chicago professor who was both outraged that anyone would refuse to pay racists and gender criticals to speak on campus, while also freaking out that students had strong opinions he disagreed with? It’s uncanny.
Although…the worst ones tend not to call themselves “conservative.” They’re “liberal” or “centrist” or “open-minded” while magically and unthinkingly aligning themselves with conservatives all the way down the line.
Don’t tell me, I’m sure I’ll remember his name someday.
Another layer is to note that the “free speech on campuses” conservatives pretend to care about is not for the people who actually live or work on college campuses: it’s for the non-academic celebrity guests who get paid an exorbitant speaker fee.
In regard to “liberal” or “centrist” or “open-minded” politicians, keep an eye on the British clone of Tony Blair, Sir Keir Starmer.
He is posed for winning over the tories and will be a thousand times better, just as Obama was a thousand times better than Dubya.
Like Obama, he is center-right in a lot of issues, making a U-turn on many issues he had promised to support.
He has also consistently purged the party of lefty Corbyn supporters while welcoming defecting Tory MPs.
He has let loyal supporters get away with islamophobic crap, while summarily dismissing Corbyn supporters for criticizing Israel -aka ‘antisemitism’. He is a competent politician in the same sense as Nixon …. and an utter weasel.
Shocked me, too, PZ. Chicago Guy is all secular this and secular that, cultural this and cultural that, then out of the blue becomes the Chosen People who Can’t Do No Wrong. Even in the undisputed face of indiscriminate slaughter. So far thirty eyes for a eye isn’t enough; I wonder where the line is?
@ ^ Doc Bill : There’s a line?
Looks like its vanishingly faint & far too easy to cross – or redraw wherever they want to draw it. Oh & ignore it too.
Neither I nor tineye.com could locate the original online – anyone have a clue?
The artist is Ward Sutton. I found the image on his account on Instagram.
@ #7: I thought the style looked a lot like The Onion’s always brilliant Stan Kelly 😀
Evil Dave @ # 7 – Thanks!
Yesterday someone on Team Dumpster posted a video on his Total Shit platform that used a blurry video template twice saying “INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED…DRIVEN BY THE CREATION OF A UNIFIED REICH”. The video was portraying a positive outcome form Dumpster’s victory.
Needless to say the reference to a “UNIFED REICH” caught some eyeballs. Team Biden jumped on it and the video was pulled fairly quickly. Being ever vigilant about his business, it’s possible that Dumpster himself didn’t know about it, of course…he has been busy testifying at his criminal trial…oh wait, that didn’t happen. Even the people who produced the video may have missed the reference.
The video template (sounds kind of like clip art) is claimed by Enes Şimşek, a Turkish producer, who says he created the graphic last year to give an old newspaper headline feel. Şimşek says that language actually is from World War I that said, “German industrial strength and production had significantly increased after 1871, driven by the creation of a unified Reich.”
Americans get sensitive to the German word “Reich”. The business software Wrike says their name should be pronounced as “Reich” but there’s so much resistance at least in American companies that they have accept the common alternative “Wri-key”.
Reich (swedish ‘rike’) usually translates as ‘kingdom’ (this is why the American TV series Kingdom Hospital is named thus – the Danish original was named after Rikshospitalet – colloquially ‘Riget’ in Danish).
But it can also apply to nations without a king. “The domain (of the nation)” would be a correct -but unwieldy- translation of the word.
I read the NYT comments a lot and I don’t know if they’ve always been a horror show or just recently, but the above nails it. So much authoritarianism in people who think themselves “good Democrats.”
I don’t care for Libertarianism myself…it’s part of the reason we’re in this mess…but you have to appreciate their reaction to Trump begging for their support and enjoy them booing hime…repeatedly: Trump confronts repeated booing during Libertarian convention speech.
hillaryrettig1 @12:
I saw a similar phenomenon years ago on the TBogg blog (anyone remember that?). The few of us who dared question the wisdom of Obama killing people with drones were roundly mocked and abused. One of the twits actually used the line “kill them over there so we don’t have to kill them here”. Disturbing.
@11 birgerjohansson
Except, after WWII literally no one in the US uses it unless they are referring to WWII, or actually think it ended the wrong way.
I’ve no idea who he’s talking about – may as well toss a coin.
Someone with a website and not a blog presumably.
right-wing conservatives do not seem to be really in favor of freedom of speech as much as the desire to be free from anyone having the temerity to disagree with what ever the hell they have to say at any time about any thing in particular.