I guess you didn’t read…when he finally put out a personal statement, it was mostly about how upset he was at the right co-opting his song because wrote it about them.

The audience however heard every dog whistle, and when they found out he wasn’t racist and was singing about right wing politicians not Biden they dropped him like a hot potato. I’m afraid you are wrong again, the right definitely heard those dog whistles and are pissed he didn’t intend them.

Easy…when he said he thinks diversity is a strength of America, nearly half his right wing audience said “I’m out” and “try saying that in a small town” and no longer call themselves fans…because they’re racist and thought he was too. You can find thousands in the comments sections where his videos were posted before he spoke out. Here’s 8-10…Just read some…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/viral-sensation-oliver-anthony-called-a-sellout-for-relatively-benign-“diversity”-comment-he-mad
e-on-fox-news/ar-AA1fG7Ct

I’m afraid it’s just know nothing people who latched onto what they heard as a racist anti welfare, conservative song who suddenly ran for the hills when they realized it and he were in fact anti conservative that suddenly hate this song. I admit I listened to it through “conservative ears” (since it was billed as the new conservative anthem) and I also heard every dog whistle they did, meaning it’s a really poorly worded song since so many got its message completely wrong. Even the Republican debate used it, which he found hilarious since the candidates were exactly who he wrote it about…but they were clueless about the irony.

He should have taken the $8 million, he’s going to fade into obscurity without the political backing he was getting.

So let me ask, now knowing he was talking about conservative politicians not liberals, and knowing he believes in diversity not tribalism…are you still a fan? (I know, you don’t/can’t answer questions). I’m not, despite learning all we now know about his intended message…but I retract my accusation that he MEANT it to be racist or hyper conservative.
Yes, I was w-w-w-wrong about HIM, but not his audience or the message they heard. Not the first or last time, but I can admit it when I’m wrong.

well, maybe should have tempered it a bit, 'cause was a bit disturbed about some of the things I've been reading...

1) https://news.yahoo.com/montana-lawmaker-suggested-she-d-182144655.html (some seriously sick stuff)

2)https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461263/iowa-meteorologist-harassment-climate-change-quits (loons being led by power lushing putz)

3)https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/26/garth-brooks-texas-greg-abbott-twitter-booed-satire (the stupidity and pride in ignorance is stupefying. also being ass hurt that trans people like a (horrible) beer?! lord have mercy...ate at a steak house, at the same table 'W' used previously. didn't put me off enjoying the t-bone. or revisiting the place if'n was in the area again. *did make me think "G** D*** it! why did the waitress tell me that!*)

4) https://news.yahoo.com/6-dead-including-3-children-161756984.html red flag af & TN will do nill

5) https://www.vice.com/en/article/ak3kz5/moms-for-liberty-hitler-quote (MFL were more upset w/asscoation then the message. The lack of self-awareness & irony - unreal)

6) & too many women dying from the abortion ban(s). don't get killing the living for the unborn if the unborn are d.o.a. & take mom w/them. lunacy.

a couple of those are pushing the limit. the lack of benignancy being a value among the right - just - ain't - right.

bob the parrot's stormtrooper comment lit the fuse. my gawd. even people in the middle ages had a sense of genetics. greeks, 3k years ago, knew androgyny was a thing. so why can't bobo's buds not bone up on the idea of biology?

it's not a choice, but living well is.

Are you really that ignorant? (That’s a rhetorical question, I know you are)
1) watch Argo. There were multiple attempted rescues, starting within days of the revolution.
2) read about Reagan who made a secret, illegal deal with the terroristic Iranians to not release the hostages until after the election to hurt Carter’s chances, then he later sold them weapons in another illegal deal to pay for another secret illegal war with the Contras. If a Democrat did anything near that, he/she would be (rightly) shot as a traitor if not legally then by some nut job….when Cons do it the anti American crimes are ignored and cons celebrate the treason.
3) Also read about the year+ of negotiations by Carter that actually gained their freedom on Jan 20 81. Would have been much sooner without Republican interference. Carter was the one who initially “held” (seized) those $8 billion of Iranian funds, and stopped buying Iranian oil costing them billions more…all legally, unlike the sneaky, illegal, back room collusion with and payoffs to the terrorists Reagan tried, knowingly and intentionally extending the hostage crisis for his personal political gains. The “deal” wasn’t struck on Jan 20…the Iranians delayed the release at Reagan’s request in exchange for promises of special treatment from president Reagan.

Like Biden, Carter actually solved a problem created largely by Republicans despite Republicans doing their utmost to work against America. Gas prices dropped nearly 10% in the last month and continue to drop despite a massive shortage world wide thanks to Russia and Saudi Arabia. Republicans have fought against every effort to lower them, voting against all mitigation efforts in a unified “fuck your gas prices” block.
They even voted against a bill to force oil companies to stop price gouging because it would have dropped prices significantly the day it passed, also helping inflation significantly, and cons REALLY don’t want prices to drop under Biden, certainly not before November.
It’s just like when every Con just voted to protect and keep neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and violent extremists in the military and federal police forces because they don’t want their voters to lose their jobs. Keeping their power is far more important to them than helping the country, and their main methodology is to try to hurt the country then blame the president….odd since they excused the former president from any and all responsibility for his lack of leadership and absolute horrific disaster that was his last year in office, from 1 million dead to -3.5% GDP to millions unemployed to rising inflation to supply chain failures to disastrously ruining the reputation of our elections to dividing the country horrifically to actually trying to overthrow the elected government by force…all for his own personal gain….and you whine that Biden hasn’t fixed everything yet!?

Pretty dishonest for Republicans to do everything in their power to stop any attempted plans on inflation, gas prices, or hostile foreign powers, then blame the president they blocked from fixing the issues they caused. It’s not weak leadership, it’s an anti American party with veto power and a chip on their shoulders willing to hurt the entire nation rather than let Biden (and America) have a “win”.

Now…how did Trump handle it when foreign powers kidnapped and dismembered an American? He covered it up, made excuses, declared the Saudi prince innocent (and Trump was recorded laughing about how he “saved his ass” over that murder)….then his son in law was given a $2 billion payment for future services his company was completely incapable of supplying.

So let’s measure Trump….
Nice guy, no. Moral, no. Ethical, no. Honest, no. Smart, no. Loyal, no. Trustworthy, no.
Fickle to the utmost, yes. Weak leader, yes. Treasonous, yes. Dictatorial, yes. Narcissistic, yes. Criminal, yes. Anti-democracy, yes.
Most American deaths-yes. Worst unemployment, yes. Worst economy, yes. Most domestic terrorism, yes.
Worst president ever by far….unequivocally by every measure. He actually made idiotic GW look benign by comparison.

As it turns out, the “air” in snack bags isn’t just air at all. It’s taste-preserving nitrogen that fights off staleness and protects bags from pre-snack time squashing. Who knew?!

The process of filling bags with nitrogen even has a name — it's called “slack fill.” While this benign practice “fills” the bag, it also leaves stomachs empty and hungry shoppers disappointed.


https://www.today.com/food/why-there-so-much-air-bags-potato-chips-t133509

I disagree. No good apple would join the police because they know it's a system that encourages abuse.

A good apple who wants to be part of a profession that helps their community does not turn a blind eye to the bad apples. At best you have a lot of benign apples who aren't rotten themselves but are OK with the other rotten apples because....
...why?

They like the prestige?
They enjoy the sense of power?
They have Leem Neesons Action Dreams™ of taking out the bad guys? Cops and robbers fantasies with life and death stakes where the Sneetches on both sides are barely distinguishable by stars on their bellies?

If you want to stop police shootings you start by taking away their guns. If you don't want to police the streets without a gun then you don't belong in that role.

Dude....when you just got harassed like that for a minor infraction, don't drive away while filming yourself, which is a serious dangerous crime akin to driving drunk.

I was stopped as a mohawked teenager in Palo Alto for being "suspicious" by taking two minutes to drop my girlfriend off at her house, and ten minutes later across town I was surrounded by 11-12 cop cars, lights on, and 18+- police who detained me for 45 minutes but had nothing to charge me with. Compared to that, this seemed benign (don't get me wrong, I see this as a blatant racist action, the message being "you don't belong here, boy", but I expected much worse).

@ChaosEngine
agreed.
context matters and i think being a decent human being plays a large role in that dynamic.

people tend to attempt to break down complex ideas and/or ideologies into more easily digestible morsels.this "twitter speak",in my opinion,is largely responsible for the decay of human interactions.

we all are biased.
we all hold prejudices,and preconceptions based on our learned experiences.
which are subjective.

we see the world through the lens of our own subjectivity and even the most open minded and non-judgemental person,when trying to sympathize/empathize with another person, will use their own subjective understandings in order to understand that person.

this tactic,which we all employ,will almost always fall short of true understanding.

so we rely on words,metaphors,allegory etc etc in order to communicate fairly complex emotions and experiences.

what brendon o'neill is pointing out,is that when we start to restrict words as acceptable and unacceptable,we infantilize our interactions.

words are inert.
they are simply symbols representing a thing,action or emotion.
it is WE who apply the deeper meanings by way of our subjective lens.

i am not trying to make something simple complicated,but bear with me.
a rock will always be a rock,but a cunt has a totally different meaning here in the states than in britain.(love you brits,and cunt is a brilliant word).

the problems of culture,region,nationality or race all play a role in not only how we communicate but how that communication is received ...and interpreted.

so misunderstandings can happen quite easily,and then when we consider that the persons intent is by far the greatest metric to judge the veracity of the words being spoken,and just how difficult it is to discern that intent....this is where nuance and context play such a major role,but we need to have as many tools in our language box to express oftentimes very difficult concepts,multi-layered emotions and complicated ideologies.

and,unfortunately,there are attempts to legislate speech.

of course well intentioned,and reasonable sounding,but like any legislation dealing with the subjective nature of humans,has the possibility of abuse.

case in point:http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/

a new canadian addendum to their human rights statute.on the surface this is a fairly benign addition to canadas already existing human rights laws,but there is the possibility of abuse.

a psychology professor from university of toronto was critical of this new addendum,and has created a flurry of controversy in regards to his criticism.

which you can check out here:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/301661-this-canadian-prof-defied-sjw-on-gender-pronouns-and-has-a

now he was protested,received death threats,there was even violence and a new internet star was born affectionately labeled "smugglypuff".

see:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/smugglypuff

i agree that free speech cannot be viewed with an absolutist mindset.absolutist thinking leads to stagnation and a self-righteous fundamentalism,so we NEED the free flow of ideas...even BAD ideas..even offensive and racist..because this brings all those feelings/thoughts/ideologies into the market of ideas to be either absorbed or ridiculed and ultimately ostracized for the shit philosophy they represent.

i WANT to know who the racists are.
i want to know who is bigoted or prejudiced.
i want to know who is holding on to stupid ideas,or promoting fascism dressed up as nationalistic pride.

and the only way to shine a light on these horrendous and detrimental ideas is to allow those who hold them openly state who and what they are...so we can criticize/challenge and in some cases..ridicule.

we should be free to say whatever we wish,but we are not free from challenge or criticism.
we can say whatever pops into our pretty little head,but we are not free from consequences.
we are also not free from offense.

i know this is long,and i hope you stayed with me,and if you did,thanks man.i know i tend to ramble.

but we can use the banning of gorillaman as a small microcosm of what we are talking about here.

i felt that we,as a community,could take gorilla to task for his poor choice in verbiage "nigger prince" and i attempted to make the case by using his history,dark humor and bad taste to add context to his poor choice of wording.

bareboards felt it was a matter for the administrators to deal with.i am not saying her choice was wrong.just that we approached the problem from different perspectives.

now gorilla decided to become the human torch and flame out.which threw my approach right out the window.

but the point i am making in that case,is that bad ideas,bad philosophies,bigotry and racism will ALWAYS reveal themselves if we allow that process to ultimately expose bad ideas/shit person.

the free flow of ideas is the proverbial rope that ultimately hangs all shit ideas.

thanks for hanging kids.
love you all!

My opinion is that there is no harm i finding her attractive, of course not. Virtually everyone would like to be thought of that way i think.

The problem is that its entirely subjective and a personal feeling. Is there any point to stating it? What function does it serve? She is very pretty, but does that have any baring at all on the video or her presentation?

I just think its a shame that if an attractive female does virtually anything on the sift, I literally can't remember the conversation at some point turning to that. Many time in a relatively benign way, i just think it will b e a great day when we can without even thinking about it look past that as being something that for whatever reason needs to be mentioned at all.

This cannot be benign coincidence. Would you do your magic and divine the natures of these noms de deja vu?

vietdd

vietdd89

I tend to view most religion as being a socially acceptable form of delusions... but they are mostly benign, some are even caring and empathetic people.

The ones that use their religion as a hammer to marginalize or harm others, I would rather they were put on a rocket and flown into the sun.

@bobknight33 --

I continue to agree with you on a lot of what you're saying (but not all).

Trump and Sanders are both riding a wave of frustration in the people, as you say. Their current popularity, even if both only go downhill from here, has already partially sent that message to both parties. I don't think Trump would make a good president, but if he wins the election I think that really hammering home that message of frustration could be a significant positive outcome. Same goes for some hypothetical scenario resulting in Sanders getting elected, although I personally feel quite positive about the other stuff that I think Sanders would bring to the table, unlike how I feel about Trump.

If there's one area where I think the government could stand to get *bigger*, it's in oversight, evaluation, and accountability. Being under the microscope and heavily scrutinized perhaps isn't a recipe for optimal efficiency, but I think we desperately need more of it in government AND the private sector.

Early in my lifetime, a large corporation that had a relatively benign monopoly by today's standards was considered a big enough deal for the government to step in and break it up. AT&T / Bell got split into the "Baby Bells". Corporations now are vast juggernauts compared to that, but since they make gigantic profits I guess we collectively see them as bastions of Capitalism. But I think that in reality they are doing much more harm to Capitalism with their monopolies, collusion, and corruption.

I think Sanders is the candidate most likely to even *try* to do something to roll back that shift, and bring back oversight and accountability to government. Hillary sure as hell wouldn't do it. And I don't think Trump would either -- he is the literal face of a gigantic Corporation himself, after all.

I had high hopes for Obama. He didn't live up to them, but to be fair I think the lion's share of that is on the Legislative branch. That taught me to be careful about putting much of any stock into Presidential campaign promises, particularly about things outside the scope of what the Executive branch can actually do.

I think Trump and Clinton both put *themselves* first, ahead of all else. I don't think Clinton gives a flying fuck about any of us plebs, beyond attempting to pander to large demographic blocks of us just enough to secure our votes. Maybe Trump cares more for Joe Average than Clinton, but only incidentally -- as a Capitalist he needs Joe Averages to buy his products, and buy into his image.

I don't get the same read from Sanders. I think he actually does give a shit. A lot of his agenda would require a cooperative Legislature, which he wouldn't get -- just like Obama. So in terms of changing the status quo, perhaps his biggest impact would simply be in sending the establishment a loud and clear message that we are no longer content with business as usual in Washington. A message very similar to what electing Trump would send.

It would/ will take me some soul searching, but assuming that Hillary gets the Democrat nomination over Sanders, a desire to send that message might be enough to get me to vote for Trump. But voting for a reasonably tolerable option from a minor party might serve that end just as well. Say Jesse Ventura running as a Libertarian, or Jill Stein from the Green Party. Stein has the very distinct advantage (from my perspective) of being the only current candidate who has said that she would grant a Presidential pardon to Ed Snowden (although Ventura would too, IF he runs). Pardons are one of the few things that a President can actually *do* unilaterally -- and that makes that a pretty damn good "single issue" prompt for my vote, in my opinion.

Its hard to believe something so benign looking is so deadly. I assume if you fall in you get sucked under by the current.

I think that the GOP is in full-on panic mode, and doesn't care about legitimacy / shot at winning for this election.

They (the party elites) will do absolutely everything they can to prevent Trump from getting enough delegates to lock up the nomination. Hence Colorado and Wyoming. Those actions make it seem like they prefer Cruz, but actually they dislike him close to as much as they hate Trump.

Although it is still mathematically possible for Cruz (559 delegates) to get enough delegates to lock up the nomination (1237 needed), realistically it is out of reach (826 still available). Trump (756 delegates), on the other hand, could well manage it. So, the GOP strategy is to avoid that at all costs by encouraging people to vote for Cruz or Kasich in primaries, or even better to encourage more state GOP offices to hold a smoke-filled room convention that grants all the delegates to #NeverTrump instead of even bothering to let people vote.

If they manage that, the contested national convention will get ugly. They (GOP elites) would turn on Cruz instantly -- cast aside. In any other election cycle they would have turned on him already, but with juggernaut Trump, they have to use him to get to the contested convention.

So the question becomes who if not Trump or Cruz? Who will the GOP try to push in? I think that right now, they aren't as worried about answering that question as they are about trying to get there. That being said, they have some options:

Mitt Romney was their first thought. He took some tentative steps towards playing along with the GOP plans, failed to generate any excitement, and has since faded back into relative obscurity. But he remains an option.

Next up was Paul Ryan. A lot of the GOP see him as the future of the party; the "great white hope". There was a flurry of activity making it seem like he was going to take up the flag, but has since denied that he would be interested in or even accept getting the nod. However, he was cagey and close to as vocal against getting the nod to be speaker of the house, and then accepted that. You never know.

Kasich would be another option. He's relatively benign, and wouldn't offend many more of the republican base than the GOP is already ready and willing to offend in order to prevent Trump (and to a lesser extent Cruz).


Of those, I tend to think that Romney is the most likely choice for the GOP in the end. I think it would be extremely stupid to foist "future of the party" Ryan into this election, which would certainly taint his political future. Kasich makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, "in for a penny, in for a pound" -- as long as the GOP is willing to go to these great lengths to keep Trump out they might as well just own the illegitimacy of it, shoot the moon, and hand pick someone that a) they have complete control over, and b) has nothing to lose in terms of political future. Voila, Mitt Romney.


I also don't think that the GOP will just throw in the towel if Trump locks down the number of delegates needed for the nomination. I'm sure they already have some last-ditch, scorched earth preliminary plans in place for that contingency.

However, I think that they essentially already have thrown in the towel with regards to the election in general. At least to a sufficient degree that they don't give a rats ass about the chances for whoever is the republican nominee winning. That's a *distant* priority behind NOT TRUMP, among other things. Which is pretty stupid, because the likely nomination of Hillary on the democrat side gives them what should be a *golden* opportunity to steal the election. IF they could come up with a vaguely tolerable candidate ... which they won't.

How did harassment go from lewd sexual comments and possible unwanted touching, to a lone male in a public space looking at a woman from a distance?

This newer social justice warrior feminist movement I keep seeing stories about appears to be saying that any unsolicited male attention, no matter how benign, is harassment and proof we live in a "rape culture". So looking is violence now?

I believe that you are correct, and Carr was not actually fined or otherwise legally penalized for his remarks.

However, it *was* a possibility that he would be, according to the first line in the article I linked to in my first post in this thread:
"Jimmy Carr could face sanctions for making a joke about dwarves during an appearance on BBC1’s The One Show."

I believe that I read other news articles that suggested that was a possibility at the time it happened, but I can't find anything with a real quick search now.

Going outside of the scope of that single incident, I definitely have seen quite a few reports of things that I would consider to be fairly trivial incidents like this being looked at by the UK government as "hate speech" and therefore potentially subject to "fines, imprisonment, or both" (according to that wikipedia article).

Samples from a quick search include a politician being arrested for quoting a passage about Islam from a book by Winston Churchill, a young man who was jailed for 12 weeks because of "some offensive Facebook posts making derogatory comments about a missing child" (it doesn't say what the posts were exactly; I am not saying I would defend his posts but I don't think anyone should go to jail for being an idiot and running their mouth on the internet), and another young man who was fined for saying that "all soldiers should die and go to hell". Plenty more incidents beyond those as well, it seems.

So while Jimmy Carr didn't end up actually facing any legal repercussions for his joke, I think it is not far fetched at all to suggest that he might have (and there seems to be some evidence that legal repercussions enacted by the government were being considered in that particular incident).

That is what seems crazy / wrong to me. That is NOT freedom of speech; it is freedom of benign speech, with an increasingly narrow view of what speech is benign.

I'm 100% OK with their being "consequences" for Jimmy Carr for his joke. But the government shouldn't be involved in that (and again, to be fair they DID end up staying out of it in that case). The consequences that I think are fine include:

* Ofcom or the BBC passing on some/all of any fines that the government levels against them on to Carr (ie., IF they get fined for breaking broadcast decency standards, make Carr foot the some or all of the bill for that).

* Ofcom or the BBC electing not to invite Carr to appear on any more programs if they are concerned about preventing fines / protecting their image / whatever. They are a business, they gotta look out for themselves.

* Individual people who were offended by Carr's joke boycotting programs that he appears on, refusing to pay to attend his live performances, etc. Obviously. If you don't like what he has to say, you are are of course not obliged to continue to listen to him.

Anything beyond those consequences is going too far in a society that claims it is democratic and free, in my opinion.