@ChaosEngine

i guess i was not clear.
so let me clarify.

i was not defending an artists right to discriminate on the basis of:sexual orientation,gender,race,class etc etc.

i WAS,however,defending an artists right to refuse a commission on their own personal grounds (whatever those might be) and they could do it without making a big deal about it.no need to be specific WHY you refused the commission.just that you wont be able to do the job to the best of your ability and that maybe joe-artist down the street could serve you better.

so you may find darkhands analogy trite and contrived but the basic heart of his comment is true.if his heart aint in it you are gonna get crap as a result.

being an artist for hire is nothing like owning a bagel shop or selling t-shirts.

if i aint feeling it...
i aint doing it.

if you want to project that i refuse because you are gay,or because their is a vagina involved..well..thats on you.
my reasons are my own.
i may share those reasons with you,i may not but i have that right to refuse the commission.

and the artists who DOES share a reason of homophobia or sexism is just dumb and probably not worth hiring anyways.

as for calling out artists who "whore" themselves.
i wasnt thinking of artists who accept money for the work they do.we all have to eat brother and if i used your example,each and every one of us are whores in one capacity or another.

i was actually thinking of the artists who lend their pen,brush,camera and instrument to create propaganda videos,commercials etc etc.

basically anyone who would sell their integrity for a buck.

Suey Park aside (she acts crazy), I personally believe many of you would be well served by thinking about this situation more critically before you jump on the defend Colbert bandwagon. Colbert is a funny satirist, but is not without flaw, and in my mind this bit on his show was at best a shitty joke and at worst completely unnecessarily racially insensitive (i.e. even as satire, it did not serve his point well). An article here talks about it in a more articulate way than I probably can:
http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/04/colbert-white-racial-satire-dont-need/

This is somewhat tangential (I'll tie things together later), but based on my readings it seems Chappelle may have grappled with whether some of his skits were having net positive social impact, especially near the tail end of the show's run. From Chappelle's wikipedia entry (way more context there) --- "Chappelle said that he felt some of his sketches were "socially irresponsible." ... "According to Chappelle, during the filming of the sketch, a white crew member was laughing in a way that made him feel uncomfortable and made him think. Chappelle said, "It was the first time I felt that someone was not laughing with me but laughing at me."
--- For me, coming from somebody like Chappelle, that's pretty heavy stuff. if Dave Chappelle -- IMO quite brilliant both comedically and otherwise, and has personal experience being an oppressed minority -- struggles with what makes good socially responsible satire, that probably means it's hard. Really hard. Yet there are many people far less qualified than Chappelle in the area of satire creation and firsthand experience of racial oppression using "Colbert is satire, don't you know what [good, socially responsible] satire is?" (I'll answer that rhetorical -- No I don't, nor do probably most people) as a bit of a rubber stamp for Colbert being totally justified in doing this bit.
In my opinion, if there were ever a time for Stephen to totally break character for a second and just say "I'm sorry. Satire can be very difficult at times and we make mistakes. This was one of them. We've got to try harder.", now would be the time. As Chappelle pointed out, some people could be comfortable in laughing for the wrong reasons and not realizing it ... those people need a bit of a reality check. As the person everybody is rushing to protect, Colbert would be the best one to deliver it. In doing so, this could even more powerfully (than his satire) make people come around to the idea that racism is not just a switch you can turn off and be done with it (a la Stephen Colbert the *character*), it's a constant maintenance process like brushing one's teeth ( a la Jay Smooth -- Great talk here by Jay on just this topic ). "Wait.... even Stephen Colbert (the person) satirist master extraordinaire needs to think about race issues!? Hmmmmmmm..."

Your video, Painted snake using a single brush stroke, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I re-watched it a couple of times and you can see how the ink continues to spread and define the scales a few seconds after the brush stroke. wow

What's ultimately going to come from this is maybe a few people will realize that these situations involving an entire country and large swaths of people and interests aren't easily buttoned up with a few statements. These situations aren't simple they're complex and it takes a bit more background and understanding to get to a point where we think we have a handle on things.

You find this out for example when you try to understand how Germany allowed the Nazi's to take over and do the evil things they did. Some will just say ridiculous things trying to brush it off or close the book on it. The reality is there's a ton of different factors that have a great effect on historical events.

First things first, these cops are assholes and should be jailed straight away (and I'm with @bcglorf, if you commit a crime while on duty as a cop, you should face extra jail time).

That said, (and god it pains to me to agree with lantern) I still don't think it's fair to tar all cops with the same brush. We don't judge any other group by it's worst members, why do the cops get singled out?

"Because the good ones don't speak up"

Ok, I'll admit this is a problem. But it's really not that simple. If you are a good cop, by definition, you're working within the law. You need to gather evidence, build a case and so on. In practice, that's pretty difficult to do, especially when the bad cops, also by definition, aren't bound by the same rules the good cops are.

Not to mention the social stigma of "ratting out" your colleagues (and that applies in every walk of life), the potential harassment or even threats (again, bad cops aren't bound by rules).

The problem is a cultural one, and it has to change from the bottom up.

Made these last night-I call em:

Chewy Sugar Cookies (monster version)

2 3/4 cups flour (sifted with:)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

I cup (2 sticks) salted, butter (softened)
1 1/2 cups whole cane sugar
1 egg
1tsp (or to taste) vanilla extract
3-6 tbsp buttermilk
some ground cinnamon, and some more sugar for later

sift dry ingredients into bowl
in a separate bowl, cream sugar, extract, egg, and a small glug of buttermilk until creamy
mix wet and dry ingredients and add just enough extra buttermilk to make the mix slightly sticky but not wet (or, the opposite of how you like your women)

NOW comes the monster part:

Add to dough, some pure grated coconut (unsweetened), dried cranberries, and fresh almonds that have been hit with the coffee grinder to chop and powder a bit)

Place the dough in the freezer while you preheat the oven to 375°F

on an un-greased cookie sheet, place small dollops of dough that has been rolled in some of the coconut/almond mix you set aside extra

on top of each dollop that you flatten slightly with a fork, brush-on some buttermilk on each dough-glob, then sprinkle with a sugar and a ground cinnamon mix

Bake for 8-10 minutes on second-to-top oven rack

Real panty-droppers these, bet ya can't eat just five

@Sotto_The issue is the power and influence one corporation has over the world's food supply and those who would use their influence in the Department of Agriculture and the Supreme court to implement sweeping legislation or hinder the free will of the small, medium, large or other farmers who would have nothing to do with Monsanto's seeds or who wish only to use sumbunall of their products, not whether a farmer is given their rice for free in an ethical fashion to grow some proprietary rice (ever try to grow rice? S'pretty dependent on climate and seasons, rainfall and other environmental conditions, not to mention the hectares it requires to cultivate) as opposed to say leafy greens of all kinds, sweet potatoes, squash, all of which are much more easily cultivated AND, have shorter seed to fruit times as well as requiring much less space AND, are chock-full of Vitamin A.
We don't even mention here Paprika, Red Pepper, Cayenne, Chili Powder, which are WAY higher in Vitamin A and pretty much grow like weeds when cultivated by morons.

Shaky and hollow point your study cited as well, to support what is obviously a fishy prospect providing this option to poorer countries when you consider the back-door dealing that a corporation like M practices and their track-record of driving small farmers out of business with endless litigation and an army of lah-yahs, investigators, all petty thugs and criminals on their payroll.

A no-brainer? Yeah, if you spout the party-line and din't use your brain but instead cited an "official' study from a 'recognized', 'expert's' journal.

Again, loaded language in your closing with the assumption that most opponents and vocal activists of GMO crops are science deniers. Broad, brush-strokes my friend.
Labels.

I for one want these motherfucker's labs under extreme scrutiny and their science tested and re-tested by those not on their payrolls or whose interests do not include stocks in their concerns. I also want heirloom seeds, regardless of yields, whose fruits produce fertile seeds.

MOST GMO crop's fruited seeds are as sterile as your argument, the genetic markers tweaked similarly to insure that the market on common-sense and centuries-honored methods be cornered and rendered inadequate.

If you look at a painting, you could run experiments to count the number of brush strokes, calculate the dimensions of the frame, determine the chemistry of the pigments, the age of the canvas, and so on. Does that diminish the meaning of the piece? Does that negtate the fact of the painter who painted it? If the answer is no, then neither could our scientific understanding of the Universe prove that there is no meaning to it or there is no Creator behind it.

Throwing your brain at that kind of stuff changes it for the better no matter what you remember a few years down the line. It's a muscle, and understanding the mathematics behind magnetism like bench pressing a few hundred pounds, and besides, you can always brush up.

Your video, Demon cat thinks brushing is yummy, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

These cops did an excellent job under difficult circumstances. And I don't buy for a second the "she's only a girl" bullshit.

And I'm with @sheppard. Yes, there are bad cops, but to tar them all with them same brush is just fucking ignorant. I have a friend who is right now in police college. He's taking a massive pay cut from his previous job to be a cop, because he believes in it.

Everything in this video made me admire these cops. They did the best they could with a woman who was cynically trying to exploit her gender to get out of being arrested. Watch the look on her face at 3:12. She's perfectly fine and is even trying to signal someone, but then she goes back to being hysterical.

Meanwhile, the people videoing are insisting on knowing what she was arrested for, which is none of their business, and in fact would be a violation of her privacy for the cops to give out.

All in all, they handled the situation with professionalism and courtesy.

And @Trancecoach, you really want to replace the police with private security? Yeah, 'cos that's worked out so well with prisons and the military (blackwater, etc)....

I'm sure your memories are your own and you have a right to them, but that's a broad brush you use to paint a lot of people.
It's insulting to many of the people I know and love.

I'm sorry for your pain, and I hope one day you will heal enough to see that the bias you create tarnishes a lot of very good people as well as label a few bad apples.

Trancecoach, way to work that brush with the beautiful people-Hookin' up Barr with drugs! Now was this before or after marijuana was declared legal in some states?? Hmmm?