well, Artician is right I guess... I won't be able to listen to a 60 minutes like show while two old chaps converse about the most important issues in the world... I'll probably be bored to death... I need explosions! lazer beams! shewshs!

on another note... funny that I sort of work in this business and I was very well educated by this article.

I hate to point out the obvious @enoch, but I would say that actually...*you're* talking about some pretty important issues, not blankfist.

as I alluded to in my post, this is this equivalent of taking the Obama, "you didn't build that" speech out of context tactic that the Repubs tried to spin a while back. or the "when did you stop beating your children?" equivalent.

this is a troll sift. He has accused this video of being propaganda, but he hasn't met ANY burden of proof by any stretch of the imagination.

you are the one contributing, enoch, not him.

@VoodooV
dont be too harsh on our boy @blankfist at least he has us talking about some pretty important issues.

if we do not discuss the hard issues and deal with truths and only hold onto our own biased ideology,then nothing gets accomplished.

i do not subscribe to blankies capitalistic unrestricted free market position.
i have been learning much about the free market and it does have some substantial strengths in many regards.

the problems arise,in my opinion,in regards to societal responsibility.
unrestricted capitalism makes everything a commodity.
and some things should NEVER be considered a commodity.

so i am against the privatization of schools and commodifying children.
and for those of you who wish to berate me for my position allow me to point to our current prison system:prisoners=commodity

now by me saying this does NOT automatically mean i am in support of our current education system.
i am not.

the system we have now is a bloated and stagnating beast which does little to educate and everything to indocrinate and create obedient workers.

and who is blamed for all this?
the teachers!
of course!
bind their hands,gag their mouths,stifle their creativity and crush their imagination.

and THEN turn around and say "there...theres your problem.the teachers".

so @ blankfist is not entirely off the mark when he infers or implies that it is government that is at fault.

because they are.

the real question is why?
now i am wading into postulation waters here but this is what i suspect.
1.the american government nor corporations wish to have a truly educated and informed citizenry with critical thinking skills and the ability to consume data and form rational conclusions.
people with those abilities will always challenge power.

they would rather have a docile and submissive public that does not question authority.
best get em while they are young.

so it doesnt matter if the schools are privatized or publicly funded.
they BOTH seek the same results and will BOTH be/are equally corrupt.

and most likely BOTH will blame the teachers for a perceived failure.

because BOTH will ignore,either knowingly or unknowingly,the systematic failure of HOW they teach children.

no longer is art taught.
nor civics (at least not where i live),
nor the humanities.
they are teaching these kids to be systems managers,not free-thinkers.

i believe that education all the way up and through to higher education should be a public responsibility.the investment will pay dividends greater than anything put IN to the system.
i am not going to list them all,just think about what a well educated citizen can bring to table.
see:finland

because at its heart,its essence,is not society a collective practice in community?
there are some things that should never be socialized.
education is not one of them.

money is not the problem.
teachers are not the problem.
its the SYSTEM and how it teaches,that is the problem.

remove the politicians and the special interest from the equation and allow the actual educators to do their jobs.

instead we have turned teachers into baby-sitters and schools into factories of the banal.

what a disgrace.

And thats the rub - news was never meant to entertain. We have gorged ourselves on entertainment for so long that anything other than something that IS entertaining...is just seen as a waste of time (even though its beneficial!!).

This is where the Daily Show and Colbert Report format comes in handy. They have balanced analaysis of important issues, and its entertaining.

If CNN and MSNBC tried to mirror that (and somehow didnt fail miserably....), then we would all be better for it.

Woah, hey now. It wasn't Richard Dawkins in the elevator; that was someone completely unrelated. Richard just posted a comment in his forum that essentially said she was being a baby about it and there were more important issues to make a fuss about.

@drattus: "But in a nutshell... many months back at a conference a woman in an elevator was made uncomfortable by a man, man turned out to be Richard Dawkins. People took sides and much drama ensued."

Still dealing with fallout from Elevatorgate? When will it end? Why can't the community let it go and move to more meaningful conversation? I mean I stood by Rebecca at the start, and still say the dude was highly improper, but for that incident to continue to divide the community is just beyond idiotic. Somebody overreacted to Rebecca's statements and she overreacted back, and from there it snowballed on and on... and on... Seems both sides are carrying it on and on rather than just agreeing to disagree over the issue and moving on to more important issues.

This is a very important issue that must be taken seriously. If nothing else than for the children!

I am appalled at some of the responses to this here on the Sift: "she should just take it and shut up", "yeah what's wrong telling someone they're fat" and @scannex's craptacular line of argumentation. This discussion took such a bizarro turn that even bobknight33 has more sense in his comment than a good half of the commenters!

There are several important issues at stake here:

1) Unethical behaviour should be called out, as done here, not silenced/ignored, no matter how "petty" it may seem. Silence (often enforced by shaming and/or interiorised guilt) is one of the main contributors to a culture of abuse of privilege, of bullying, humiliating, harassing, etc etc. I just wish stuff like this (the video) happened more often on TV and in the media in general. The more this kind of behaviour (be it sexist, ableist, bigoted, etc.) is called out as socially unacceptable, the less it will spread over the next generations.

2) Privilege: this guy thinks it is his place to tell a perfect stranger that she's too fat for TV, as if his small-minded opinion was worth anything. Even if it hadn't been so disgustingly condescending, he should know (lets hope that's now the case) that it's not his place to make those remarks. Even if he's a doctor, nutritionist, you name it. He's not her doctor, nor friend, and you have to be pretty fucking stupid to think you're illuminating someone on their hitherto unnoticed BMI, and even more fucking stupid to defend that as "doing her a favour".

3) Obesity is not like smoking. Yes, they are both health problems, but unlike smoking, being obese is not a behaviour. It can be caused/aggravated by certain behaviour, among many other factors. But while a behaviour can be inhibited while in front of others (e.g. not smoking in front of kids/a camera), you cannot "stop being obese". This brings out another distinction, namely that, while seeing people smoke can entice impressionable minds to do the same, seeing someone who is fat will not make one want to be fat as well. Seeing an overweight person on TV having a job or living a normal life might, on the other hand, give hope to people who are mocked and discriminated against for their weight issues, something which does not undermine in the slightest the struggle against obesity.

I could go on, but I've ranted enough as is. Suffice it to say that I fully *support what this woman and her colleagues have taken the courage to do, and hope it is a situation we will see more of in future. We can't (and shouldn't) outlaw douchebaggery, but we sure as hell can make it socially stigmatising, and we damn well should. (and unlike obesity for some, douchebaggery and hateful/hurtful ignorance is something anyone can be cured of)

/rant

Silverman is hilarious, but then comedy is all about taste.



I've enjoyed some of her past videos that are similar to this but this one never really made me laugh, but it is an important issue.

That said it doesn't surprise me that a Firearm license and a student i.d. are not equivalent...

Cheers for the sift.

Ah. He "misspoke." Doesn't change his position that women have to bear a rapist's child for nine months. His prepared statement in full (I was tempted to edit the last paragraph):

“As a member of Congress, I believe that working to protect the most vulnerable in our society is one of my most important responsibilities, and that includes protecting both the unborn and victims of sexual assault. In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve.

“I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action. I also recognize that there are those who, like my opponent, support abortion and I understand I may not have their support in this election.

“But I also believe that this election is about a wide range of very important issues, starting with the economy and the type of country we will be leaving our children and grandchildren. We’ve had 42 straight months of unacceptably high unemployment, trillion-dollar deficits, and Democratic leaders in Washington who are focused on growing government, instead of jobs. That is my primary focus in this campaign and while there are those who want to distract from that, knowing they cannot defend the Democrats’ failed economic record of the last four years, that will continue to be my focus in the months ahead.”

@rbar I didn't call you a socialist, I don't know you that well! It was about your portrayal of capitalism. Also, I apologize for referring to free market capitalism, subject of this topic, as just "capitalism", that caused understandable confusion. I completely agree with you that some of those "isms" fall under a broader definition of capitalism, as they're social orders dependent on private property rights. Those who advocate free markets like me, however, really tend to consider free market capitalism as the only real one, while variations are just "less capitalistic" or not capitalism at all.

Any economic system is as cooperative as the next? Hmm... I don't know, rbar. Would you say there's as much cooperation inside North Korea as there is in South Korea? The old East and West Germanies? Surely any country with a lesser economy enjoys much less cooperation of their citizens among themselves (or with other countries) than a country where policy favors economic growth, no? Very common in North Korea, the "do what I tell or you'll starve in a concentration camp" approach, just isn't my favorite definition of cooperation. Coincidence or not, their economy is shit.

You raise a very important issue of limited resources, that wikipedia article on Capitalism explains better than I ever could, that counter-arguments to "those criticisms of the depletion of finite natural resources consists of the economic Law of Diminishing Returns, opportunity cost, and scarcity in economics". Interesting stuff.

My issue is with you portrayal of capitalism as ever-increasing competitiveness, because it's kind of biased and overlooks the abundance of cooperation. Imagine looking at a crowded night club and describing it simplistically as "a bunch of people struggling for the attention of the opposite sex". Seems pretty accurate if one hates night clubs. There is competition going on, specially for the most popular people, but what about all the other people enjoying each other's company over drinks, talking, flirting, and laughing, couples making out and enjoying the music on the dance floor? Who would describe those activities as purely competitive?

There is a lot of supply and demand in a capitalistic economy, not trying to sound like an economist, but competition is proportional to the difference between supply and demand. So what about where supply is meeting demand, should we just overlook the huge amount of cooperation happening there?

I find it amusing that you ask "What? What policy?", then, at the end of the same paragraph, write "The way the bailout happened is ... utter crap, but that is a different story all together." No, it's not a different story, the bailouts are government/central bank policy, partly the answer to your important question. Stepping in and handing out money to bankers who should have been punished by their excessive risk-taking with bankruptcy, is the exact opposite of letting free markets work.

To try to answer your persistent request for examples of free markets, if you didn't realize it yet, free markets are not very compatible with central banks, institutions that have a legal monopoly over what happens to half of a country's economy (usually half of all economic transactions involve money). Now, do you know how many countries have central banks today? Except for Monaco and Andorra, all of them.

Centuries ago, there wasn't a single country in the world where people enjoyed freedom of expression. That fact could be considered an obstacle to its adoption, but never a testament to its impracticality.

No you wrong. Bush spent like a Democrat. Obama made the mess bigger. >> ^harpom:

>> ^bobknight33:
There is more important issues at stake this election than same sex marriage. I'm not a fanboy of Mitt but Obama has done such a lousy job that he has to go.
Obama Was the great HOPE and CHANGE president and he as done nothing for gays, illegal alien and Club Gitmo, the economy, jobs and anything else you can think. He promised the sky and delivered nothing.

Don't forget, he followed the first retarded President of the US. He had one hell of a mess to clean up.

>> ^bobknight33:

There is more important issues at stake this election than same sex marriage. I'm not a fanboy of Mitt but Obama has done such a lousy job that he has to go.
Obama Was the great HOPE and CHANGE president and he as done nothing for gays, illegal alien and Club Gitmo, the economy, jobs and anything else you can think. He promised the sky and delivered nothing.


Don't forget, he followed the first retarded President of the US. He had one hell of a mess to clean up.

There is more important issues at stake this election than same sex marriage. I'm not a fanboy of Mitt but Obama has done such a lousy job that he has to go.

Obama Was the great HOPE and CHANGE president and he as done nothing for gays, illegal alien and Club Gitmo, the economy, jobs and anything else you can think. He promised the sky and delivered nothing.

"Distraction techniques like TV and magazines are the propagandists best tools to prevent people from thinking and talking about important issues."

I'm sorry. Are we sure this is North Korea? The irony slayed me