CSotD: He wouldn’t want his brother to marry one
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So the Benghazi-of-the-Week is that Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty expressed some neolithic views of sexuality and some jaw-dropping observations about pre-Civil Rights America and A&E exercised their right to not feature him on their channel.
Jonathan Rosenberg makes about the only necessary comment on the "scandal" itself.
What makes it a "Benghazi" is the tortuous inconsistencies required to pump it up into an outrage, starting with the idiotic concept that "freedom of speech" and "freedom to have your own reality show on a network you don't personally own" are the same thing.
I've got no problem with people objecting to the suspension itself. And, as Jonah Goldberg notes, it's kind of strange to put a guy on the air because you think rednecks are amusing, and then yank him back off the air when he says something consistent with being a redneck.
Particularly since "reality shows" are faked to begin with, which means you have to punish the guy for going off script without admitting there is one.
But, whatever else it is, it's not a free speech issue.
Nor are most of these outraged defenders of freedom exactly consistent about whose freedom they're willing to defend.
Pardon me if I suspect that, had Robertson announced that there is no credible historical evidence Jesus Christ ever existed and that the Bible is merely a collection of Jewish folk tales, these same people would be screaming for A&E to take him off the air.
Or what if he had said his brother died without having kids, so he was sleeping with his sister-in-law to get her pregnant? Or if he had modeled his role as family patriarch on the Biblical example set by Lot?
(Either of which, I might add, would be ratings gold.)
I was involved in local TV back when Donald Wildmon and his followers were petitioning sponsors to withdraw sponsorship of Franco Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth," which had not yet aired and which they hadn't seen but which they were convinced was blasphemous and which is now a mainstay of dewy-eyed Christian hagiography.
I have no problem with boycotts, or with petition drives asking media to change their policies on what they publish or broadcast. I wish people would complain about how morning drive has become a swamp of adolescent poop jokes. I think it was fine to let Glenn Beck's advertisers know how much you hated him.
And I'd be okay with telling A&E's sponsors who much you enjoy homophobia when it's couched as religious belief.
But I have a real problem with selective morality and uninformed opposition, and I find it particularly obscene to defend private industry's right to underpay their staff and curb their hours to prevent them from qualifying for benefits, and then turn around and announce that a company has no right to choose who they put on the air.
You want to enforce Christian values on private industry, there are a lot more pressing issues than whether A&E has the right to hire and fire actors.
In other fake outrages
Kevin Siers explores the exciting interplay of misperception and self-deception.
Siers may be exaggerating about increases coming every year, but, I promise you, this is not a new phenomenon and I've certainly seen them with some regularity for as long as I can remember.
It certainly did not begin with the Affordable Care Act.
Part of it is perceptual. As Yogi said, "You can observe a lot just by watching," and those of us who are parents can remember when we were pregnant and it seemed the world was suddenly filled with pregnant women everything.
Similarly, if changes in coverage are on your mind, you'll focus on them more.
It doesn't help when the media chooses the changes as Something To Concentrate On.
As I noted the other day, pack journalism can make the exceptions into the norm simply by reporting them out of proportion to their occurence. It can also add actual spin, such that Al Gore becomes a liar without telling any lies and Dan Quayle becomes an idiot based largely on apocryphal legends.
Thus a campaign promise or possibly a simple overstatement has been elevated by the press into a deliberate lie.
The vast majority of people are indeed able to keep their coverage and their same doctors, and focusing on the exceptions — and failing to vet them for accuracy — is a case of accepting GOP spin as gospel.
Siers' example is a more transparently foolish fallacy, but there's plenty of stupid to go around.
And, appropriately, finally …
I really like this xkcd, but you'll have to visit it to read the whole thing, because it's exhaustive enough that I don't think posting the entire piece here would be fair use.
I'm not geeky enough to have shared his experience, but I sure miss the days when Usenet was dynamic, and when listservs created the communities Facebook only pretends to replicate.
Which reminds me of a story from the Olden Days: I was on a Family Law listserv, which was dominated by Men's Rights bullies — if that's not redundant — who would continually get into shouting matches with the people on the list who were actual attorneys or actual women or men in actual possession of their marbles.
So one day, an email appeared that was signed by, and clearly written by, an extremely pugnacious feminist attorney, but the return address was that of a relatively mild-mannered but relentlessly logical fellow whose profession I forget.
The screams of "sock puppet!" went up from the Father's Rights bullies, who had known all along that this woman was a fictional creation of that guy goddammit, or possibly vice-versa also goddammit, but were pleased that the veil of deception had finally been torn aside on this liberal, anti-fatherhood conspiracy.
And, behold, there was much triumphant re-posting of headers to prove the deception.
A few weeks later, the two announced that they were getting married. Turns out she'd been visiting him — two or three states over — and had posted from his computer without remembering to sign him out.
The marriage didn't last, but my amusement over the absolutely unhinged slobbering fury of misplaced outrage has held up pretty well.
Anyway, I'd love to have a place to hang out like the one Randall Munro describes, but I think it's too late.
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