On Politics: Even More New Puritanism, Of A Sort

It's all about the First Amendment.

Unless you are listening to a conservative give a speech. Then it's time to turn into a New Puritan. Truly, umbrage has never been so hair-triggered.

You've heard the story: After having agreed to participate in a presidential candidates' debate sponsored by Fox News, the Nevada Democratic Party has withdrawn from the event, leading to the cancellation of the debate. Something was said; the Nevada Democrats instantly turned exceedingly righteous, so righteous in fact that they stopped their ears at the sound of a particular joke. They have taken umbrage. They are full of woe and dismay.

And they are proving that America is being overrun by New Puritans.

Amazingly, the New Puritans in Nevada have come -- or so one would think -- to the defense of George W. Bush.

Take a tour with me through the horrifying joke that led to this new spate of righteousness. Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News Channel, was fêted Thursday at the Radio & TV News Directors Foundations' First Amendment Awards banquet. During his acceptance speech, Chairman Ailes said the following (Warning: Not For The Squeamish!!!):

First of all, I was told I should do some headlines, so I'm only anchoring this, re-reporting.

I think we all need to go very slow on this global warming thing. I realize saving energy is good, but I think it may be a trick to get our anchors to stop using blow dryers.

[Laughter]

A man in France was arrested today for using his car to run down a pedestrian. He said he thought it was Osama bin Laden. OK, it was a mistake, but it still ranks as France's biggest military victory ever.

[Laughter]

John Seigenthaler and I are the same age. Look at how he let himself go.

[Laughter]

It is true that I said Britney Spears looked great at the Academy Awards. And I later found out it was Jack Nicholson.

[Laughter/ooohs]

It is true that just in the last two weeks Hillary Clinton has had over 200 phone calls telling her in order to win the presidency she must stay on the road for the next two years. It is not true they were all from Bill.

[Laughter]

And it is true that Barack Obama is on the move. I don't know if it's true that President Bush called Musharraf and said, 'Why can't we catch this guy?'

[Laughter]

Yes, yes. Pretty shameful stuff. In fact, it is the very worst one can imagine. But I am wondering: Could you pick out the joke that has been declared a mortal sin?

Well, in case you didn't catch it, it is the joke wherein Barack Obama's name is mentioned. That's right: The great offense is the joke ridiculing George W. Bush.

I know, I know. It IS hard to understand how the Democrats of Nevada could be so sensitive about jokes mocking the president. I am, indeed, surprised that they should so quickly come to his defense. But I am no doubt prone to committing the fallacy of facetiousness; the Democrats of Nevada are actually SHOCKED that it was jokingly insinuated that a tongue-stumbling president might confuse the name of Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden. That Bush would be prone to this sort of mistake should have given Democrats some pause, as Bush's shibboleth would prove that he was a threat to decency, and a friend of Sen. Edward Kennedy's. After all, who can forget the great outrage when Sen. Kennedy said in 2005 (see YouTube clip here):

"Why don't we just ask Osama bin Laden, Osama Obama, uh, Obama, what his ... since he won by such a big amount."

(Now that's funny! Of course, there was no outrage.)

But the New Puritans in Nevada, led by the chief puritan, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, have pulled the plug on any Fox News Channel cooperative because, in light of Mr. Ailes' joke given at a banquet honoring free speech:

"We cannot, as good Democrats, put our party in a position to defend such comments."

And what comments might they be, other than ones ridiculing the intellectual and verbal capacities of the President voiced under the constitutional right to free speech? Democrats cannot defend these comments? Since when?

But the real reason the Democrats are backing out of the Fox News-sponsored debate is due to pressure from MoveOn.org; the real reason is hidden in this priggish quip by MoveOn. org, which called Fox News a "mouthpiece of the Republican Party." In other words, the left-leaning MoveOn.org crowd is intimidated and fearful; they are not confident enough in their own convictions to be asked questions by folks allegedly committed to Republican ideals. The Democratic Party -- or so we can hear them say -- is only so strong and convincing: it will gleefully submit to a New York Times-sponsored debate because that medium is a Democratic Party mouthpiece, where the questions will be safe, easy, unthreatening. But Democrats debating in a Republican-biased forum? Impossible!

And to top all this off, journalists rushed to Barack Hussein Obama to ask him whether he was "offended" by a joke that had nothing, really, to do with him. He replied that he was not offended.

'"I didn't take great offense at the joke," Obama said in an Associated Press interview while campaigning in Iowa. "I have been called worse."'

He's been called worse? One might be tempted to tell the Blessed One (Barack means 'blessed') that he was not called any thing in Mr. Ailes' joke, that this had nothing to with him. But who would do such a thing? After all, when it comes to campaigns, presidential candidates probably do think that everything is all about them.

Umbrage!

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Red Flag = Cowardice: You Better Watch What You Read Here

If you look at the blue navigation bar that spans across this blog, a feature provided by Blogger, you will notice that there is a little flag. The flag on your screen should be a lighter shade of blue than the navigation bar itself. Curiously, the flag on my page, since I am the owner of this blog, is no longer blue at all. It is now bright red. This red flag indicates that some reader (or readers) has found the content of this website "objectionable" and has passed his or her concerns along to Blogger. That this has happened has made me rather sad, not because I have been caught in some sort of nefarious activity, but because it indicates the sort of world in which we live: a paranoid and cowardly one. One would be hard pressed to find a person who has left a comment throughout my 365 posts (or so) who has voiced such alarm; there has been very little controversy at Contratimes, despite this blog's title. I can only wish that I had had a chance to speak to the person or persons involved. But I can't: they've scurried off on their jolly way, certain they've done all humanity a favor.

But what is alarming is what this COULD portend. I encourage you to read the warnings for yourself. You see, if enough people descend on this site and click that flag, not only will Blogger paste up a warning on the front-sheet of this site, it will cease listing it. In other words, this is about censorship. It is about attempting to silence a voice on the Internet; to silence someone using the medium which is supposed to be the most democratic engine in history. But we all know it is hardly that. While I have never once made an attempt to silence a single person on the Internet, my work is deemed objectionable, and someone hopes to silence me. I pose some sort of threat, though there is not a bit of censorship in me. Imagine.

Of course, I am probably being paranoid.

But perhaps I am being added to the List of Banned Blogs in the New Inquisition. Perhaps the delicate ears I've offended are right-wing Christian fundamentalists, for we know that no decent, liberally-minded, freedom-loving, free-thinking intellectual could EVER find offense at free speech. Yes, that is it: I am being persecuted by religious zealots. At least, that is the only apparent explanation for the New Puritanism that deigns to flag this site as offensive.

Perhaps there is a way around this. No doubt I may move to my own server and be done with Blogger and the threats of hidden visitors who haven't the courage, or the intellectual vigor, to challenge me to my very plain face. Or is it that I have intimidated them to cower in the upper left hand corner of their mouse-pad, clicking in their boots? Who knows? But please note that if this site is deemed objectionable, then you, dear reader, are treading on very dangerous ground. Besides, they might flag you next. No. They WILL flag you next.

So much for democracy. And freedom.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes -- All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Blogger, Censorship, New Puritanism, Free speech, Red Flag, Flagged

Straining At Truths, Swallowing Lies

Consider it the new Puritanism. It's the new state religion manifested in great public displays of pain, shock, and disgust. It's as common as news print; as rarefied as membership in the Myopia Hunt Club. In short, it's everywhere, and it is ruining our lives. For it's the moral shock, the umbrage, at the wrong things.

Take two examples. The first, from a small New Hampshire town, is the story of a police chief who arrested a known illegal alien for trespassing. In minutes, it seems, human rights groups, on Monday, descended upon New Ipswich, New Hampshire, to protest the abuse of a Mexican illegal wanton in his dislike of America's immigration laws. Protesters screamed and squirmed about 'profiling' and the alleged abuse profiling invokes.

In short, the police chief is evil, though he did nothing wrong; and the lawbreaker is good. (One protester's sign read: "No human is illegal"; while a letter drafted by the Human Rights Task Force stated that "Everyone in the United States of America, regardless of immigration status, is entitled to equal protection under our nation's laws." Everyone, apparently, except a person who enforces those laws.)

The second example was reported moments ago. A 97-year-old Massachusetts woman, from Boston's Jamaica Plain, was found beaten to death in her home. Her "LifeLine" button had been pressed to alert authorities of trouble. When police arrived, she was found wrapped in a rug.

The juxtaposition of these stories is telling. For there is not, nor will there be, ANY protest outside this woman's home by the Human Rights Task Force. She might as well have died at the hands of Muslim terrorists.

But arrest a Mexican for committing a crime prompts the 'sensitive', truly moral among us to cry out against 'racism' and 'profiling'. Of course, no one screams about the profiling done by criminals against 'women' alone at night or the elderly 'rollovers' whose cashed Social Security checks are easy pickings. After all, profiling is fairly standard practice for criminals.

There is a slew of other glaring examples of America's increased Puritan fastidiousness. Here are a few more presented in no meaningful order:

1) Americans are concerned that the Koran was mishandled by US military servicemen at Guantanamo Bay, with even the commanding Brigadier General speaking in apologetic tones. Of course, desecration of the religious rights of Christians in Africa, of Buddhist artifacts in Afghanistan, or of crucifixes (soaked in urine) in American art circles prompts a mere callous dismissal. Moreover, no one reproaches Muslim fanatics for abusing the Koran in order to justify murder.

2) That Abu Ghraib abuses were considered "atrocities" (by Hillary Clinton, no less), and yet there is nary a candlelight vigil for beheaded Americans and Europeans (they deserve it, apparently, since they should not have been there in the first place, sort of like any woman raped in a dark alley at night), proves that we are increasingly morally indignant at the wrong behaviors.

3) Americans mock a President for stumbling over his words, but are apparently sophisticated enough to permit former KKK-member, and now senior senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia (in 2001, on FOX News): "My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white n*ggers. I've seen a lot of white n*ggers in my time. I'm going to use that word...."† Misspell 'potato' or misspeak 'nuclear', and you're an idiot. But if you're a Democrat racist, that's not worth a single placard. When Trent Lott praised the former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, his remarks led to a lynching. And his words were innocuous. But Byrd keeps on flapping without a a single Democrat crowing about his impropriety.

4) While attending the consecration of the first elected openly gay bishop in Christendom, I witnessed a dissenter read before the thousands gathered a description, replete with statistics and clinical terminology, of the behaviors of homosexual men. In short, the dissenter was reading MERE WORDS, you know, he was MAKING SOUNDS WITH HIS MOUTH. Suddenly the presiding bishop, the titular head of the American Episcopal Church, raised his hand and said, "Spare us the details and get to the substance." Odd, don't you think, that speaking of homosexuality in words is offensive, but the acts of homosexuals are not? If the details in words offend us, then why not the acts themselves? In other words, it is OK to do what no one wants to talk about it; but it's evil to talk about it.

5) Related to number 4, if a person ever expects a homosexual to 'change', note that such a person is instantly vilified as homophobic and abusive. However, no one seems to mind DEMANDING that homophobes MUST change. Of course homosexuals are born and homophobes are made, or so goes the new Puritanism. That few rarely point out that socio-biologists have insisted for decades that a person's genes are selfishly interested in procreation to preserve themselves in perpetuity; indicating that a strong aversion to homosexuality might actually be genetic, you know, in-born; reveals that the new Puritanism is only open to certain limited types of thinking.

6) When Reverend Jerry Falwell talks about making America great again, he is censured by the new Puritans who believe that religion has no place in politics. But when Reverend Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, speaks on America's greatness, the new Puritans fall dumbly silent. (No one notices, it seems, the colossal irony that Barry Lynn is a REVEREND interested in protecting America from religion.) They stop their ears to Falwell's evil rhetoric, and stand mute when Lynn rants with contradictions.

These are but a few of the many examples of the new puritanism. No one protested when Andrea Dworkin (now deceased) argued that men and women were different, essentially (and that women are better); but Harvard's faculty reeled and wailed when its president recently suggested that men and women MIGHT be different; proving that the new Puritanism is in the highest places.

It seems the Koran flushed down the toilet has prompted some, at least in spirit, to fly the American flag at half-staff, nay, to even burn it (Muslims burn our flag daily. Burned a Koran lately?). But the death of a pope, the head-of-state of the Vatican, a true defender of peace and justice, prompts many to wonder whether flying the flag at half-staff in his honor violates the U.S. Constitution. Muslims can flush American skulls down toilets in the name of the Koran; but Americans are to feel ashamed that their soldiers have not worn gloves when handling the same book. You get the picture, and that picture is a mess.

Welcome to the new Puritanism, where we strain at gnats and swallow camels. Or, more accurately, we strain at truth, swallowing everything else.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†For the Byrd quote, see this link. Yes, Byrd did apologize publicly for his slur and gaffe. So too did Trent Lott. But Lott remains marginalized.