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Free speech? What is that Grandpa?

Journal by Runaway1956

"Hush child! Free speech is the reason you grew up without a grandma or your mommy or daddy! They all went to the Utah camps for demonstrating against the Democrat Party!"

https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1520790249957429248?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/28/dhs-created-disinformation-governance-team-police-/

https://www.sott.net/article/467375-Panicked-CNN-guest-wonders-how-we-re-going-to-control-the-channels-of-communications-in-this-country

https://ijr.com/dhs-dismisses-concerns-disinformation-board-leader/

Geeez, people, too bad we didn't have a disinformation board in the McCarthy days, huh? All those commies and socialists could have been put into concentration camps. Those radical black activists could have joined them. All the gay activists, a bunch of feminists, the free sex cultist hippies, and all the druggies. Don't forget the illegal aliens!!

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  • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @03:52PM (16 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @03:52PM (#1241452)

    Telling lies is a sin, of course, unless they are Democrat lies. Hiding the truth about Democrat candidates in the run up to an election can never be a sin. Lies are really only lies when Republicans tell those lies!

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Subsentient on Monday May 02 2022, @04:16PM (13 children)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Monday May 02 2022, @04:16PM (#1241459) Homepage Journal

    Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Enough with the sarcasm. Those of us with a spine are appalled at ideas like a "disinformation board". It's true the unwashed masses can have the cognitive dissonance to say "hurr it's okay when we do it" without realizing it, but those of us with a spine and a functioning logic center know better.

    God fucking dammit, humans are such stupid, nasty little monkeys; I'm ashamed to be one.
    People don't learn. Either everyone plays by the rules, or the rules lose their meaning and moral authority.

    I'm a free speech near-absolutist. I'm also left-leaning and a registered Democrat. Don't think the left is a monolith. We're not.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Subsentient on Monday May 02 2022, @04:19PM (12 children)

      by Subsentient (1111) on Monday May 02 2022, @04:19PM (#1241460) Homepage Journal

      And, as someone who checks multiple sources of news before believing much, I can tell you that the Republicans are currently the leaders in lies -- that said, the Democrats invented gerrymandering, though the ideologies of the parties were flipped back then.
      Election fraud is never okay. Full stop. But Trump lost to a senile old kid sniffer because Trump was even more unpalatable. They could have put a tweaker with no teeth in the running and he'd be more appealing than Trump.

      --
      "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti

      • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @05:09PM (8 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @05:09PM (#1241477)

        And, as someone who checks multiple sources of news before believing much,

        Echo... echo... echo... yup, must be true.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:45PM (7 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:45PM (#1241560)

          Just remember, it is the New York Times, and the Washington Post, not the other way around.

          The Washington Times is an American conservative[3][4][5][6] daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout the District of Columbia and in parts of Maryland and Virginia. A weekly tabloid edition aimed at a national audience is also published.[7]

          The Washington Times was founded on May 17, 1982, by Unification movement leader Sun Myung Moon and owned until 2010 by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate founded by Moon. It is currently owned by Operations Holdings, which is a part of the Unification movement.[8][9]

          Throughout its history, The Washington Times has been known for its conservative political stance,[3][4][5][6] supporting the policies of Republican presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.[10][11] It has published many widely shared columns which reject the scientific consensus on climate change,[12][13][14] on ozone depletion,[15] and on the harmful effects of second-hand smoke.[16][17] It has drawn controversy by publishing racist content including conspiracy theories about U.S. President Barack Obama[18][19] and by supporting neo-Confederate historical revisionism.[20][21]

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times [wikipedia.org]

          And:

          The New York Post (NY Post) is a conservative[8] daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The Post also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com.

          It was established in 1801 by Federalist and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, and became a respected broadsheet in the 19th century under the name New York Evening Post.[9] Its most famous 19th-century editor was William Cullen Bryant. In the mid-20th century, the paper was owned by Dorothy Schiff, a devoted liberal, who developed its tabloid format. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch bought the Post for US$30.5 million.[10] Since 1993, the Post has been owned by Murdoch's News Corp. Its distribution ranked 4th in the US in 2019.[11]

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post [wikipedia.org]

          Murdoch!

          Content, coverage, and controversies

          The Post has been criticized since the beginning of Murdoch's ownership for sensationalism, blatant advocacy, and conservatism bias. In 1980, the Columbia Journalism Review stated that the "New York Post is no longer merely a journalistic problem. It is a social problem—a force for evil."[63]

          The Post has been accused of contorting its news coverage to suit Murdoch's business needs, in particular avoiding subjects which could be unflattering to the government of the People's Republic of China, where Murdoch has invested heavily in satellite television.[64]

          In a 2019 article in The New Yorker, Ken Auletta wrote that Murdoch "doesn't hesitate to use the Post to belittle his business opponents", and went on to say that Murdoch's support for Edward I. Koch while he was running for mayor of New York "spilled over onto the news pages of the Post, with the paper regularly publishing glowing stories about Koch and sometimes savage accounts of his four primary opponents."[65]

          According to The New York Times, Ronald Reagan's campaign team credited Murdoch and the Post for his victory in New York in the 1980 United States presidential election.[66] Reagan later "waived a prohibition against owning a television station and a newspaper in the same market", allowing Murdoch to continue to control the New York Post and The Boston Herald while expanding into television.

          In 1997, Post executive editor Steven D. Cuozzo responded to criticism by saying that the Post "broke the elitist media stranglehold on the national agenda."[67]

          In a 2004 survey conducted by Pace University, the Post was rated the least-credible major news outlet in New York, and the only news outlet to receive more responses calling it "not credible" than credible (44% not credible to 39% credible).[68]

          The Post commonly publishes news reports based entirely on reporting from other sources without independent corroboration. In January 2021, the paper forbade the use of CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as sole sources for such stories.[69]

          Now we see why Runaway has been operantly conditioned to bark at CNN.

          And for those deny all common sense:
          https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/29/the-five-wikipedia-biases-pro-western-male-dominated [theguardian.com]
          Or,
          https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/ [thecritic.co.uk]

          Wikipedia’s list of deprecated sources currently contains 16 right-leaning sources: Breitbart, the Daily Caller, the Daily Mail, the Daily Star, the Epoch Times, FrontPage Magazine, the Gateway Pundit, Infowars, LifeSiteNews, News of the World, One America News Network, the Sun, Taki’s Magazine, VDare, WorldNetDaily, and Zero Hedge – and just one left-leaning source, Occupy Democrats. Other politically biased sources have also been deprecated, but it is harder to position them on the left-right political axis, such as media companies controlled by the Russian or Chinese government. The deprecated right-leaning sources include both those that advance far-right conspiracy theories (Infowars and WorldNetDaily) and those that advance ordinary conservatism (the Daily Mail and the Sun), as well as many shades of grey between those two extremes. It could be argued that even the non-extreme sources that have been deprecated are not of a particularly high quality, so the prohibition against citing them is not a problem per se,

          But to fact check the fact checker:

          The Critic is a monthly British political and cultural magazine.[3] Contributors include David Starkey, Joshua Rozenberg, Peter Hitchens and Toby Young.[3]

          The magazine was founded in November 2019,[4] with Michael Mosbacher, former editor of Standpoint, and Christopher Montgomery, a strategist with the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs,[5] as co-editors. It was funded by Jeremy Hosking, a Conservative party donor[6] who had previously donated to Standpoint.[7]
          Reception

          Mosbacher described The Critic as competing with Standpoint. Mosbacher said that Hosking had been unwilling to fund Standpoint without more of "the culture wars content" that interested him, but Standpoint's board resisted this direction.[6] The Times Literary Supplement described The Critic as having a resemblance to The Spectator, with a mission "to criticize the critics".[8] Ian Burrell of The Drum called The Critic a "contrarian conservative magazine".[6]

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Critic_(modern_magazine) [wikipedia.org]
          .

          Who would insist on "culture war content"? Oh, yes, a conservative. Point being, they have found a culture warrior, a man after what passes for Pat Buchanan's heart, in our own Runaway. Looking forward to him getting spanked again in this journal entry. Runaway journals are about the only entertainment left on SN, other than Fine Articles on subcutaneous nematodes in swarms out of some bloody chap's bum.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:54PM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:54PM (#1241569)

            Sounds serious, we should report him to the Disinformation Governance Board [babylonbee.com]

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:12PM (5 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:12PM (#1241580)

              Somebody needs to add the BabylonBee to Wikipedia’s list of deprecated sources. Conservatives suck at humor, they are just not funny.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:23PM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:23PM (#1241619)

                I've seen a few actually funny pieces from there, but mostly it is very on the nose libbies evil hurrdurr. Satire is not their strong suit, as usual cons copy the free. What else can you say about a group of privileged white bigots that thinks Rage Against The Machine is on their side?

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:52PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:52PM (#1241630)

                  The Babylon Bee got banned from Twitter and had posting disabled for an article naming Rachel Levine "Man of the Year". They were banned because it was deemed offensive due to Levine being a transgender person. Here's an article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/03/21/the-babylon-bees-twitter-account-was-suspended-but-that-made-its-story-go-viral/ [forbes.com].

                  I'm not weighing in on whether the attempt at humor was funny or not, or whether it went too far. That's up to you to decide.

                  The CEO, Seth Dillon went on Tucker Carlson's show to discuss the ban: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnq92_mR3yo [youtube.com]. The problem here is that Dillon goes beyond saying that satire and comedy should be protected. Instead, he suggests that the point of the satire was to take a position on whether a transgender person can actually transition to the opposite sex.

                  A lot of comedy becomes unfunny when it focuses on taking political and social positions instead of humor. That's exactly what the Babylon Bee is doing here. SNL wasn't funny at all when it became too political, and I just wasn't interested in watching. And I'm someone who has watched all of the Celebrity Jeopardy sketches so many times on Youtube that I have pretty much know every line in all of the sketches. Yes, I enjoy them too much, but SNL actually was quite funny at times. The Babylon Bee is getting political here, and it's just not funny to me. It makes me less interested in any of their other content because I know they're trying to make political points instead of just being funny and writing satire.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @06:14PM (2 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @06:14PM (#1241933)

                    A joke is funny because people laugh. Not everybody will laugh. Not everybody can. Some are too stupid, some aren't stupid enough, some internalize everything. Some simply lean back, turn it all off, and read Mark Twain or watch Blazing Saddles (1974) [imdb.com], every few years. Others...

                    Analysis paralysis ensures that some people will end the day, drained from a hundred conflicting emotions, and very few of them good.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @09:46PM (1 child)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @09:46PM (#1242013)

                      The measure of good humor is if it makes people laugh. The Babylon Bee has posted some quite funny content in the past. Politics isn't off-limits. SNL has a long history of satirizing politicians. I always enjoyed Darrell Hammond's caricature of Bill Clinton; it was hilarious. I remember a sketch, and I'm pretty sure it was a cold open, where it involves him calling Saddam Hussein and asking him to kick out the weapons inspectors to distract from the impeachment. It's political, but it's absurd and very funny. The difference between is that political humor wasn't trying to persuade me to some political view, which is a lot of what late night comedy turned into for awhile. When it became clear that the Babylon Bee was trying to make a point about transgender people, it made it unfunny. People tend not to laugh when you're beating them over the head with a political view.

                      It's not about good or bad taste in the jokes. I know the sketch with Dakota Johnson where a father was dropping his daughter off at the airport to join ISIS [youtube.com] was controversial, but I thought it was funny as hell and well executed. I know that people complained about Gilbert Gottfried cracking a joke about 9/11 a few weeks after it happened, but dammit, it was funny.

                      Good humor unites people, getting them to laugh about something where they might otherwise disagree. I don't have a problem if it's in good or bad taste if it's funny. Just don't beat me over the head with political views, because that defeats the purpose of humor and is unfunny.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @10:18PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @10:18PM (#1242033)

                        Gilbert Godfried died last week. I suppose Don Rickles would work as a meat packer, today. Everybody has a point to make or an axe to chew on... other people suck.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @09:38AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @09:38AM (#1241790)

        They could have put a tweaker with no teeth in the running and he'd be more appealing than Trump.

        That applied to the 2016 primaries and election as well. Think about that for a minute.

        • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday May 06 2022, @09:18PM

          by Subsentient (1111) on Friday May 06 2022, @09:18PM (#1242871) Homepage Journal

          Yes, but Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, and only got in because of the electoral college. Still, a majority of Americans found him unpalatable. This time around, people got to see that he was every bit as braindead and hopelessly corrupt as "ze libs" said he was, which is why he lost reelection.

          --
          "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 03 2022, @11:05AM

        by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Tuesday May 03 2022, @11:05AM (#1241801) Homepage
        > the Democrats invented gerrymandering

        Nope. Gerry represented the Democratic-Republican Party, which was the originator of the concept in context of modern western democracies. That didn't fraction off into the Whigs, the National Republican Party, and the faction that merged into the not-yet extant modern Democratic party until a decade after his death.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @06:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @06:24PM (#1241500)

    Telling lies is a sin, of course, unless they are Democrat lies.

    Where I live, there are constant TV advertisements about Republicans being against rule 42, against the border wall, against apple pie, and they show pictures of Republicans standing next to Obama or Hunter Biden's dad. Oh, the democrats in their advertisements are heroes, protecting us from evil and giving us cheap healthcare... their pictures are with adoring fans or doing hero poses before idyllic lakes at sunset. That was all April... can't imagine how it'll all spin as we get closer to November.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:40PM (#1241553)

    Telling lies is a sin, of course, unless they are Democrat lies.

    Lies are still lies, no matter who is telling them. Just so you know. Also, having differences on matters of policy is not automatically a lie. In addition, pointing out how horrible your preferred policy positions are, isn't a lie either. I hope this clarifies things for you.