So there I am reading the mostly quite aware comments on BooMan’s excellent Pie War Anniversary diary when I run smack dab up against THIS little doozy.
JUST when I thought it was safe to get back in the water.
So I said something.
A COUPLE of things, as it turns out.
And now it’s a diary.
About where things have gone in Official Left Blogoviate during the VERY eventful year following the Pie Fight.
Curious?
I’ll save you the trouble of scrolling down if you’re in a rush.
They have gone to hell.
Or Las Vegas. A SUBURB of hell.
Take your pick.
Read on for more.
Mirrorshade Mind writes::
“The pie war on Dkos was a pointless exercise in restricting the exposure of an advertisement that some people found offensive. I was offended by those who wished to ‘censor’ that ad. In a Democracy you have to take the good with the bad sometimes.”
I have one question for you, sir or madam, and one question only.
But before I ask that question, go up a few comments and read the reprint of my “The Real Gilligan’s Island” deconstruction if you have not done so already.
I’ll wait.
Read it?
Good.
OK. Now here’s the question.
Would you have been bothered if dKos had accepted an ad from a TV show that cast Hitler and the Aryan supremacist Nazi Party in a sympathetic light? Even as a so-called comedy? That cleverly REconstructed say “Hogan’s Heros” into a subliminal advertisement for the correctness of the Nazi way of life? That used an image of two Aryan-looking god and/or goddess types stripped to the bare minimum doing calisthenics in the sun on a Nazi meeting ground, surrounded by all of the usual Nazi/Goebbels/Reifenstahl visual cues? Swastikas, Reich eagles, etc.?
That’s my question.
I breathlessly await your answer.
“In a Democracy you have to take the good with the bad”, my ASS!!!
No one was trying to ‘censor’ that ad. Not many people, anyway. Most of us were simply trying to get dKos to put its money where its mouth was.
And we lost.
Because the people who were running dKos were NOT living where their mouth said they were. It was a rude awakening. But ALL awakenings are good.
It wasn’t about the use of sex in advertising.
It was about the use of sex in advertising to promote an evilly regressive, sexist show on a supposedly PROgressive political site.
Had some mild jiggle image…preferably male AND female…been used to promote say the Daily Show or Michael Moore’s work, the uproar would have been minimal. Hell, a good looking woman gets MY attention every damned time. (Good looking by MY standards, which the Pie ad critters were not. We all have our own pictures, and silicone has no part in ANY of mine.) It’s advertising on a glandular level, and it is both perfectly natural and perfectly understandable for pro advertisers to get people’s attention any way they can that is not in violation of community standards. But when it became perfectly obvious that said ad WAS in violation of the community standards of that blog at the time, its controllers made a decision…consciously or just because that’s the way THEIR glands work… which in retrospect was the turning point that led to dKos becoming the left wing blog of record for the PermaGov. They said “HELL no!!! We LIKE this ad!!! Go fuck yourselves.” They used the “freedom”card, but in reality it was all about money and where their own secret little pecker dreams lead them when they think no one is looking.
And…Presto chango!!!…one short year later they have a good selling book out, are appearing on national TV as paid poundits, and are running a big convention in Silicone Central where Presidential wannabes are courting them in ways the Skipper and Ginger never ever DREAMED of flirting.
“I want you.”
“In the worst way!!!”
So by their own lights…and in the last analysis they are just mainstream “Get mine now. With ICE CREAM on top!!!” centrist American entrepreneurs running a left-wing shtick, whether they actually know it or not…they were quite right.
Only thing is…mainstream America is headed right down the tubes.
And some of us are actually trying to REVERSE the process.
We shall see how successfully the attempt turns out.
So far…not so good. The promise of left blogtopia has in the last year been co-opted on a national level into a mindless celebration of weak liberalism in the most mindless of ALL American cities, Las VegasLand. Founded on the greed and stupidity of the new middle class by those wise predators, the Mafia, it has now been institutionalized into an American way of life by the even WISER predators who have succeeded in out-Mobbing the Mob on every level of American society.
The BIG criminals.
The ones who do not break the laws, they just make new ones to suit their purposes.
Pie fight?
I got yer “pie fight” right HERE!!!
I would have paid to see THESE two assholes hit the sack backstage.
Whadda lovefest THAT would have been.
“Whadda buncha maroons!!!”-Bugs Bunny,early ’40s.
Yup.
“Th-th-th-th-That’s ALL, folks!!!”
Yup.
Later…
AG
