Ok, Arthur Gilroy here’s the answer you want me to explain to you. Just remember you asked.
orginally you quoted the following from my comment. (note: the link you provided did not work on the Gilligan Island thing. So I’m not responding to the comments left with reading what you might have written there.)
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.
It seems that this statement has inflamed many of the people who comment on Booman Tribune. That was not my intent. My intent was to offer my viewpoint on what I thought and still think of the pie fight on Dkos last year.
Now apparently I have to explain it to those who left comments that I didn’t understand the “real issue involved” in the pie fight.
I understood perfectly what the real issue was but like Arthur I find it inconceivable that anyone who believes in the word “freedom” cannot exercise a little common sense and tolerance so that “freedom” is more than just a word but a real world exercise.
So lets look at the “Advertisement” that sparked the original pie fight. For anybody with an ounce of common sense it was obvious this ad was “sexist” and “stupid”. It attempted to appeal to the base nature of the male by objectifying the a female who was well endowed in the upper chest region. Many females objected to this advertisement on Dkos being that it was a progressive political site.
I totally ignored the ad because any ad that attempts to appeal to me on this level or assumes through the use of the inference that I’m just “sex maniac” who has no control over my sexual impulses is not only downright wrong but shows a total lack of respect for me as a mature male. So to me this type of advertisement has little or no appeal.
So I exercised my “freedom to chose” by never clicking on the link for whatever it was they were attempting to sell me.
So what am I now defending? If you guessed right you know it was the decision of the site owners to take the money of the advertiser and laugh his ass off when the ad generated no revenue for that advertiser because they didn’t do any homework on the people who visited Dkos and their views on using “sex” as a selling point.
Stupid is as Stupid does. So I can tolerate this kind of stupidity because freedom allows anyone to be as stupid as they want to be. So this whole pie fight in my viewpoint was pointless because the advertiser was an idiot. Marko’s showed everyone that, Yes there were even stupid advertisers that would throw money at him which he could put to better uses in getting politicians elected who represent the people and not just coporations who want no accountablility for themselves and their actions.
The other thing I objected to was the hypersensitivity mode this ad caused everyone to go into. If women don’t want men to look at them as “sex objects” then they have the choice of wearing the required dress for women of the Taliban overlords when they had control of Afghanistan.
Women in America get upset when their physical attributes go un-noticed by males they want to attract. They also get upset when a male can’t take his eyes off the cleavage long enough to look them in the eye. So for males it is a no win situation. All I can say here is that if you women who are reading this have pegged me or the rest of the male population with a “male chauvinist” label you are wrong to do so.
Yes there are men who rape and beat women I can only say they better not even attempt it my presence because I will use any means up to and including killing them to stop it from happening. I’ve seen the results of women who were abused not only by men but by other women, in many cases their mothers or sexual partners. The same goes for men I know who have been sexually and physically abused.
Last month a very good woman friend of mine passed away. Her mother abuse her so badly in her childhood that she developed multiple personalities which allowed her to survive the experience. She had massive scars on her back from the beatings her mother gave her with belts, canes and lamp cords etc… No human being deserves this type of treatment.
Saying that a stupid advertisement causes this type of behavior is simplistic and ignorant of the reality that human beings who commit these atrocities on other people are preprogrammed by the attitudes, values and experiences of the generation which gave them life.
Attitudes, values and behaviors learned in childhood are not easy to overcome. Changing society to stop hurting each other is not something any government, special interest group or institution can force society as whole to do. It has to be done at the individual level on day to day basis.
Sorry everyone but this is a hot button issue with me on a very personal level because I’ve dealt with the fallout of way too many people who have suffered the petty tyrant who uses and abuses any human being they are in contact with.
Is their a connection between sex used in advertizing and rape and abuse? If your taught hate then yes. If your taught to love then there isn’t. So if what you love is sick, perverted and twisted by childhood, life experiences and you define your life by what you hate then the problem is more than just a picture which may act as a trigger.
So as you can see I rejected the advertisement on a personal level but I will defend to the death the right of Dkos to take that advertisers money because I believe in the words “freedom” and “tolerance”. In this case everyone on Dkos had the “right not to ever chose” to click on that advertisers advertisement.
What good is freedom without being given choice? The minute anyone wants to limit my choice in life is the minute I know that freedom has ceased to exist. This was the real issue that got glossed over in the pie fight.
So I’ll stand by my original statement. If anyone doesn’t understand why at this point then I suggest you spend a minute making a list of how you would “impose by force” the choices you would limit Americans to make. If you already have along list then maybe you should rethink this concept called “Freedom”.
There is one other thing I will point out about the pie fight on Dkos.
Don’t waste my valuable time with being a bunch of drama queens and getting off the main focus of any site and it’s real objective to make America free from the tyranny that is being imposed on it’s population by the politicians, corporations and the criminals who created this mess we all call America.
[Update]To all those who have commented. Each and everyone who commented is “Right”. So now you can feel much better about how you convinced me that your “Right and I’m Wrong”. Yep! Everyone here has just convinced me to “Agree with Everything and Everybody”. Keep it up and within no time at all the world will finally have Peace since there will be nothing left to argue about.
