I can’t believe those people of all people are scolding about hate speech.

Dear Lord:

+++++++++++++++

#12 Ojoe 7/23/2007 9:26:35 am PDT

This leftist stuff is not my idea at all of what the USA should be about.

Here we work together and we get along

Freedom

Respect

Prosperity

Under God who loves us all

#13 savage_nation 7/23/2007 9:27:50 am PDT

These people better realize that they longer they keep pushing the closer they are to setting themselves up as targets by ‘certain elements’ in the government who would dearly like to see them hang for treason.

A second civil war is in the making.

These people see the U.S. Constitution as the product of slave-owning, dead, white, European males.

They see the religion of jihad and honor killings as part of the multicultural menagerie. They see Jews and Israel as giving offense to their strong-willed Muslim friends.

#73 Joan Not of Arc 7/23/2007 9:47:16 am PDT

I think no matter how prevalent this kind of thing is, it still makes one sick. Liberals can get away with this kind of puerile hatred but no one else. How about everyone who exhibits this kind of stupidity gets a boot up the ass?!

++++++++++++++++++++++

I can’t believe those people of all people are scolding about hate speech.

Agreed. On the other hand, what the hell is up with Gawker? That shit makes me cringe.

My assumption, from having known a couple Gawker people in the past, was that the editor was probably Jewish — and if not, then that he or she understood that the readership is heavily Jewish, and was doing a typical NY safely-edgy thing.

And of course, Chazmo of LGF is interested in finding things that he can make appear as if they’re anti-Semitic, pro-Islamist threats. He doesn’t care at all about context or tenor, or about what people are really saying, but only about how he can credibly spin something into an ‘outrage.’

Why the surprise, Duros62? Accusing others of what they are doing themselves is standard conservative politics. That way, when they get caught (and they always do) they can obfuscate the issue by claiming its all just tit-for-tat. See also: “voter fraud”, “activist judges”, etc, ad nauseum.

Do these people ever actually talk to, you know, these “liberals” they go on about? Or do they get all their ideas about what “liberals” think from other “conservatives”?

I may have some very harsh opinions about George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Trent Lott, Alberto Gonzales, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Orrin Hatch, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, John McCain, Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell, Kathlen Parker, Larry Elder and many other Republican and/or conservative nitwits, but they are all based on things that they actually said.

Meanwhile, some “lefty” professor I never heard of says something (or didn’t say something) stupid and suddenly we’re all responsible for it.

God, they’re dumb.

Do these people ever actually talk to, you know, these “liberals” they go on about? Or do they get all their ideas about what “liberals” think from other “conservatives”?

No, and yes.

Do these people ever actually talk to, you know, these “liberals” they go on about?

Yes they do, and they still don’t get it.

Rudy, of course, is not Jewish. Alex Pareene? I don’t know, but he is from NYC.

Re: Gawker

Mark Caro of the Chicago Tribune’s Pop Machine blog took offense to that Harry Potter post at Gawker. Heeb Magazine HQ responded, as did Gawker. Gawker responded to the Heeb post and then posted a diagram in response to a reader. Balk writes (from that fourth link):

We are sincerely sorry for offending your delicate Jew sensibilities. Yes, it’s true, there are a few Jews here in the office—we’ve crunched the numbers, and four out of five Gawker editors have at least some Jew blood in them (not on them!)—and we do think that gives us the right to make Jew jokes. But you know what? None of us are Irish, thank God, and we still knock the micks every now and again. We’re kinda of the opinion that the idea of ethnicity and its accompanying stereotypes are inherently hilarious. So, sure, we may not know a lot about life in Israel—do you guys still eat the Palestinian kids after your tanks run them over, or did you stop that once Rabin came into office? Do we still send Israel billions of dollars a year?—but, guess what, we think the comical ways in which your Jew country kowtows to the craziest Jew elements of crazy Jewiness could not be funnier. Hope that’s okay!

Someone needs to tell Johnson to add Heeb to his list of left-wing hate sites.

“#13 savage_nation 7/23/2007 9:27:50 am PDT

These people better realize that they longer they keep pushing the closer they are to setting themselves up as targets by ‘certain elements’ in the government who would dearly like to see them hang for treason.

A second civil war is in the making.”

Just keep telling your self that buddy. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Can he really believe this shit? Then again he’s a fan of “Savage Nation” so I guess I already know the answer.

Here we work together and we get along

Respect

Unless, of course, you happen to disagree with my somewhat radical opinions, then I’ll have to smear you, threaten you and attempt to convince members of my government to imprison you. But hell, I’ll still respect you. Really.

A second civil war is in the making.

Yeah, but it’s gonna be a little embarrassing when we all roll out for it and all the people calling for it, encouraging it and doing whatever they can to enable it turn out to be the same chickenhawks that won’t take up arms against the evil islamonazis, and everybody just stands around kind of uncomfortable and confused ’til someone (probably Pinko Punko) offers a bite of his sandwich and everybody puts down their weapons and starts trading really good porn sites…

mikey

Just to make the above clear as mud, the quoted text from Balk is more in response to a commenter at Heeb’s blog who didn’t like the original Gawker post than it is to the Heeb post itself.

I was speaking to a wingnut friend of mine this weekend. He educated, pretty hip, relatively funny, etc. He is not religious at all, and describes himself as a “California Republican.” I’ve asked him a number of times what this means, because every time he explains, it makes less and less sense. So, he said that California Republicans are socially liberal but fiscally conservative, which to me sounded libertarian more than anything.

When I asked him about the war he said that Iraq was a huge blunder that never should have been waged. Not, bad, right? HOWEVER, he believes that we are in a war against “extremism” and that ANY extremism is necessarily dangerous and should be fought. This sounded pretty vaccuous to me so I asked for examples. He listed: Hitler, Stalinism, and militant Islam. Well, that made sense to me. I agreed that all three were bad news. He then proceded to tell me that after 9/11 the U.S. needed to smash a country. “Whether or not it had anything to do with 9/11?” I asked. He said yes. Well, why Iraq? You just said the whole thing was a mess. Yeah, but 9/11 changed the way we should behave in the world, and that even if torture doesn’t work we should use it from time to time on really bad guys – like the fellas we’ve captrured in Iraq.

He then said something about hippies being extremists too and that hippies are bad and that their activities in the 70s were very dangerous – just as dangerous as, you know, Hitler, Stalin, and Osama. I asked for examples. He couldn’t recall, but he was sure that the hippies did terrible things in the 70s.

Thankfully his wife changed the subject.

Legalize, that’s fucked up man. I know it’s been said before, but damn, The Right really has become a parody of itself. Yep, those hippies are basically the same as Stalin. And that’s not “Moral Equivalence” either because only Libruls do that.

Well, I hate to offer support to the “California Republican”, but as I have said before, I’m a hippie and I did some truly awful shit in the seventies, not to mention most of the eighties. Of course, I’m in the same boat as he is in that I can’t remember much of it either, but some courts decided I should go to jail, so it musta been pretty bad, huh?

mikey

Why the surprise, Duros62? Accusing others of what they are doing themselves is standard conservative politics. That way, when they get caught (and they always do) they can obfuscate the issue by claiming its all just tit-for-tat.

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting that Projection “R” Us technique.

If I become a full-fledged hippie can I do some truly awful shit? I’ve done some falsely awful shit, and it just wasn’t, you know, satisfying the way I thought it would be.

I like the way over at Gawker, they’re standing up on their hind legs and defying the squeaking little gerbils that are all over them for showing (perceived) disrespect towards an ethnic group. That’s the kind of moxie that it’d be nice to see when next there is a Sammich Eruption or some such in these here parts…

I see the problem. Anybody over at Gawker and Heeb regularly understands the “hip, edgy, ironic” nature of their ostensibly antisemitic remarks. Only those of us on the outside, not privy to the joke — a group that includes Mark Caro, the Heeb commenter, and possibly the people behind Stormfront — could possibly look at the “Jew Jew Jew” stuff in Gawker’s and Wonkette’s posts and think “Hmm… That seems a little, er, beyond the pale.”

Like the “stunning rocket” bit, “Jew-liani” is an in-joke, specifically referring to this video.

“Jew York Times”, of course, is them slipping in a warning about the completely real Jewish domination of New York and the media that threatens us all.

“Hmm… That seems a little, er, beyond the pale.”

“Beyond the pale” originates with the “Pale” (walled fortification) that the Romans erected to separate their clean, wholesome, civilized occupied territories in Britain from my filthy barbarian native Celtic ancestors. To the ‘Green Zone’ Romans, everything ‘beyond the Pale’ was worthless, uncouth, disorganized. Therefore using this phrase is objectively anti-Irish, at least by LGF standards, and those who perpetrate this cultural libel deserve to be beaten with cudgels (/snark).

Dammit, my cudgel is in the shop getting a new coat of spar varnish. I do, however, happen to have an old taped up roll of nickels and a muddler. If these substitutes are available, I’ll be delighted to do the honors…

mikey

er, acceptable.

Real men don’t use prevue…

mikey

Thankfully his wife changed the subject.

No, it’s not fortunate that his wife changed the subject — or, more precisely, it’s only fortunate for him. Not you. This is how wingnuts “win” arguments. We give up or decide harmony is better than acrimony or “agree to disagree” or whatever. No, I say. Hold their goddamn feet to the fire. Make ’em prove that hippies out-Stalin Stalin (Mikey’s transgressions notwithstanding — I’ve no doubt MIkey can out-radical the best of them when he’s of a mind).

In case anybody cares, live debate blog!

Charles Johnson looks *exactly* like my friend’s mom.

Oh, and links to LGF from TinyURL worked earlier today. Now it seems he wants to block anyone from using it to reach his site.

Idiot.

Goddamn right, Smiling Mortician. Unfortunately, sometimes it really is better for us to just let it go. The last reich-winger of whose company I had the displeasure was a coworker. He said Katrina was the best thing to ever happen to NOLA, cuz it got rid of all the n*ggers. Continuing that conversation would have only lead to violence, I think.

Not my style to use asterisks to cover up bad words, but I see the post was edited to do just that. When within the pale with the Romans…

That asshole was and is a lost cause, though. When it comes to otherwise reasonable people who maintain their Republicanism with a rickety stand of disinformation and faulty logic, the best thing you can do for them, and the world, is to knock it down.

“Beyond the Pale” also refers to the “Pale of Settlement in South-eastern Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine where Jews were compelled to settle in the 19th century by the czars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement

I’m a smart sammich!

Yay! Now we know what kind of sammich it is. Yum, fried pork brain with country gravy. Thick dense crusty bread. That’s a smart sammich, by golly….

mikey

Everybody likes Dennis Kucinich’s wife.

The End.

LIke Legalize I regularly have strange conversations with conservatives. A sampling of the things I have been told in just the last month or so:

* The press is liberal and overtly hostile to Bush and this is why they don’t ask tough questions at press conferences.

* Bush has no responsibility for what is occurring, has occurred or will occur in Iraq. Although he is the “Commander in Chief” the military operates completely independently and without oversight from him whatsoever. When asked why then we need a CIC at all, the response was “well, someone has to be in charge”.

* All government programs are completely and totally corrupt, with the exception of the military which is perfect in all regards. Any evidence presented otherwise is a “liberal conspiracy”.

* Government health care is terrible and inefficient and we’d be better of with nothing at all. (The speaker’s mother had received, by his own admission, “exception” cancer treatment through Medicare which was prolonging her life. However but both he and his mother “hated the government with a passion”).

* The chain of command of the Marine Corps is involved in a conspiracy with the “liberal media and Iraqi Al-Quaeda sympathizers” to persecute Marines charged with murdering civilians, even though many of the Marines involved have plead guilty and admitted to the killings. That being said it’s also true (according to the speaker) that the Marine Corps and all of it’s officers and enlisted men are “patriots and freedom lovers” and any criticism of them is unfair and a lie.

* John Kerry was a draft-dodger and Bush was a decorated combat veteran. When I pointed out the truth was exactly the opposite of this the response was that Kerry didn’t really earn his medals and that Bush had many ribbons he received while combat was occurring in Viet Nam at the time. When I asked how someone who actually was in Viet Nam could also have been a draft-dodger the response was “Kerry didn’t want to be there in his heart, so he was virtually a draft-dodger”.

Without exception political conversations I have with conservatives consist mostly of irrational and magical thinking that they will not discarded regardless of the contradictory facts.

Dammit, Sammich, my people were Beyond the Pale centuries before those Russian gonifs came along, even if you use Wikipedia’s thinblooded version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pale .

(Hey, the nuns told me it was a Roman invention. Never disagree with a Dominican teaching sister, they can use those rulers in ways that would impress your average ninja. But even 14th-century Ireland predates 17th-century Poland.)

Stop trying to coat-tail on my ethnic victimization cred, or I will have to inform the sanctified ninjas…

or I will have to inform the sanctified ninjas

And while they spent the nickels, they’ve still got the holy muddler…

mikey

My conversation with my conservative pal (and he really IS a friend and a good guy) really wasn’t an “argument” as such, in that, well I make a living making arguments, and when the terms of the discussion are so bizarre, in that the standard “if —- then” logic does not seem to be operative, there really is no point in trying to counter the points raised by the other side. I mean, at this point everyone realizes that trying to reason with Chuckles Johnson and his band of deluded knuckle-draggers is a no-win proposition. You can’t argue with idealogues; all you can hope for is that they are forced to air their abusurdities among reasonable people, and that those people will simply shake their hands and beg for the conversation to turn to baseball because the current one is harshing their buzz.

So, in the end, we all agreed that the Yankees are pure, good, and freedom-loving, while the Red Sox and Mets secretly support teh Islamocommies.

As usual, Johnson has taken the time to nuke links from a critical blog and re-direct people who click Gavin’s post to a flashing image screaming “YOU ARE AN IDIOT.”

Why he does this to visitors when his blog has closed comment registration is a mystery to me.

You really don’t see the power angle, Dave? These are weak, inconsequential people. They thought they could hook their Navy SEALs jammies to the cheney “Fight everyone then go back and fight them again” star and maybe have one chance of being something those, you know, athletes just seem to be given. Maybe there’s one chance they can lie their way through the world, calling for confrontation and retaliation without every actually participating. And yes, people can actually be that stupid.

It’s about power. He does it because, in the larger picture, he has nothing over which he wields power. Just this. He can manage comments. But beyond that, he can configure the server to reject source IPs. He actually has dominion over the Intert00bz! All hail! Kneel before your rightful ruler, peasants!!

mikey

WTF? We’re getting behind “Rudy Jew-liani” and “Jew York Times”. Well dude, you might be, but I’m not.

Rightards often make out the left is antisemitic and that’s why it attacks Israel. Way for Wonkette to prove their case.

It’s a well documented fact that the LGF crowd are run purely by the “Dr. Zoidberg” part of their brain.

Rightards often make out the left is antisemitic and that’s why it attacks Israel. Way for Wonkette to prove their case.

Yeah, but let’s be sensible here. One one hand you have a mostly Jewish group of NY-hipster editors using the word ‘Jew’ loosely. On the other you have literal neo-fascists who genuinely want to kill Muslims, and who are feigning outrage in order to make themselves look less like Nazis.

This is that ‘moral triage’ that HTML Mencken is always talking about. Both sides aren’t right, but one side is far more egregious.

From Johnson’s Wikipedia page:

Johnson coined the term “idiotarian”, popularized the epithet “moonbat” and promoted the sarcastic use of the phrase “Religion of Peace” to describe Islam.

He also coined the term “fauxtography” to describe the publishing of manipulated photographs by news services such as Reuters and the Associated Press.

All true, or his he having an “invented the Internets” moment?

Next question: if it’s all true, doesn’t he deserve to be beaten with a tube sock full of oranges? I fucking hate those words.

Cheerily,

So, he said that California Republicans are socially liberal but fiscally conservative, which to me sounded libertarian more than anything.

Yes, I have encountered this since moving to California almost 9 years ago (criminy, has it really been that long?). Essentially, they are classic pro-business, pro-small government (and they actually mean it–it’s not just lip service like what George the Lesser offers up while ballooning the government) conservatives minus all the gay-bashing and Christianist bullshit that has infested the GOP. So they’re actually repectable (and respectful in disagreement); at least the ones I’ve met are. I kind of hope they recapture the GOP as a whole because at least then we won’t have one party that’s utterly batshit fucking crazy.

You are still too sensible. In comedy it’s crucial where your material is aimed. Context is everything, there is stuff that *could* be pure comedy gold that comes out of the mouths of LGFers *if* it was said by a Muslim/Arab/Whoever they think they are talking about, and instead it’s scary and nasty because it’s not really a joke and it’s coming out of their mouth.

oh, and to an audience of above-referenced LGF villians.

Yeah, but let’s be sensible here. One one hand you have a mostly Jewish group of NY-hipster editors using the word ‘Jew’ loosely. On the other you have literal neo-fascists who genuinely want to kill Muslims, and who are feigning outrage in order to make themselves look less like Nazis.

I must have missed the “About Us” page at Gawker that says “We’re a mostly Jewish group of NY-hipster editors.” Which, if I had seen it, would undoubtedly have made me double over with laughter at the “Jewy Jewbergstein” jokes.

You know, I hear the arguments about oppressed groups appropriating (or reappropriating) the words that have been flung at them in hatred, and I don’t for a second think that the Gawker/Wonkette editors are a minuscule fraction as antisemitic as Chuckles Johnson’s lizardittoheads are anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and/or anti-brown people. But I think people who have been on the receiving end of slurs that were meant as slurs may not find it particularly funny to hear them trotted out again, even as hip irony or ironic hipness. Especially by people who are ostensibly aligned with them on the anti-hate side of the human race.

Bah, fuckit, I was trying to rip off a John Schwartz thought anyway, I’ll et him do it.

Jon Schwarz comment I mangled trying to sum up

We now begin my labored, unfunny explanation of my views on this, in which I strive to use every last bit of my SAT analogy training.

1. Mollie, you write “(Some of) the audience laughs as if he’s saying something that needs to be said, so I’m trying to figure out what it is they think he’s saying.” I’m sure that Seth Meyers and whoever’s laughing think the point of the jokes is “It’s ridiculous for Islamic organizations to try to lessen anti-Muslim sentiment by doing these small things, when they don’t seem to do much about a much larger reason for anti-Muslim sentiment: terrorism. I mean, what causes more Islamophobia — an episode of ‘24? or 9/11?”

This sounds like it makes sense until you think about it for one second. Because semi-analogous jokes would be:

SETH MEYERS: Christian and Jewish Americans joined forces yesterday to tell city officials to stop taking the Christianity out of Christmas, warning them that this simply fuels a backlash against Jews. Also fueling a backlash against Jews? Shooting Palestinian children in the head.

And:

SETH MEYERS: Jewish groups are concerned that the new season of “24,” which features Israeli Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman dropping a nuclear weapon on Mecca, will foster hate against them and create a climate of Judeophobia. Also creating a climate of Judeophobia? Shooting Palestinian children in the head.

Or:

SETH MEYERS: Muslim and Christians in Sudan joined forces yesterday to tell city officials to stop taking the Islam out of Ramadan, warning them that this simply fuels a backlash against Christians. Also fueling a backlash against Christians? Raping and killing Iraqi women.

And:

SETH MEYERS: Christian groups are concerned that the new season of “24,” which features a fundamentalist Christian president dropping a nuclear weapon on Mecca, will foster hate against them and create a climate of Christiophobia. Also creating a climate of Christiophobia? Raping and killing Iraqi women.

Needless to say, SNL won’t be airing material like that anytime soon.

2. Even the examples above aren’t perfectly analogous, because when it comes to comedy it really, really matters whether someone is aiming material at their group or at outsiders. Thus what SNL did is actually WORSE than the examples I gave. Moreover, context matters a lot too.

With this Weekend Update material, it was Meyers aiming it at outsiders. And the context is that we’re currently occupying two Muslim countries and seriously considering an attack on a third. Furthermore, Meyers is doing it on a network owned by GE, a corporation that surely has supported the Bush administration and made lots of money off the war.

Now, imagine if there were an Iranian TV channel run by the Iranian Republican Guard, and this channel had a show like “24,” and Iran had recently started wars that had killed 500,000 Jews. And that show featured “Sadiq Al-Meyers” telling this joke:

SADIQ AL-MEYERS: Jewish groups are concerned that the new season of “???? ??????” on this channel, which features Israeli Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman dropping a nuclear weapon on Mecca, will foster hate against them and create a climate of Judeophobia. Also creating a climate of Judeophobia? Shooting Palestinian children in the head.

That’s the analogous joke. And it would obviously be disgusting hate-mongering. Moreover, if few people even noticed how disgusting it was, we would take it as a sign that Iranian culture had some very deep, ugly problems.

Now, consider if the same imaginary channel had featured Sadiq Al-Meyers delivering this:

SADIQ Al-MEYERS: Muslim groups are concerned that the new season of “24,” which features Muslim terrorists setting off a nuclear explosion near Los Angeles, will foster hate against them and create a climate of Islamophobia. Also creating a climate of Islamophobia? Terrorism.

I think I’m right in saying that, through the weird alchemy of context, THAT — the exact same material that I call hate-mongering when on SNL — would have been daring and funny.

Believe it or not, I actually have much more to say. But I will let other people speak further first.

Your comment section really hates Farsi characters by the way.

But I think people who have been on the receiving end of slurs that were meant as slurs may not find it particularly funny to hear them trotted out again, even as hip irony or ironic hipness. Especially by people who are ostensibly aligned with them on the anti-hate side of the human race.

I think this is kind of the sammich discussion revisited, and I see your point, but I have to confess kind of a mental block about equating raw speech with sentiment.

I’m not sure I’m right, here, but I’m personally not much fazed by epithets (Jew, nigger, queer, et al), while being extremely queasy and horrified by human bad intentions, such as LGF possesses.

Again, I’m not sure I’m arguing a fair point.

Sadly no, Dave. The oh-so-clever little re-direct link you mention does not say “you are an idiot” it says “you are a idiot”. You see, the little johnson of LGF is the product of a program called The Dumbing Down of America. Possibly, home schooling could have been involved, but at his age it is more likely that he is what happened when Reagan conservatives decided that our schools should be on a laissez faire system, much like the disturbed and disabled people who could not fend for themselves were tossed out into the streets. Poor little johnson. We’ll never really know what potential he had; at this point it matters not.

I personally know just about everyone at Gawker and almost all of them are indeed Jewish, and, not to add anymore sweeping generalizations to the pile, but us NYC jews like to make Jew jokes.

Back in the day, you had movies like Annie Hall where Woody Allen is constantly assuming that everyone is anti-semitic to comical conclusions and this tradition has evolved into a self-parody where the jews themselves are the biggest of these bigots around.

Its akin to the Chapelle Show sketch where Chapelle plays a blind black leader of the KKK who when he finds outs he’s black divorces his own wife for being a “Nigger Lover”. Yes, that Chapelle sure hates black folk.

An earlier commenter had it right. the yokels at LGF simply aren’t urbane enough to understand the modern Jewish comic’s sense of self-parody.

Before the LGF crowd decided to hate every muslim, it was they who used Jew York City as a derisive slur against Gotham, but much like the hip-hop crowd and “nigga” the jewish comic as taken the term as their own, but all those LGFers who have never been a minority (except for now as Bush supporters) wouldn’t know the first thing about reclaiming a slur as an inside joke.

Go to the LGF comments and do a “find and replace” for “muslim” with “jew” and it reads like Goering. But thats not news to anyone here.

Plus, if you’ve ever met those Gawker Media kids, you’d know that being as irreverent as possible is a major part of their schtick.

Gavin,

“UFO?” Wow. You referenced “UFO.” Nobody ever does that.

Wow.

With admiration, Sir,
Clem

I think this is kind of the sammich discussion revisited

Yeah, it pretty much is. The whole funny/not funny line is blurred like Pammycakes’ vision after a 2-liter bottle of Grey Goose and a fistful of vicodin … although that’s not a fair comparison, since her tolerance has possibly built up to the point that that’s just the Breakfast of Champions.

Anyway – I think that Noah is getting close to a pretty good point there. Pointed humor that uses tough language and stereotypes to point out shitty lingering racism/sexism/whateverism is quite different from the knuckledraggers chortling over “Osama the Magic Negro.” One is used to challenge assumptions and make us think, the other to hammer home the already existing hatred/fear in mean&fuckedup people.

I loved Teh Sammich, thought it was funny, and think in general that shitstorms like the one that enveloped Jesus’ General a while back are the product of drama queens who should really develop their enemy identification faculties a bit more. Enforcing thought and humor orthodoxy is the type of thing that the Dolores Umbridges of the world just looooovvvvee.

[sorry about the gratuitous Potter subreference, but I just couldn’t help it]

It all breaks down to the dozens of levels of tribalism in our every day lives. Those in the tribe are allowed to make fun of that tribe, and if the audience is part of it to? So much the better.

If you’re not part of it? You’re not allowed. Simple as that.

Chapelle making a joke about stupid niggers robbing a 7-11? Fine.

Imus calling successful, young, mostly black woman athletes, all of which he is very much not, “nappy headed hos”? Not fine.

It’s a mishmash. The Wonkette piece didn’t work for me and reminded me of another Pareene post. I figured there was something going on with the two terms—Jew-liani and Jew York City—but the piece itself gave no internal clues or indications where to look. If Wonkette Reader hadn’t shared the video link, I’d still be at a loss. I’m not sure how far one can take the in-joke argument for a site so large.

The Gawker posts are better at signaling their tone, but a clearly conveyed intent to be ironic, irreverent and funny does not automatically guarantee success on these three fronts. I found the diagram amusing; I thought the other stuff fell flat.

And that’s just my opinion!

ck of Jewlicious has an opinion too, one that’s more worthy of consideration than mine.

Its akin to the Chapelle Show sketch where Chapelle plays a blind black leader of the KKK who when he finds outs he’s black divorces his own wife for being a “Nigger Lover”. Yes, that Chapelle sure hates black folk.

Imagine that Chapelle’s sketch was done on radio, that all you heard was the part where he divorces his wife and calls her that name, and that you had no knowledge of Chapelle’s skin color. Imagine further that you are a black person who has had racial slurs directed at you.

Might you not think this was a bit objectionable?

Dan, you’ve already said you wouldn’t have cared if you had read the About You page where you figured out who was who and what they were about.

You’ve got to pick an argument here, either context is immaterial to comedy or it’s not.

One point about Chappelle: he knows the subject matter of his black white supremacist sketch (race in the United States) better than Gawker knows the subject matter of its Harry Potter post (religion in Israel).

Oh, that’s horseshit. Israel is a patchwork of enforced and uninforced laws religious laws. Yeah, you can buy books till hell freezes over in Tel Aviv and get a blowjob from the Russian girl after she ate a bacon cheeseburger right before that. You can do the same thing in Tehran (probably with a Chinese or Thai girl). Hurray for freedom.

Let her marry a piece of shit in Israel and have kids and try and leave him and wind up in front of a Rabbi as a “rebellious wife” and see how long she *hearts* Israel.

Yes, I have encountered this since moving to California almost 9 years ago (criminy, has it really been that long?). Essentially, they are classic pro-business, pro-small government (and they actually mean it–it’s not just lip service like what George the Lesser offers up while ballooning the government) conservatives minus all the gay-bashing and Christianist bullshit that has infested the GOP. So they’re actually repectable (and respectful in disagreement); at least the ones I’ve met are. I kind of hope they recapture the GOP as a whole because at least then we won’t have one party that’s utterly batshit fucking crazy.

What’s totally weird about it (to me, someone from NJ who’s lived here for almost 6 years now), is that the candidates the Republicans put up are generally far more insane than anyone that would think about voting for them. I forget the name of the dude they put up against Grey Davis before the recall, but he was apparently so completely repellant that Grey Davis (nearly universally loathed!) actually won re-election. Baffling!

So they’re actually repectable (and respectful in disagreement); at least the ones I’ve met are.

Mmm-hmm, right. Its true that CA Repubs are generally more pleasant to be around socially than yer average Southern-fried Fundie Wingnut but they are no less fucked in the head and they are even more authoritarian. Theirs is a sort of fresh-scrubbed, deep tan, spiky-hair sports-sandal-stomping-on-a-human-face-forever kind of fascism.

The post LGF is ranting about looks like it’s recycling the charges that anyone who supports Israel is either Jewish or is bought and paid for by the Jewish cabal that controls the world media.

I’m Jewish by heritage only and think conservativism is morally and intellectually bankrupt, the Iraq War is the greatest foreign policy blunder in US history and George Bush should have been impeached as soon as it became clear there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I also have worked as a humor writer and occasionally perform comedy. Despite all those things, I found the post about as hiply ironic as the musical stylings of Johnny Rebel.

Hey just so long as we’re riffing on racial stereotyping… and scanning last night’s commercials… mebbe ya’ll should ponder Billy Dee Williams selling Colt .45 malt liquor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhzKWMk3kow&mode=related&search=

Then again, maybe not.

Dan, you’ve already said you wouldn’t have cared if you had read the About You page where you figured out who was who and what they were about.

I think maybe you missed the snark in my post on that point. I’m going to have to work on being less subtle.

I hearby dub this thread Teh Ruben Sammich.

It’s true the dirty fucking hippies were as bad as Stalin. They did, after all, take over the government, nationalize industry, set up gulags in the deserted plains, persecute intellectuals, and execute their political rivals. Right?

Things just haven’t been the same around here without the Sammich and its cheery friend, Mr. Celery.

“It’s true the dirty fucking hippies were as bad as Stalin. They did, after all, take over the government, nationalize industry, set up gulags in the deserted plains, persecute intellectuals, and execute their political rivals. Right?”

Well, they wanted to but…all that pot smoking really kills your initiative.

Pot & hippies, not quite so bad as Stalin…

Noah, you said:

“LGFers who have never been a minority (except for now as Bush supporters) wouldn’t know the first thing about reclaiming a slur as an inside joke…the yokels at LGF simply aren’t urbane enough to understand the modern Jewish comic’s sense of self-parody”

I’m a Jewish LGF yokel who loves the site and has met Charles and spoken with him.

“Plus, if you’ve ever met those Gawker Media kids…”

Actually, I’m sorry…I haven’t. I do know the man who played trumpet with Woody Allen for years and is on the soundtrack of most of his movies of the first 20 years of his career! Hell, I’ve sat in with his band, since he’s a good friend of my dad’s!

Is that relevant?

Oh, and Annie Hall is one of my favorite movies (though I prefer Broadway Danny Rose), and I’m also a fan of Dave Chappelle’s blind black racist skit.

Still, despite my cinematic tastes and passion for good sketch comedy, and the fact that I know someone who knows Woody Allen, AND that you slice the Challah on Shabbat with your rabbi buddies at Gawker media – I found the postings at Wonkette and Gawker insensitive at best.

I do confess to not reading their blogs, much, though, so maybe it’s my fault for not digging their nasty style. Honestly, I kind of wrote them off after they talked about John Edwards kissing Israel’s ass and saying Israel was the biggest threat to world peace.

I guess it’s the LGF Yokel in me.

But agree with me or not, the Gawker “shtick” isn’t really funny.

And Alex Balk is no Dave Chappelle or Woody Allen.

Perhaps your comedic tastes will mature over time, and you’ll find someone truly funny to rant about.

To the ‘Green Zone’ Romans, everything ‘beyond the Pale’ was worthless, uncouth, disorganized. Therefore using this phrase is objectively anti-Irish, at least by LGF standards, and those who perpetrate this cultural libel deserve to be beaten with cudgels
They built limes in the Irish Sea!?

Actually, it was limeYS who used the term to refer to Irish territory not under English controll.

Ah, David S., your chief complaint is that the matierial simply is *insensitive* and thusly not very funny to LGFers – likely due to the more high-brow calls for violence and genocide that represent the comment section of LGF threads. Fair enough. Some people think that calling for the death of a Supreme Court Justice is hilarious, while other people think that looking for an exit off the “B Jew E” in Brooklyn is funny.

On the other hand, while, I for one, appreciate your laundry list of irrelevant name-droppings as a means of fellaciously appealing to authority, some Americans still believe that offending over-sensitive LGFers is hadly a capital or infamous offense worthy of the endless, copy-and-paste screams of “ANTI-SEMITE!!!!111one3” spewing forth from Chuckles’ pie hole whenever his brain is over-taxed by a sentiment more complex than “AMERICA FUCK YEAH!” – a feature that manifests itself approximately every five minutes.

On the other hand, I’m not sure that LGF isn’t a comedy site in the first place. I mean, the posts in teh-scary-discarded-tube-of-death-that-didn’t blow-up-New-Jersey thread are comedy gold and all …. I’m just not sure that they were MEANT to be such. Any insights, Oh Lord of Comedy Stylings?

He’s redirected your tinyurl. He must be really embarrassed by what he wrote.

Legalize:

You said,

“while, I for one, appreciate your laundry list of irrelevant name-droppings as a means of fellaciously appealing to authority.”

That’s not what I did, Legalize. You obviously didn’t comprehend or fully read my post.

Noah was name dropping by saying he knows people at Gawker. I was being ironic by name dropping about Woody Allen’s trumpet player, to prove that it really doesn’t matter whom Noah nor I know.

Hence, my, “Is that relevant?”

Noah was also trying to compare Gawker’s nasty, anti-Semitic humor to the humor of Woody Allen and David Chappelle, implying that people at LGF don’t have the “urbane” sophistication to comprehend said humor. I merely made the point that I read LGF and love the humor of Woody Allen and David Chappelle, but that I don’t see how that’s relevant to the nasty posts at Gawker.

As far as your changing the subject to try and make this some illogical tit-for-tat argument by attacking the comments on LGF, I can say that I generally don’t read the comments and disagree with many of the posters there. I know Charles, does, to..

People who attack LGF always slam the comments section, because they are an easy target and some really nasty people post there. Finding examples of Charles saying nasty things about Muslims that are the equivalent of “Jew-liani”, is pretty much impossible, though.

Comments sections on many blogs are loaded with venomous stuff. Hence, the comments under the “Jew-liani” thread on Wonkette and the “Jewish graph” thread on Gawker, plus the neo-Nazi pictures that pop up on Daily Kos from time to time.

It’s an ugly world, Legalize. But you’ll make get through it, I’m sure.

“Legalize:

You said,

“while, I for one, appreciate your laundry list of irrelevant name-droppings as a means of fellaciously appealing to authority.”

That’s not what I did, Legalize. You obviously didn’t comprehend or fully read my post.

Noah was name dropping by saying he knows people at Gawker. I was being ironic by name dropping about Woody Allen’s trumpet player, to prove that it really doesn’t matter whom Noah nor I know.”

Hence, my, “Is that relevant?””

Well, that certainly is convenient

“Noah was also trying to compare Gawker’s nasty, anti-Semitic humor to the humor of Woody Allen and David Chappelle, implying that people at LGF don’t have the “urbane” sophistication to comprehend said humor.”

Successfully.

“I merely made the point that I read LGF and love the humor of Woody Allen and David Chappelle, but that I don’t see how that’s relevant to the nasty posts at Gawker.”

Because it’s the same thing.

“As far as your changing the subject to try and make this some illogical tit-for-tat argument by attacking the comments on LGF, I can say that I generally don’t read the comments and disagree with many of the posters there. I know Charles, does, to..”

Really? You’re taking the position that cherry-picking comments in LGF threads isn’t fair because said comments don’t necessarily reflect the views of all or most LGFers specifcially, or all conservatives generally …. ? Really? If the Irony of this position requires explanation, feel free to ask.

“People who attack LGF always slam the comments section, because they are an easy target and some really nasty people post there. Finding examples of Charles saying nasty things about Muslims that are the equivalent of “Jew-liani”, is pretty much impossible, though.”

Yeah, you’re right. Chuckles slanders an entire religion, and groups of people without wack plays on words. Never. Not once. And not every other thread.

“Comments sections on many blogs are loaded with venomous stuff. Hence, the comments under the “Jew-liani” thread on Wonkette and the “Jewish graph” thread on Gawker, plus the neo-Nazi pictures that pop up on Daily Kos from time to time.”

I wonder if you can take a moment out of your busy day, reflect honestly, and without any self-serving rationalization, simply admit that LGF certainly falls into this category. Just wondering.

“It’s an ugly world, Legalize. But you’ll make get through it, I’m sure.”

You see “ugliness,” which I suppse is requisite of LGFers. I see great hilarity and often inanity that is deserving of mockery.

Legalize:

“Well, that certainly is convenient”

Huh? I was using irony to make a point. You obviously didn’t get it.

You still don’t.

What’s so “convenient” about using irony?

I confess I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

“Successfully.”

How did Noah prove that David Chappelle and Woody Allen’s humor is comparable to Wonkette saying “Jew-liani” and “Jew York Times?” He didn’t pick out any specific examples of Woody Allan’s that are comparable.

And Chappelle’s skit is clearly done by a black man to show the absurdities of racism. It’s in a compeletey different context.

Where are there examples of these two comedians posting hate speech on the internet or using racial slurs to target people in their stand up routines?

“Because it’s the same thing.”

Because what’s the same thing? Charles pointing out Islamic fundamentalism is the same as saying “Jew-Liani”?

When has Charles used a racial slur to refer to Muslims or Arabs?

Please cite examples.

“without any self-serving rationalization, simply admit that LGF certainly falls into this category.

What category? Nazi propaganda images using Hilter, like have been posted on Daily Kos?

When has Nazi propaganda imagery been posted on LGF.

Man, you’re STUPID.

“Both sides aren’t right, but one side is far more egregious.”

Oh, that’s okay then. So as long as the other side wants Muslims to be killed, we can hate Jews? That’s fantastic because all this not hating Jews was really beginning to get me down. But if they stop hating, we have to stop our moral equivocation and treat our own behaviour on its merits? Bummer!

And dude, all this bullshit about how everyone on Wonkette is Jewish and it’s just an injoke is getting me down. I don’t read Wonkette, so when someone links to some inyourface antisemitism there, without disclaimer, how am I supposed to know that it’s all just a fun joke you Jews are sharing? Man, won’t there be egg on your face when the fascist guy at LGF turns out to be a Muslim!

Congrats, David, you’ve managed thus far to avoid calling me an Islamonazi (or some derivative thereof), while simultaneously invoking strawman after strawman, and inconsistency after inconsistency, in an attempt to avoid … well … the point, as well as every clear example, easily proffered in this thread. Now, who do you have for the wildcard in teh AL this year?

Legalize:

You said,

“Congrats, David, you’ve managed thus far to avoid calling me an Islamonazi … wildcard in teh AL this year?”

Um, sure.

You really outsmarted me.