True. And free speech also allows us to call them stupid fucking cunts. Maybe you should remove the beam in your own panties?
I’m not seeing the humor – am I missing something? I presume it’s a reference to Clint Eastwood’s bizarre and (IMO) pointless conversation with a empty chair (that was a stand-in for Barack Obama). And based on a Stringbean’s postings in this thread and others, I’m presuming he thought there was something clever or meaningful in Eastwood’s performance.
There can be a chuckle in encountering unexpected cultural references, but if the references are motivated by dumb, misguided agendas, that destroys the humor. That’s why Dennis Miller stopped being even slightly amusing.
What am I missing here?
Altering objective, measurable, verifiable truth is a freedom of speech issue?
If it was up to me, the paper’s licence to publish would be revoked, and further, if the laws would allow it Angela Merkel should sue them for damages.
No, it’s because El Al does not have the balls to stand up to Heredi assholes. No other airline would put up with their shit. Which is why they fly on El Al.
Civilized countries do not have “licenses to publish.”
Call them stupid fucking cunts all you want, perfect; but it’s nothing more that their editorial choice, it ain’t anything relevant.
Don’t like newspapers that censor pictures of women? Don’t buy it nor read it.
It’s exactly a freedom of speech issue. They have the rigth to publish whatever news they want, exactly as they want. Unless they’d said that it was a march in Cambodia, in favor of altering the off-sides rule in seven-a-side rugby they had simply taken a view that everyone of their expected readership understood.
Maybe they should say “it’s satire” and then they will be defended by everyone in the world.
I’m left to wonder what damages did Ms. Merkel suffer.
I don’t generally read newspapers designed to cater to insane cultists. So I’m good there.
Real damage? None. It’s however a little shitty to marginalize perhaps the most powerful woman on Earth and brand her a non-entity because menses.
I don’t think anyone is saying they should be imprisoned. They should be laughed at and called out for being shitty people.
I don’t think that the point of the thread is about Chancellor Merkel. It’s mostly about a newspaper lying to their readership, violating every journalistic code of ethics imaginable, about the fact that there are female world leaders so they can perpetuate the fantasy that women are inferior and therefore incapable of being leaders.
No - lying is NOT a freedom of speech issue.
ETA - I would also supply the same sort of reasoning to 'Mercan media that repeat political memes that are demonstrably false - I think there should be consequences for telling deliberate lies.
You are 100% justified to your own opinion on any matter that you want. It can be as racist, bigoted stupid or unjustified as you like.
What is not acceptable is to lie. And make no mistake - this is exactly what the newspaper as done. They have deliberately edited the picture to tell a lie, to perpetuate a mistruth, to say something that is objectively and demonstrably false.
That has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
As to what damages has the Honorable Ms Merkel suffered? In the real world none.
But I would love to see her sue them anyway on the basis that they should be punished and suffer consequences for lying.
If I were to construct the case, I would base the damages on her reputation being harmed by the paper telling a lie - the lie that she wasn’t somewhere that she provably was.
I’d also like to make the argument that it called into question both her competence and her compassion - both of which harmed her reputation.
Well said, bengangmo.
Somebody who creates fiction in order to push an abhorrent agenda is still an asshole, but they are orders of magnitude less bad than somebody who creates fiction in order to push an abhorrent agenda and tries to pass it off as fact.
Not as funny as Stringbean’s.
News is factual. They’re making things up. It would be a bit different if they just blurred Merkel and the other women in the picture, but instead they pretended they didn’t exist.
But, insane cultists are also people, with the same rights as non-insane cultists and non-cultists. If they want their newspapers in full vaginalessness, I couldn’t give a flying (or swimming) fuck.
A Little shitty? It’s big time shitty, but such are human rights.
Completely agreed insofar as their right to be shitty is not infringed upon.
How are they lying to their readership? They might be lying to me if I picked their paper as my only source of information, but not to their (expected) readers.
What if they put a header on the front page of every edition saying “We edit out all images of women and no merely blur them but take them out and make it look like they were not there”?
What mistruth were they perpetuating?
Ms. Merkel is a very clever women. Even if she were to care a bit about it, she is savvy enough not waste a second of her life in a useless suit. Her reputation wasn’t damged a single bit, nothing, zero, nada. People who read “The Mysogynists’ Gazette” or whatever it’s called, want that.
If, CNN, BBC, CBS, FOX, ABC, Al-JAZEERA, NHK, CANAL+, RAI had all done that’s be a problem.
A small newspaper? Doesn’t register.
It’s shitty editorial stance, but censoring always starts with the easy cases and then goes to the controversial ones.
What if they put a header on the front page of every edition saying “We edit out all images of women and no merely blur them but take them out and make it look like they were not there”?
I fully concede the paper’s leviathanical assholeness. They should’ve just blurred the pic.
What if they put a header on the front page of every edition saying “We edit out all images of women and no merely blur them but take them out and make it look like they were not there”?
Now that is stupid.
Emphasis added. A sense of humor?
That would be okay too. I mean, the policy is fucking stupid, but at least that would be honest.
It seems like you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. It is severely obscuring your point to the extent that you seem to have no idea what you’re talking about.
Your first post on this suggested that people should not get their panties in a bunch over this matter. Now you yourself are trying to outdo others in describing just how shitty it is. Watch those panties, idiot.
It’s an illustration of the sexist Haredi point of view. It’s also a reminder of the fact that Haredim have far too much power in Israel as Alessan points out. I have Israeli friends who are sick and fucking tired of the bullshit they pull over there. This includes buses segregated by gender, special stipends for hyper religious loons to sit on their asses and study torah all day while fathering ten children and attempts to deny secular Israeli women access to the public sphere.
They have power. Are they the kind of people any rational person wants to have power? Would most women be truly happy to have some male rabbi tell her to who to marry? Tell her that her husband cannot have sex with her because she’s spotting? Explain to her that she is denied the power to study the highest law in the land and must stay at home making dinner, working a job and having as many kids as her husband decides?