I didn’t. I just didn’t have the strength to, I suppose.
I remember when Matt Shepard died. I manage this email list for gay teenagers- we run ages 13-25. The vast majority are closeted; we’ve got a lot more minors than any other age. It’s just the time for support, I guess. He was all we talked about for weeks. Nobody has the market on fear and paranoia more than closeted gay teenagers.
I remember how the fear felt. That whole idea that ran through all of our heads, of the heads of our parents. I remember telling my mom “No, not me. Couldn’t happen to me.” And it’s not like I run around worrying about being the victim of smear the queer. There have been times, however, when things have been a little dodgy. I realize it’s stupid, but it’s something that’s just… there.
It’s funny how he was just gay. I mean, everyone is complex and unique, and in the end he was just gay.
I hope that if I get myself killed I’ll be remembered as more than just a skirt chaser.
I watched it for a few minutes. One of the little stories involved a woman who sued her ex-husband for hate crimes, claiming that he abused her specifically because she was a woman, therefore making it a hate crime. The judge agreed with her too. It didn’t say if the guy ended up in jail, but I found myself silently cheering for that woman anyway. She couldn’t get the guy convicted for beating or raping her, but she was able to get him convicted of a hate crime, which is a felony.
… my wife and I watched part of it. First, it was hard to believe that MTV is aiming to be the last bastion of human civility, but there you go. While I firmly agree with the anti-discrimination stance of the program we watched, I find I don’t agree with hate-crimes legislation at all. I refuse to punish thoughts, only actions, and hate-crimes laws go beyond that measure. Anyway… it was a decent effort I suppose, from what I saw, although they seemed rather heavy-handed in their “hate crime laws are a super good thing” department.
<sarcasm>
Let’s take the already incompetent juries in America and turn them into thought police. What a great idea.
</sarcasm>
I think that what happened to Matthew Shepard (sp?) sucks. I think that the people who did it should be punished. Send 'em to jail for life or give 'em the chair. But this whole notion that we should probe into the minds of the people who engage in hate crimes and punish them more because the crime was motivated by unpopular beliefs is silly to me.
Just watch this hate crime thing get completely out of control. Minorites killing “majorities” (sorry, can’t think of a better word here) will get out of jail in 6-10 years and will walk the streets again, while anyone killing a member of a minority group will rot in jail forever because of the population’s liberal guilt.
When is MTV going to stop with this liberal agenda thing and start playing some music videos already? It’s 3:45 AM and I can’t even see a video. Used to be that you could avoid all of MTV’s politics and actually catch a video if you watched really late. Now, I guess it’s 24 hours of political issues. Maybe I can catch the next Matthew Sweet video on CSPAN?
I’ll leave your other comments for some of the more eloquent posters. However, would you cut it with the “liberal agenda” crap? It seems like when a conservative dislikes politics they disagree with it’s branded “liberal agenda”. MTV can do what they damn well please, and i think you really could benefit from the stores they’ve been presenting. If you had actually watched, you might have actually learned something.
But then i’m just another one of those gay people who complain too much because I could possibly get beaten to death, or assaulted because someone “strongly” disagrees with my sexual orientation. I’ll go back to the closet and hide, just so you wont have to hear of my “Liberal agenda”.
Oh, come on, Doobieous. I’m not trying to start up the whole “liberal bias in the media” argument. My point is that MTV stands for Music Television and that the whole channel has been dominated by, among other thinks like silly “real-life” shows, politics and attempts to influence the minds of the people who watch. I’m more pissed about the lack of music videos than I am about anything else.
And yes, I did watch a bit more after I posted. I still disagree that we need more “hate crime” legislation. Do you trust the juries of America to get inside the minds of criminals and determine their ultimate motivations for crimes? Even if that’s possible, do you think that someone who killed a gay person should be punished more severely than someone who killed a person randomly? What will happen to “equal protection” if we keep going in this direction?
I’m not even going to address your last paragraph.
I’m also wondering about MTV’s motivation for running this special, though not from any idea that they have some sort of “liberal agenda.” More than one news organisation has pointed out the paradox of MTV championing anti-hate crime legislation while playing homophobic and sexist videos (Eminem is just the latest example, there have been homophobic and sexist metal and rap videos on nearly as long as MTV has been around).
It’s a great stand for MTV to forego advertising revenue to draw attention to injustice, but it might have been wise for them to put their own house in order first.
I didn’t see the program but according to CNN, MTV said that 90%+ (don’t remember the exact number but it was over 90%) of their viewers identified “hate crimes” as a major issue affecting their generation.
Note: MTV had coverage of Clinton's inuagurations. Not Bush. Note: the 2 Democrat inaugurations, not the Republican.
re:hate crimes.
I care about what happens more than why. Matthew Sheperd's killers were facing a possible death sentence fro murder while committing a felony. Is hate crime legislation going to make the penalty HARDER? Tacks on the electric chair? Lethal injections with a dull needle?
I am now sitting in a room with a black woman and 2 white guys. If I go berserk and shoot her, should I protect myself against possible hate crime prosecution by shooting them too? Some of the zealots seem to think a "majority" shooting a minority is automatically a hate crime.
Are you talking about the first Bush innauguration not being covered by MTV? If so, I don’t really think it’s fair to hold that lack of coverage against MTV, since perhaps it was only in 1993 that that tradition was started. It’ll be interesting to see if they cover GWB’s innauguration, and if they don’t, then I’d say you have a case.
I’m still very much annoyed that MTV chose to complete last year’s “Rock the Vote” campaign by showing the final episode of The Real World on Election Night. That was irresponsible programming, if MTV truly had wanted to get their audience excited about politics.
And as for Hate Crime Legislation?
Maybe I’m just confused, but aren’t most murders, by definition hate crimes? I fail to see the necessity for a new set of laws to define which murders are worse than others. Dead is dead. Murder is murder. Maybe someone can help me understand why current laws making murder a punishable offense aren’t sufficient…
At the expense of being labeled hyper-cynical, I thought I should add to my last post. I forgot to mention MTV’s own not-so-clean past in race relations. According to Dave Marsh and James Shepard in The New Book of Rock Lists, when MTV was started they refused to play videos by black artists, claiming that those clips “might offend their target audience.” The top management even refused to play Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”–that’s right, folks, the policy extended even this far. The only reason Jackson got airplay at all was because the president of CBS Records, Jackson’s label at the time, threatened to pull all his other artists from MTV unless “Beat It” got played. It still took an unaccountably long time for black artists to be fully accepted by MTV–I know, strange considering the success of rap music on the channel, but completely true.
If MTV wants to seriously present itself as a defender of minority rights, it’s got to admit its own past and present failings. Else there will be more, deserved, cynicism from me and others.
No, I meant Clinton's 2. MTV has said they will not be having an inaug party this time. One of their employess reportedly, upon being asked why, said "Because he's not a Democrat." Possibly apocryphal, but also possibly true, as they are not doing one this time.
I have to agree it’s funny that MTV is trying to have it’s cake and eat it too. I’ve seen people talk about the trouble they had getting them to show black artists, and even rap videos.
Simply put, they are being hypocritical. You can’t exhort your followers to avoid “Hate Crimes” only to then have the world premeier of Eminem’s newest video.
I think part of it is that MTV has distinct elements of a social institution… but at it’s heart, it’s a corporation. They’ll do lip service to homophobia, but Eminem is going to earn them a lot more money.
Is it MTV’s obligation to be anything except a corporation? I’m not sure.
On another note… the best explanation I ever got of what a hate crime is went something like this.
Okay, say you’re a random Protestant white guy and you kill someone who happens to be Jewish in the course of a robbery, that is not a hate crime. We already differentiate between intent in the law- the difference between first, second, third degree murder, manslaughter… they have to do with various levels of intent. That is, if I kill someone in a fit of rage, that would be prosecuted differently than if I plotted out something far in advance.
Now, say I specificaly went out to kill a Jewish guy because I hate Jews. Say I wrote “die kike die” by his body.
Most importantly, say I did it to specifically cause fear within the Jewish community.
Hate crimes are a matter of intent, I think. Just my two cents.
I wanted to watch. I drove to my college campus to find a tv with cable on it to watch the show.
After driving around for 45 minutes and finding televisions t hat were inaccessible or being used for something else, I went home dejected. But I don’t know that I would have been able to watch the entire thing without leaving.
It would also be a hate crime if someone targeted a white man for being white or a man. For instance, Valerie Solanis could conceivably have been charged with a hate crime for trying to kill Andy Warhol, since she advocated violence against men simply because they’re men.
The problem is that some people are much more likely to be the targets of violence simply because of who they are. I’m not convinced that making it more illegal to harm people if you’re doing it because of who they are is a real solution, and I’m generally against laws being enacted simply to “send a message.” It would be a lot more effective if society did more than pay just lip service to the idea that everyone should be allowed to live free of harrassment, but since a significant part of society very obviously thinks that gays (or Jews, or blacks, or whatever group they were brought up to think of as sub-human) shouldn’t even exist, much less live next door, I don’t see that happening soon. Federal hate-crimes laws, like federal civil-rights laws, could be a way to bring some justice when local jurisdictions refuse to do it themselves. Unfortunately, we don’t know if that’s going to really change the way things are now.
In other words, I don’t know the answer. And since I gave up on MTV long ago, I didn’t realize the show was on until I saw this thread.
Maybe not, but if it’s going to act like a corporation, then it can’t pretend it’s a “disinterested” social institution. Saint Zero hit the nail on the head: MTV can’t have it both ways.
I don’t know…I really don’t like MTV as you guys may have noticed from other posts of mine. Its like they’re saying “look at us, we can cover real issues too!” Its painfully obvious, is all. They do a movie about an “important issue” then do a whole special after it. Like with their other movie Jailbait (which i did watch, :)), and then the whole teen sex spiel. Its like they’re trying too hard and its definitely not sincere.
They are, as you guys have mentioned, a corporation, and it just doesn’t feel real. Its like they’re making this movie to make themselves look open minded when in reality they’re a hypocritical channel (i.e., not playing black artists in the eighties, playing Eminem videos).
I didn’t watch the movie, not just b/c of all that…mainly because I have absolutely no time for TV this week. I thought about tuning in but really couldn’t…
A man sleeps with my wife. Now, say I specifically went out to kill this man because I hate men who sleep with my wife. Say I wrote “die adulterer die” by his body.
Most importantly, say I did it to specifically cause fear amongst those that wish to sleep with my wife.
I sure as hell intended to kill this guy. But it’s not a hate crime.
Here’s an article that talks about my biggest hate crime peave(sp?), the fact that it so often doesn’t work both ways. http://frontpagemag.com/dh/1998/dh10-26-98.htm Yes. I know it’s from a very biased source. I don’t care.