Bill Maher brought this issue up on his show last night. During the Clinton Era there was “political correctness”, verbal landmines you couldn’t step on lest all hell would break loose upon you.
Now what we have is “Patriotic Correctness”. Anybody who disagrees with the President or his military campaigns is branded “unpatriotic”, “anti-american” or a “traitor”
People are going around boycotting musicicians and movie stars who dare say an unkind word about our President.
Sad. Really, really sad. Were people widely branded as traitors for speaking out against Clinton’s military campaigns in Kosovo or Bosnia? They were merely people who disagreed with the president.
If a Democrat were in office right now, and people like Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilley were criticizing his military decisions, I might turn the page or change the channel. But I certainly won’t go around calling them Unpatriotic Traitors and demand that the network take them off the air.
For fucks sake people, French Fries has now turned into “Freedom Fries” because we hate the French so much for not going along with George W. Bush.
The fact that dissent is not being tolerated worries me a great deal.
If Bush’s political decisions were such good ideas, I think they’d be able to stand up to serious questioning and scrutiny. Apparently they are not. Which is why all opposition must be suppressed with the collective Iron Fist of the Right Wing
No, no, no, they were staunch patriots standing up to the ruinous policies of that pinko philanderer who somehow backed into the White House by using his oleaginous charm to sway the weak-minded of our nation. Twice.
If I decide that I do not want to see a Susan Sarandon movie or listen to the Dixie Chicks, what is wrong with that?
You have the right to say whatever you want.
And I have the right to decide that I don’t agree with what you say and decline to buy your products.
It’s got nothing to do with patriotism. I click off Jack Chick for the same reasons.
The government is not urging boycotts of these people. Individuals are deciding on their own to boycott these people.
Don’t you find it ironic that these folk are screaming about their rights to say what they want, but if you say what you want and it happens to disagree with what they believe, then you’re violating their rights?
Remember, some of these people are the same who campaigned to end Dr. Laura’s television show. She had a right to her views, and they led a boycott to get her off the air.
How come it’s now a violation of their free speech when it happens to them?
My personal blitzkrieg against SUVs. I’ve never bought one, after all. The putsch against slow computers. The fast food armageddon (tough competition after all). The genocide perpetrated agains acid washed jeans and hypercolor shirts (remember those?).
For fucks sake my ass! Freedom fries sounds mighty good to me. I don’t need to give the french credit for a damn thing. The french can kiss my ass and bark at the hole.
Of course they’re similar things. Different in magnitude, by quite a dramatically huge amount, but the reasoning is exactly the same: “I don’t like something that so-and-so said, ergo I will boycott so-and-so.” Can you really not see that?
Yes, but you see, the ONLY thing Dr. Laura traffics in is moralizing. Thats pretty much all she does. There’s no musical or cinematic artistry that she puts out that can be separated from her ideology. Those two things are inseparable.
That’s not the case with the Dixie Chicks. I can still listen to their music even if I disagree with their political beliefs, those two things are separate. The quality of a dixie chick song is not retroactively tainted by a comment they made afterwards.
“Disagree with”? “Dare say an unkind word”? These phrases understate the harshness of what the celebrities actually said. It should be obvious to public figures that reviling the President will piss off a lot of their own fans, since he has a 70% approval rating.
Incidentally, I was struck by all the hullabaloo that Tim Robbins has engaged in about the Baseball Hall of Fame gig. His whining makes him and organized baseball both look bad. However, it makes me think that Basebll was right to uninvite him and Susan Sarandon. His public petulance makes it seem likely that he might have used that appearance as an opportunity to politicize what should be a non-political event.
Yes, but the reasonableness of their respective reactions are wildly different. I am criticizing these people for being wholly unreasonable in their outlook.
People actually went out and ran over Dixie Chick CDs with tractors after they heard of what they said about Bush.
If I had a beautiful painting in my living room for years, and then I found out that the painter was a Republican, I’m not going to rip it off my wall and burn it. The fact that the painter didn’t vote the same way I do doesn’t detract from the beauty of the painting.
I can still recognize beauty produced from those who don’t agree with me on certain things.
The Dixie Chick boycotters, those who loved them before but hate them now because they spoke against Bush, can’t see anything valuable unless it’s produced by a Flag Waving Pro War singer. Sad.