I can’t wait for Starving Artist to opine that liberal politicians are a bunch of damn quitters because they have not resigned from office yet.
I mean, his comments have such a through-the-looking-glass quality to them. In addition, he often appears to be using the essential and proven tactic of accusing your opponents of the very weakness that is in your own position; as long as you accuse the other side first, it puts them on the defensive, and then makes any counter-argument of “but you did it first” just seem like a tu quoque.
But they were happy then, don’t you see?! Because none of them ever took little Starving Artist aside and ranted to him about Jim Crow laws or institutional racism (probably because they didn’t want to be lynched for complaining about their lot), that proves that they were HAPPY!
Wow. I don’t think you are a racist, but you certainly are a moron. Either that or a troll. I sure hope troll is the correct description, because it means that I have not been wrong over the last couple of years.
I remember when you started posting here Starving Artist: I didn’t think you would last very long because your posts were ignorant to the point of absurdity and your level of discourse was comparable to someone in high school (IM not so HO). But over the years I started to develop a grudging respect for you. I actually got to the point where I would read your posts instead of skipping them as I so often did. Your rhetoric lessened, you could actually string an argument together, and you finally started scoring some points. I rarely agreed with you, but there were times where you made me re-think my positions. Not many, but a few. I actually had hopes that someday you would actually reach the level of Sam, Scylla, or Bricker in contributing a welcome counterpoint to the many liberal and moderate viewpoints on this board. Now, however, my hopes have been dashed. If you truly believe the crap you are spewing in this thread, you a much less intelligent than I ever gave you credit for, and that includes my opinion the first day I read your prose. Please tell me you are just trolling. Please. Because if you don’t, a little piece of my hope in humanity will die being confronted by the utter stupidity of your rhetoric.
I’ve no doubt they were happy, what with all that major civil rights legislation tumbling through Congress like an avalanche of virtue.
Oh, wait, that’s why conservatives voted against the Civil Rights Bill! It had already been done years previous, and the dumbass liberals didn’t notice!
What you don’t realize elucidator, is that civil rights legislation would have been achieved far, far sooner if only the dirty hippies hadn’t used the foolish methodology of marching and demanding rights. The true conservatives, (who, as everyone knows, embraced civil rights, but simply not the hippy methodology) would have quickly passed the legislation, there would have been no civil unrest or disagreement, and everyone would have been happy, polite and civil. As I’m sure you can see, this is an argument that is simple and correct, and if you disagree with it, you are simply engaging in a prolonged battle of words, and are close-minded.
What, you mean alcohol? That’s destroyed more lives than all illegal drugs put together. Pretty sure it’s not the sole province of liberals, either.
Sounds pretty much like the end result and (unstated) methods of “No Child Left Behind” to me.
Liberals encouraged and glorified gang culture? On what fucking cuckoo planet did this happen? Since we’re just going with anecdotal evidence here, I can honestly say that I have never in my life encountered any liberals who thought gang culture/violence was a boon to society. This assertion is so patently absurd I don’t even know why I’m bothering to respond.
It’s called encouraging freedom of speech. And you do realize that there are just as many conservative whites who listen to gangsta rap as liberals (I feel justified in making this claim, since you don’t seem to feel cites are necessary in this discussion), don’t you? Also, as far as the emulation: cite? People have been claiming the new “youth music” has caused juvenile delinquency at least since jazz came out, yet I’ve never seen any solid evidence of causation.
Thank God conservatives never have and still don’t engage in misogyny, gun violence, or crass vulgarity. Otherwise you might have to rethink your position. Unless you think they only do so because they’ve been seduced by the glittering neon of “liberalism”.
Ah yes, the damned PC Police letting people out of prison because they thought the penal system was a racist plot. Certainly there are no more complex factors involved (such as prison overcrowding being a result of draconian drug laws or funding issues). I’m sure the next time you vote you can get enough conservatives to change this shitty system based on liberal doctrine.
“Sexual promiscuity”? Man, you really are living in the '50s. I’ll give you the fact that liberal enjoy fucking rather than seeing it as a dirty, shameful act (unless it’s done right!) that women shouldn’t enjoy lest they be branded brazen hussies. But rates of teen pregnancy, STDs, etc. are the result of stupid people fucking, not liberalism. Hell, it’s probably more the result of uptight conservatives not being willing to talk frankly about sex and its consequences and teaching abstinence-only bullshit, but then what else would you expect a filthy liberal to blame it on?
Absolutely the most retarded thing you’ve ever posted, which is saying something. If you sincerely believe this, you’ve got less brain activity than Terri Shiavo.
Yes - damn the liberals selfishly pushing for UHC and SSM! They obviously aren’t concerned with society at large! Must be why you hear about so many groups of liberals starting up survivalist/separatist movements and moving to the woods and talking about armed rebellion against the government because they don’t want to pay taxes.
I hate to break it to you, old chap, but Fox News isn’t liberal.
I think you have accurately paraphrased SA’s argument. Which makes it a convenient starting place for me to explain why he’s wrong.
The concept of propriety common in the 1950s was a vehicle for allowing the majority to ignore the concerns of minorities. Women, blacks, gays, and others were shut out of the mass media because discussing their concerns was considered crude, or inappropriate, or obscene. FinnAgain broached the subject of maritial rape being legal, and it’s an excellent example of how the powerful taboos and stigmas attached to sex are inextricably tied up in women’s liberation. How is a woman who is routinely being raped by her husband supposed to escape that situation, when she literally has no conception of what sex is supposed to be? If the only message she’s ever heard about sex is that its shameful and degrading, and sex with her husband regularly shames and degrades her, how is she ever going to learn that there’s something terribly wrong in her marriage? If no one will talk about divorce, except in terms of how it “ruins” the woman, how is she ever going to escape an intolerably abusive relationship?
Now, I’m sure SA would agree that that’s a bad situation, and I suspect his solution would be, “Well, those topics should be talked about, but we should still have standards about what other things should be talked about.” But that’s problem with these sorts of standards - how do you determine what should be taboo if you won’t talk about the taboos? It’s easy to say that, say, a rap song about shooting cops should be beyond the pale, but can you craft a taboo specific enough to exclude something like that, but include another work of art that deals with the anger caused by the racial disparity so often found in law enforcement? You don’t want to ban them both: how are you ever going to resolve the very real social issue, if society refuses to talk about it? And someone is going to argue that you are not, in fact, dealing with two different works of art: that the “Cop Killer” song is, also, dealing with the anger caused by the racism inherent in our law practices.
We are, in many ways, living in a more vulgar time. And I do think that vulgarity is a necessary side effect of a freer and more open society. If Starving Artist wants to blame that on liberals, I’m actually okay with that. There’s a whole lot of problems in this country that we wouldn’t even know about, if we hadn’t relaxed our ideas about what’s okay and what’s not okay to talk about. If having to hear the word “motherfucker” on someone’s stereo is the price we have to pay for that, I think it’s a pretty small price to pay.
But what about the kids, Miller? They hear Jay-Z saying “motherfucker” (a word kids had never heard or used in my day) and it’s a slippery slope to crack addiction, gang-banging (in both senses of the word) and revolving in and out of prison.
Starving Artist, we have done this before, but I’m not sure everything you said in your long post above has a basis in fact. I’ll pick out an easy one and I await your thoughtful response.
Do you dispute that? Can you provide a cite that supports your claim or are you willing to give a little bit of credit to liberalism for this triumph over something that is a bane of society?
I think you made some other factually incorrect statements, but I’d like to clear this one up before we move on.
You know, it’s funny. Starving Artist mentions here that he assigns a large part of the blame for what he sees as the downfall of civilized society on the Beatles, so much so that preventing their rise to fame would be the second thing he would do if he had a time machine, after saving John F. Kennedy. And yet in this post, in which he proclaims his love for Steely Dan, he says that he’s also a big fan of the Beatles and loves virtually everything they ever thought about doing. (I guess in this case, “virtually everything” means “everything except precipitating the downfall of polite society,” of course.)
Now that’s really something right there. I don’t know if I’d be able to be a fan of someone if I thought something like that about them. I mean, as it is, I can’t imagine myself getting into Charlie Daniels at all because of some of the things he says, and all he is is a cranky grouch who has political views that I strongly disagree with. If I felt that he were on the forefront of a political movement that I believed was destroying an aspect of society that I hold dear, then I don’t know what I would do. Don’t get me wrong, I would never advocate banning his music or anything, because that’s not how I roll, but I certainly couldn’t ever be a fan of his, that’s for sure.
But then again, I’m a big fan of the show 24, despite my unease that it may be encouraging some people to be more supportive of torture, so maybe it’s not so crazy that someone could love the Beatles and still blame them for disagreeable social changes.
Also, I hope I’m not totally out of line here, but I think that if one is going to repeatedly complain about how society has become more crass and vulgar, then one should not openly admit to being such a huge fan of a band named after a sex toy, because then it kind of looks like you’re enjoying the fruits of the very tree you want to chop down, you know?
Boy Salix, that is really interesting. It almost seems from the two posts you linked that Starving Artist posted something outrageous that he didn’t really believe just to get a rise out of people. At least I think that’s a reasonable interpretation.
The answer is simple: I can admire/enjoy the produce of artists apart from their politics and influence.
If I turned away from every liberal artist, I would have virtually nothing artistic in my life…no movies, no music, no magazines, no TV shows, no nothin’.
Artists are great…for producing art. Too bad they don’t limit themselves to that.
Having said that, however, I’m about to unfollow Donald Fagen’s tweets. He seems much less airheaded when you only listen to his music.
Funny. I’ll admit I don’t have a strong education in the Beatles’ history, but my impression is they were as influential as they were because of their music, not their politics.
