Letters to the Editor
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insanity like a fox?
Think about the idea of a radio chain removing one of their core artists of the last decade from national radio play - one that brings in the coveted female demographic - in the programming biz, it's nothing short of insanity.
Look, I admire the Dixie Chicks willingness to take the consequences of speaking their minds and I think the people boycotting them are a bunch of idiots, but this argument misses the point. If your listeners are, for the most, part a bunch of "patriotic" (in the Newspeak sense where patriotism means supporting the President above all else, unless of course he's not a Republican in which case you're free to smear him all you want) idiots who have turned against one of your core artists of the last decade, you'd be crazy not to stop playing their songs. The last thing you want to do is enflame the anger of your listeners and have it directed at you, too.
Whether the station managers and their corporate masters are also idiots who agree with their listeners' sentiments is irrelevant to the business sense in taking the actions they did, and is hardly evidence of some "top down" conspiracy to punish people for their speech.
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sorry ignoramusio...
...you're buying into the conservative faux-narrative - the fan boycott was never as large as portrayed, nor did the dixie chicks lose any of their substantial drawing power on the road. nor did they stop selling records. so pshaw to THAT argument. the fact is, the corporate media has been censoring artists and songs since 9/11. temporarily removing them from playlists on a national level was a display of loyalty to the house of bush. not to mention that they had previously shown undesirable independence by renegotiating their contract with sony.
"At the first concert of their nation-wide Top of the World Tour the Dixie Chicks received a very positive reception. The concert was held in Greenville, South Carolina on May 1 and was attended by a sell-out crowd of 15,000. The women had come prepared to face up to opposition — and Natalie Maines invited those who had come to boo to do so — but the crowd erupted in cheers. (Tickets for their concert tour had gone on sale well before the controversy erupted, meaning that a cross-section of all their fans was at the concert.)"
in other words, business as usual. this was a tempest in a texas teapot. the over-hyped boycott drive was fanned by the media like a swift boat on fire.
there's always someone trying to start a boycott over something, but this story just fit into the narrative the right-wing media wanted to push. all that fox news bloviating, bill o'reilly attacking, etc. if you want to pretend that the dixie chicks weren't smeared in a reflexive bout of corporate whip-cracking, i've got some weapons of mass destruction i'd like to sell you.
again, this incident is a pefect example of how dissenting speech is suppressed and punished in this country, and you yourself made the point about how unequally criticism of the president is handled vis a vis clinton/bush. it's all about what stories and viewpoints get pushed.
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Thoughts on Colbert, Cohen and Culpability (excerpt from letter to Richard Cohen)
Dear Mr. Cohen:
Give me a personal break, and super size it. And yes, I would like some freedom fries with that.
First, to get right to the point: you have not been this wrong since you—along with the vast majority of the so-called liberal media—allowed yourself to be hustled by the hysterical and intelligence-insulting claims of the administration in late 2002 and early 2003. Suffice it to say, pointing out the supine performance of your colleagues at, to name the two most disappointing examples, The Washington Post and The New York Times during the lead up to, and aftermath of, the Iraq imbroglio is rather like shooting fish in a barrel—or harpooning whales in a bathtub for that matter. And yet, it warrants mention when people who should know better not only get it so wrong, but are yet to realize, or concede, that the primary reason they got it wrong is their unwillingness to bite the hand that pets them (or the tail that wags them).
You—and evidenced by the deafening silence and white ink this week, many of your compatriots—doth protest a tad too much. Colbert wasn’t funny? Well, let’s just say that humor, and scathingly on-target scorn, is in the eye of the beholder. I think we’ll let the looks on certain faces and the tone of certain columns (including the conspicuous absence of many commentators who just couldn’t be bothered to comment) speak loud and proud on this one. Colbert hit his mark. Early, often, and indelibly.
You inexplicably call Colbert a bully for the ostensible impunity with which he lambasted Bush, to his face. This begs the immediate question: doesn’t it take a little more courage, not to mention perspicacity, to say in person, as a comedian, the very things well-paid writers like you were not able, or willing, to say in the safety of Op-Ed pages for the past several years? More to the point, how often has this president put himself in the position to be ridiculed, much less forced to answer simple questions from reporters? Not only is it abundantly documented how obsessively Bush avoids unpleasant or uncomfortable intrusions upon his eggshell sensibilities, but one of the primary (and painfully apparent) goals of his protectors and paid apologists has been to shield him from being accountable, or even (seemingly) aware of any facts that run counter to the fantasies he and his cronies have conjured up in the safety of their well-fortified situation rooms. This is a man seemingly allergic to introspection, comforted by cliché and available for fabricated words of encouragement after the dust and danger have cleared. Indeed, the only people being bullied are the citizens (be they reporters or democrats or non-Kool-Aid drinking members of the GOP) who dare to question or critique the president or his policies. Maybe you’ve forgotten about the carefully screened audiences Bush spoke to and took the occasional, scripted questions from on the campaign trail (and his entire tenure has, under the shameless machinations of Karl Rove, been one ceaseless campaign), or the folks who were tossed out of these same spectacles for having anti-Bush stickers on their cars.
This, in sum, is not exactly a president who has been obliged to suffer the indignities of being held accountable or asked, publicly, to answer a tough question. Of course, it’s easier—and safer—to (rightly) poke fun at the infuriating, yet hapless Scott McClellan for his craven stonewalling. And although no one will miss him, he was, at worst, a minion doing what he was told.
Listen: you need to understand something. What Colbert is doing, and what he achieved in that incendiary performance, is beyond satire or even the current flavor of our times, detached cynicism. He is inverting the strategy Bush and Co. utilize (and which Fox News has long made its S.O.P.), to lamentably successful effect, nowhere more egregiously than in the 2004 election: create an environment where careful debate or compromise is a sign of weakness, the willingness (or ability) to concede error or allow any manner of criticism is unseemly, unmanly. This, after all, is a president who “doesn’t do nuance.”
Colbert was not merely making fun of Bush’s propensity to bumble except in the most carefully orchestrated events, or his obliteration of the English language—we can let him misspeak for himself and let the videotapes cry themselves to sleep. Colbert’s unique—and thus far unparalleled genius—is in illustrating how this cocksure inarticulacy can be played off as straight talk from a regular guy, an honest cowboy who can’t be bothered to look up facts or trust books or listen to advice from experts because he goes by his gut, and he listens to a Higher Father. Perhaps you’ve forgotten how this strategy (to Rove’s credit this debility, which would have annihilated an aspiring candidate’s chances before Reagan, and the real Republican revolution that arose from the revelation that, finally, image and facile amiability trump intelligence and acumen in the new and improved America) was deployed against Kerry, and especially Gore: Are these pretty boys with their faces buried in books really the people you want leading the country?
Colbert lampoons the charade of patriotic and/or faith-driven certainty that is designed to avoid and discourage discussion or debate. Take a moment and consider how this rather simple scheme precedes virtually every catastrophe this administration has caused or conflated: Iraq, tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, warrantless wiretapping, et cetera.
Colbert was funny. You know what isn’t funny? The same scribes that this administration scoffs at (that’s you Cohen), proving that, when push comes to shove, they’d rather defend the man who conned them and attack the man who had the temerity to remind them how easily they were hoodwinked. That isn’t funny. It’s sad.
My condolences,
Sean Murphy
http://blog.myspace.com/bullmurph